What are the odds of finding the one person who knows you inside out, top to bottom, good and bad, and loves you enough to want to spend the rest of their life with you anyway? My guess is something like a billion, trillion, gazillion to one, or thereabouts. Add to that, how do you know they are the one and will always be the one? What is to say, or who is to say that you will always be each other's one and only? How can you say for certain that with the inevitable change and growth everybody goes through in life that you will not just grow apart, and start wanting different things? What is to say that once you find that unbelievably special one that you will be able to fit them into your life, and that they will know how to include you in theirs (and to your satisfaction)? And what is to say that you will be forever and ever willingly committed to this person? Seriously, the more I think about it, the scarier the idea becomes.
This little brain pretzel of mine proves, once and for all, that marriage phobia, or rather the reluctance to readily commit to someone and get married is not exclusively a guy thing, girls go down that road as well. You know who we are, they call us “Career Women” accompanied by a dip in the voice and a slight frown of the brows, and all of a sudden being a woman who knows her own mind is a major no –no; it is OK to be a male bachelor by choice, but not a female one. What?! Female, single, and not desperately hunting for a husband? Something must be wrong!!
But social prejudices are not what I want to discuss today, but rather, why we have become, what we have become, hesitant to marry.
First of all, I think this unwillingness or lack of keenness to marry, if you may, develops with age; you are getting older and better acquainted with yourself, more comfortable in your own skin, deeply attuned to your psyche and inner workings. With all of this self-discovery, enlightenment and one or two epiphanies, you start setting yourself a way of doing things, a system or routine of sorts, and you become one of those “I like it the way I like it” type of people, not that there is anything wrong with that, I love to like things the way I like them –the way I see it, life throws at us a lot of stuff that we do not like and have to just deal with, it seems only fair to live your personal time the way you, and nobody else want; call me selfish if you want.
I am not the only one who feels this way though, at least in my circle of friends and acquaintances. The single males and females I had gotten around to talking to seem to agree with me: we are unwilling to try and change the way we do things, we are in love with our comfort zones.
You know something, maybe we are selfish little brats, maybe even scared kids, but also, maybe we are yet to cross paths with someone who would compel us to take the risk. So maybe it is not entirely out doing.
Seriously, it is quite unsettling to think about. Let us say you finally do get thrown off balance by someone you find incredible, now what? Do you just drop everything to be with this person? Or do you hold on to your system and risk missing on a once in a lifetime? Is it Fate only, or do you have to do something to help Fate out? If you follow the rule of “if it is meant to be it will happen” will you be safe, or do you need to hustle a little and make a move or two to get that right person, and do you really want to make a move or two to get that person? See, I told you, it is extremely mind boggling.
But, for the sake of argument, we will state that you do decide to take the plunge, it does not end there. There is no guarantee that this thing is forever. What do you do? Is there anything to do anyway? What is to make you want to stick it out if things start going differently to your plan, and they will, trust me? Bottom line, how do you decide anything, one way or another? Is there some kind of formula out there that we, scared singles, have not figured out yet?
Well my married friends tell me what it is just a matter of giving up on the fantasy in exchange for the reality, although I think it was Oscar Wilde who first said Love is the triumph of reality over the imagination. Sounds simple enough, right? Maybe there is something to this reality versus fantasy thing; but which part of which fantasy, and exchange for which reality? How do you determine which reality you come across is the right reality for you? I do not think there really is a cut and dry answer for this one, everyone is pretty much, on their own, it is at the end of the day, up to you and your intuition to decide. Good luck with that (cue in devious giggle).
In the end it probably boils down to guts and personal choices, which as you grow older become miraculously clearer (yay old age!). So, set in my ways or not, I am still a fairy tale princess at heart; I would like to think that if the absolutely, incredibly right person comes along I would be willing to let got of my comfort zone, and stone-set way, or at least meet him half way, the absolutely, incredibly right part is what is tricky though, because being pretty set about that as well it will not be an easy feat. Man this is one vicious cycle!
