The Dating Game

A strange thing happened on my trip past forty. I fell in love, and someone fell in love with me. Now neither of these things had ever occurred before. (Alright that's not exactly true, when I was 16 I had a job working in a file room, the 20 year old mentally handicapped boy who worked there too decided he loved me and bought me an engagement ring, but that's another story.) So I get to 40 without ever being in love, or having someone love me.

Of course all things being as they are, the person I love is not the same person who loves me.

There's a terrible 70's song that keeps playing on the radio down here, the chorus goes “Are you going to stay with the one who loves you or are you going back to the one you love?” Seemed like a simple enough question. Obviously my logical mind always said that I'd be better off with someone who loved me and treated me well than with someone who didn't love me.

Of course my logical mind had never actually been in love.

And when I fell in love for the first time naturally I fell in love with someone completely wrong. I couldn't fall in love with a nice guy, oh no, apparently that's just not going to float my boat. I feel in love with someone incapable of love because he's an alcoholic. I mean he says he loves me but when it comes right down to it I am somewhere down the list below his motorcycle and a bottle of rum. He's never going to change his life to suit me, or be the man I want and need him to be. I know this. My logical mind knows this.

Bachelor number two ladies and gentlemen is a nice guy. The kind of guy I would tell my girlfriends to date, sweet, ready to commit, ready to make sacrifices to be with you, ready to change himself to whatever you want. And I can't bring myself to want him, not at all, not even a little. I mean, I'd like to, it would make things easier, it would make my parents happy. This is the kind of guy you bring home to your family as opposed to bachelor number one who's the kind of guy you don't even want your friends to know you're seeing.

When I came back this time I was done. The man I love called me drunk, instead of welcoming me home and asking me out he asked me for a job. And instead of telling me he loved me he told me that I wasn't a professional because I wouldn't give him one.

I was done. So done.

I'd been treated well and now this. I didn't want it. I felt the spark die in my soul. And then it was gone. Nothing. The nothing I'd wished for for so long. And I felt a deep sadness that it was over and a sense of relief that it was. I felt betrayed by love, betrayed by my own fickle heart for loving the wrong person and sadness that one day I would forget what love had felt like. Seven years of being alone, seven years of wanting to be with someone and now I had two options and I didn't want either.

Because my heart had discovered that there is a third option, you don't have to go back to the one who loves you, or go back to the one you love, you can just realize that it's ok to be alone. That you don't really need either. Seven years of being alone and now I realize how damn good I've become at it. I like my life the way it is, I like things the way I like them, I don't need some man to mess things up.

So thinking I emailed Mr Loves Me Desparately that I didn't love him, could never love him and he should just forget it. Then the guy I used to love texted me twice, that he loved me, that he would always love me. And I only hope that my resolution holds. My life is good. It's ok to be alone. It's ok to be done with me for 5-20 – 100 years. It's ok to let love die, and it's ok to stop looking for someone else to complete you. Because in the end I don't need anyone else.