First thing this morning I wake up to a friend's post talking about wishing "true love" still existed. I can't help but think it's not that it doesn't exist. I mean I know plenty of people in relationships that don't actually "love" each other, so it can seem like it. Still I know people like my sister, who in spite of their ups and downs, that is still really love or one of my best friends who doesn't even believe in "soulmates" or "true love" who married her husband after only 3 months more than 20 years ago. No matter what she says their relationship is "true love", to him, to her and to anyone that knows them. Hell, one of my other best friends, she is married to her best friend and they've been happily together since high school. It's not that it doesn't exist. It's just that I don't think it exists for me. There I said it. It simply doesn't exist for me. My personality makes up 4% of the people on this planet and only 2% of that is female--I'm like 0.08% of the planet. I don't need someone like me, but figure that the personality that compliments me has to be as rare. I'm sure I had better odds when I was younger since the dating pool was larger but now? The odds of me finding "true love" is like looking for a 400 year old shipwreck in the Laurentian Abyss.
For one, as we get older the single pool gets smaller, then gets people that are dismayed, yea let's call it dismayed, at failed relationships and divorces. The single pool gets muddy with a lot of crap that has nothing to do with anyone other than the person that we were previously with or one previous huge failure in our minds. If I'm honest, I have spent years with huge character flaws to avoid putting my heart at risk. This is mostly my own fault if I'm really honest about it. Not that everyone that I've dated have had huge character or psychological issues. I just seemed to be picking very poorly. One of the aforementioned best friends, would tell me that I had a "broke picker". Maybe. But in retrospect, I was intentionally picking the failed relationships from the start. I didn't trust myself to pick a right one, so I would just settle in with the wrongest of the bunch--even when faced with multiple choices. As we get older, those wrong choices are so much more prevalent it becomes easier and easier to pick the wrong one that even when a right choice presents itself it even feels more "right" to pick the wrong choice.
Yes, I know it sounds like circular logic. It is. It's like a merry go round from hell. I've tried to alleviate this circular logic with FWB at one point. That was a truly bad idea. I have established a theory on FWB since and from observation of every single FWB relationship that I have ever known about, I have concluded this is absolutely true. And truth be told, it's just common sense, although anyone entering into a FWB doesn't ever want to admit--regardless of which of the two in the FWB they are. What two? The fact is that whenever you have a FWB there is one that really genuinely doesn't want a relationship and one that actually does and hopes this will lead to it. Sure, it is probably possible that some FWBs turn into real relationships, but the majority of the time, it is just what it is. FWB. One wants a relationship and hopes this might turn into it and the other really doesn't want one and hopes to find a real one while still getting laid. Sooner or later, it's a recipe for disaster. It simply doesn't work.
There's even a more ridiculous thing to consider when we think about FWB. Sometimes we're actually in a FWB "relationship" and we don't even know it or acknowledge it. The other person is just bidding their time until they find someone or something better. Or they've just hit a low point--like desperate for sex--and they settle on us. I know this is true, because yes, I have done it. I have gotten into a "relationship", okay maybe more than one over the years, with no intention of sticking it out. Zero, zilch, nada, just so I wouldn't have to sleep alone for a bit. Eventually the guy would annoy the hell out of me with some habit that I didn't find endearing. You know that old adage when you love someone you love everything about them even their flaws, well, when you enter into one of these types of relationships where you are just filling the void, eventually those flaws are like nails on a chalkboard. They snore too loud, they chew too loud, they do this thing with their nose, they sing in the shower...who cares? Something about them annoys you. With the right person, apparently from conversations that I've had with people that are now with the "right" person, it's not that annoys you--it's that it annoys you that you are with them.
Another one of my best friends used to say everything, pretty much anything, about any girl he dated was annoying as hell. There wasn't a single thing any woman was ever going to do to make him happy. He's not the only one. I've listened to my guy friends enough over the years to know that what they can't stand about one woman is something they will describe as "cute" with the right woman. And here's a shocker--it's the same for women. We will overlook and even find an endearing quality in flaws for someone we love--but we can't do it for someone we don't. I'm guessing it's human nature. There's no way to truly quantify it other than it seems to be true. I don't know. I know I've never understood anyone overlooking cheating. It does one hell of a number on the psyche when someone cheats on us. But, I've known people that love someone so much that they will overlook that "flaw" (and yes, that's how they describe it as a flaw) because of love. I'm not doing it, but it pretty much proves my case. If they didn't truly love that person, they would be bolting for the door.
Being in love is actually pretty scary for those of us that have tried it before. It's not something that we want to rush into when it happens again, and the fact is that when you fall in love, no matter how old we are, you just fall. There's nothing preventing it. Some of us want that feeling so desperately sometimes that we tell ourselves that we are in love when we know damn well we aren't. Other times we see we are in love and we tell ourselves we aren't and run away as fast as we can. I've done both. Neither are actually smart. I said I was smart (last blog), but I never claimed to be smart about everything. Bottom line, the first choice is never working. We weren't in love to begin with and we knew it. We just wanted to be. The second choice, well, no matter how the saying goes that "true love that's meant to be will be"--no, sometimes we screw things up so bad there's no coming back from it. I've had past relationships where they screwed it up and ones, truth be told, where I have screwed it up. Sometimes we have to admit there are lines that we can't cross if we truly love someone. Problem is that most of the time we have yet to admit what those lines are until we've crossed them...and then it's too late.
Is there "true love"? Of course there is. All of us see it--we know it exists. It comes down to does it exist for us? For those of us that are single, stupid at relationships, self sabotaging, afraid, not willing to be hurt again, or whatever other lame brain excuse we can make for ourselves, does it actually exist for us? Some people will never have "true love" because they had it once and it's still there for that one person. I can think of one woman that I think of as one of the biggest manipulative sluts I know--yet, I know something about her that makes that statement incorrect. She's still head over heels in love with her ex. Whatever it was that went wrong there--it may or may not repair itself. I have little doubt he's still in love with her. But both of them are toxic to anyone else that they date. They will never have "true love" because truth be told they never will let the "true love" they have go. If you are like them, still holding onto some past relationship, well, you can never have what eludes you until you let go of what is gone.
Truth be told, most of us that want "true love" are just too scared to actually have it. It's easier to recognize that feeling and immediately squash it before it gets started. "Sex is everywhere. Chemistry isn't." Chemistry scares the hell out of us and running to the easiest thing is, well, just easier. But Granddaddy used to say that "the easy route is the coward's route". I used to think it was a stupid saying. But when it comes to "true love"? It's easier to pick the easier wrong choices than the ones that excite us, scare us, make our hearts beat faster. We know when that heart gets going the risks have just doubled, tripled, multiplied immeasurably. The risk of being hurt is far more difficult to face than finding a quick piece of ass. But we will fool ourselves for the quick easy answer than risk ourselves for the scary heart pounding possibly real thing. The real thing hurts for real when it ends. The quick answer, well, we can just whine and cry about how it doesn't exist without ever actually getting hurt. "True love" is not the easy route at first glance, but when it is "true love" it is once you take the leap. Now that's one hell of a conundrum.
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