Trying a New Attitude

A dear family member of mine, who has lived the full and adventurous life of a single girl straight into middle age (with a few relationships thrown in), just shared with me that she’s met the man that she’s going to spend the rest of her life with. A friend of mine told me about a friend of her family who, in her 50s, after fully expecting to be single all her life, fell in love and got married. Another friend of mine met and started dating her future husband when she was 17. Seventeen!

What do I take from all this? We don’t get to choose when we meet the people that we are going to fall in love with. We can be open to it, we can try to be ready for it, but the when is beyond our control.

I hope I don’t sound self-aggrandizing when I say that I am driven. Not driven to the point where I can’t enjoy a good vacation or lazy morning in bed, but a general overachiever. A driven friend of mine (birds of a feather!) who is also single describes our situation like this:

    We decide that we want a relationship – we are ready to fall in love and we just need to meet someone to do so. We send it out to the Universe: “I am ready! Send someone!”

    Three minutes go by.

    “What the hell, Universe?! I said I’m READY!!!”

Oh driven friend o’ mine, you are so right. Something that we want is out of our control, and we don’t do well with not accomplishing our goals, however much our goals depend on the spontaneous arrival of unknown people.

So with this, I am ready to try on a new attitude. It goes like this: I am going to meet someone wonderful and we are going to fall madly in love. I don’t know when, but it is going to happen.

And, like any driven girl would, I have already deliberated and determined the pros and cons of such an attitude.

Pros: I can relax more about dating now, since I am going to fall in madly in love with someone at some point, so there’s no pressure to try to make a particular date work. Also, singlehood changes from this lifestyle that I may or may not have for the rest of my life to a temporary situation, giving me leave to indulge and make the best of it. (I think I am doing this already, but taking away the prospect that I might do this forever would make it less…gloomy.) Plus there’s the general good feeling that there’s someone out there for me. And complete wonder what that person is like. I’m envisioning a tinfoil hat.

Cons: I could be wrong and be single forever. (Hey, a new attitude doesn’t forfeit my ability to reason!) But what if I am single forever? Will I find myself on my deathbed cursing the attitude that misled me into thinking that I was going to meet someone, when this attitude allowed me to be happier along the way? Even if it misleads me I will still get the benefit of thinking that it’s not a matter of control or anything I should or shouldn’t be doing, but a matter of timing. Which I guess is another pro. Huh.

And I could always ask the doctor at said deathbed to marry me. Or maybe the nurse. And the nurse can read me steamy love poems in my final days. Oooooh…I’m liking this plan.

But don’t worry, dear readers: I am not of the belief that I should now just sit back and wait for my love interest to enter stage right. I still need to put myself out there, which is sure to entail more misadventures in dating!