Like most people of my generation, I was taught about love by watching romantic comedies. And watching my parents fumble through their divorce, and navigate dating with kids. It seemed so matter of fact, so natural for them at the time to have family gatherings with all of us, both parents and their new significant others. It was always harder for my father, the women he dated were not as excited about how much he hung around my mom. They broke up with him over it. His argument was that nothing ever could come before his kids. And being civil to my mom was a needed byproduct.
With time, all things seem to change, and my ideas on what romantic love should look like have evolved. I spent the first 30 years of my life obsessed with finding the “right” partner. The one where love was enough for us to overcome our differences. Where we didn’t have to speak, because we just were able to understand each other. Where making love was full of life, excitement, and our erotic needs in sync. Uncertainty coupled with confidence and desire. The narrative of this love would arch through hardships of getting to know each other and cohabiting, and once a certain amount of time has passed, enough for all parties to agree that they want to spend more time together - this moment is when you know you have found the “one” (of many that you could spend time with reasonably content).
It is a story both of intense meaning and meant to be, we baffle at the bizarre nature that out of every outcome, every time, every person, we somehow ended up attracted to each other in the same moment. We overlooked the convenience of it all that is inherently embedded in the relationships of our lives. We fall for people close in age to us, who live close to us, and who have similar life experiences. However, we tell ourselves that we had those few hardships, and we made it thought, that means we are perfect for each other. This moment, the one where we have the ability to have found the “one” feels like certainty, relief, and that we will exist here for the rest of our lives, with this person.
I don’t know about you, but I fall in love easily. With lots of people. Kindness is attractive. I lived with two other men before Josh. Each time, I never felt like this was “it.” It was nothing about them. It was all about my expectations - both people I was in love with. But love was not enough.
In the airport once, on a family vacation, I passed a guy a note who was on my plane out to Seattle. On it was penciled, “What do you think of moral relativism?” (the hidden message actually read ‘I think you are hot. I don’t know you. But my body wants to know you.’ From his appearance, he seemed like someone who had taken an intro to Philosophy course. I don’t know this for a fact. We passed notes back and forth throughout the 3 hours on the plane. I think he left his number on the paper. I never called. We could have fallen in love. He could have been the “one.” It would have been special. But with fate (the idea that what will be, is) things turned out differently.
Now I think back to this moment and am completely wowed by the fact that I could pass a random person a note. It feels almost superhuman. But I will say that if I do have a superpower, it is doing weird things and normalizing it. Like jumping into cold water, or anything new, and then rapidly normalizing it. Do you think you have any superpowers? What are they? I’d love to know.
The way memory functions for me these days has changed. I used to remember everything. I could just think, “Carissa you have to remember this.” “Carissa you don’t remember this…” but I remembered it all. The details of people’s outfits I saw from across the room after years, the middle names of people I sometimes passed in the hallways and smiled at. I longed to reach out to ask about their lives, but out of extreme shyness, let myself pass with fear and pride. I couldn’t let them know I cared.
Now things have flipped. I want to remember everything, and yet I can’t. And even if I do remember something, it is untrustworthy. The events dubious. Gone until I have a cell phone where I outsource my memory to.
Are you able to get to new places without a map app? If so, I am proud of you. I can’t. I even use maps for places I have driven over and over again. I make the excuse that I need to check the traffic or want to know the fastest way, but really, I have forgotten how to intuit directions from some deep primal part of the brain. Lost my migration guide, with the knowledge that I could just look it up. My brain only has space for so much, instincts included.
In this moment, when I am trying to define the love I have in my life as the love that I expected to have, I have to rely on this faulty memory. And the exact memory of photos and geolocations that my phone has recorded.
For me, like most projects, if I really understood what was involved, and how much care and work the project required, I probably would not start it. The romantic comedies of my youth served me a real purpose, a delusion of existence akin to heaven. Otherworldly in its fixed emotions and stable affections. A place to get to. I like clearly defined goals. I also felt inherently worthy of this goal, which is something I took for granted.
When I said, “I do,” I didn’t really know what commitment and acceptance were. What I was committing to was my memory of the recent past of being together. Not the rest of it all, the parts where we fight about finances, bear witness to each others’ illnesses, and re-learn how to love in the ways that the other understands. This was told to me, in the classic wedding speeches. I thought I was listening. But I didn’t understand.
Angela Duckworth has talked before on NSQ about Greed as a sin. It’s interesting – they are revisiting the seven deadly sins in a contemporary context. For example, gambling as a sin. In the past, we have blamed the gambler. The individual that was making the poor choices. Choosing to spend their time and money on something that was statistically stacked against them. It’s not rational to play slot machines with the idea that you will get rich. Or the lottery. They talk about actually how it is the institutions that actually are the ones taking advantage of deep human instincts. The primal desire to be in the flow state, and get rich. Did you know that people wear diapers to play slots? All the while being served free booze? And we still blame them. I for one, love flow states, free booze and not having to get up to pee.
At the end of the podcast, they (Steven Dubner and Angela Duckworth) always ask for people to send them a podcast memo with the answer to a question on this week’s topic. For this episode, the question was, “Tell us something you have gambled on?”
I gambled on love, without knowing it. In my mind, I was setting out to find the one, in the fairytale sense, spending eternity in a youthful state of bliss. In contrast, there is something really beautiful/tragic in making a commitment to watch someone as your life falls into decline. I betted on the lie that I had been told about love because that was what I had lived until this moment. It was all I knew.
Things could have been different, I suppose. I would be lying if I said a part of me was not disappointed with the reality of love. The ebb and flow between intense feelings and mundane. However, I still feel confident I placed the right bet. There are moments, and when they come, I savor them, trying to remember them without a device, where the mundane becomes holy, the real more beautiful than I could have imagined.
Have you ever sat with the feeling of uncertainty of whether you’ve made the right choice? Placed the right bet? It’s hard to say what decision will be the right one, but maybe this deck that I made with Annie Duke will help you make a decision that will move you forward.
Yes, yes, and more yes. So much goes into our notion of what makes a good partner and our understanding of what we need and want. Plus as you say, our awareness of what marriage will look like can only be based on our life experience and our relationship thus far.
I said “I do” during a period of time in my twenties when I was unsure about my future and what I wanted for my life. I had zero insight at the time as to why I couldn’t bring myself to say no to the proposal and I had a nagging sense that it was a big mistake.
I was raised in a traditional family with no divorce or openly acknowledged dysfunction. Though I was and am a feminist, I had no doubt that whatever career I pursued, I would ultimately be a wife and mother who trusted her stable professional man to “take care of everything.” That was the example I was raised with and it never really occurred to me that it was important and valid to prioritize following my passion and forging my own path. Interestingly, I was always way more capable than my husband, and in marriage I DID take care of myself, and everyone else in all kinds of ways, though it took many years to realize. Subconsciously, I saw myself as a person swimming in open water who needed a boat to cling to. Sad really, when you consider that, that was true for most of the women who’ve ever lived on this earth throughout history. It was not accurate for me, but I didn’t know it.
Point of the story is that even though I had lots of dreams and talent before I chose to move home and get married, my own subconscious pressure won out. Makes me wonder what some good premarital Counseling, or any counseling for that matter, could’ve done for me!
Have to leave a second comment (after reading the second half). This writing! This observation of commitment and expectation gets at something I have felt but never seen in writing quite like this. Its wonderful.