2001-03-30 - 986008135

On the internal soundtrack: "Don't Stop", Fleetwood Mac

Oh, god. I just realized that I'm losing an hour this weekend. Ugh. I can expect to be draggy for the next week or so.

Yesterday Megan noticed the picture of Alicia's twins that I am currently using as my wallpaper. She said, "Doesn't looking at that picture all the time make you want to have kids?"

I said, "No, it makes me want to visit them."

Later we were both in Jay's office discussing children -- apparently Molly's biological clock is ticking, whereas mine is either broken or on a time delay -- and I mentioned that I don't want to give up my sleep. Jay said, "Well, yeah, when you have kids, sleep is the big sacrifice."

That's the thing, y'know. Anytime I start thinking the twins are so adorable and wouldn't it be amazing to watch a kid grow, I remember three things:

1. No sleep

2. Constantly cleaning up pee, poop, vomit, blood, and other messes

3. Teenagers and their hormones

I'm told that when you have kids of your own, these things become inconsequential, particularly the second one. But I can't SEE that from here, and I'm not going to take other people's word for it and then end up being constantly pissed off by the whole business.

I said I was going to talk about love, didn't I? Okay, let's see here.

Since there are three millions different varieties, I'm going to focus today on the concept of being "in love" and how it relates to marriage.

What is being "in love", really?

Most definitions I've heard include a strong physical attraction, feelings of affection, a desire to spend a great deal of time with that person, and mutual respect.

By that definition, I've been "in love" dozens of times, so that doesn't really work for me. You can feel all those things for a person and still be completely unable to get along with them. Compatibility and a sense of mutual understanding -- of "getting" the other person -- go a long way for me. If you include those in the definition, I've only been in love once.

The truth is somewhere in between, I suppose. There have been several people I've loved very much, but only one of them hit all the marks and didn't have any personality traits that could cause unhappiness down the road. Even though he is a pest.

When I was young, I bought into the concept that you "fall in love" and then you get married and live happily ever after. Many people do this. There are people who have been married for over a quarter century who got married based on this ideal.

On the other hand, there's a lot of people who do that and then get divorced.

In the latter case, if you get divorced, does that mean you weren't really in love? In some cases, yes. In others, no. Many people who divorce say they still deeply love the person they married, they just couldn't make the marriage work.

This makes sense. You can have incredibly strong feelings about someone who is your polar opposite -- it's their differences that love them, even, and you don't want to change them -- but in terms of making a home, juggling finances, raising kids, etc., love isn't always going to be enough.

I guess the point I'm making here is that while love is an important ingredient in marriage, it isn't the ONLY ingredient, and indeed sometimes being in love should NOT result in marriage.

I'm of the opinion that there are some people you are meant to love very very much, but you are only supposed to be with them for a limited period of time. Like sparklers on the Fourth of July. I bet I could fall in love with someone who was religious. I do admire people who have a deep, true belief and try to live their whole life in a spiritual way. But given my own feelings about religion, I can't see a long-term relationship working out. Also, I am sometimes drawn to people who are my opposite -- oddly enough, people who are angry or cynical, partly because I want to help make them less so -- but a person like this would make me miserable on a daily basis. Those same people are drawn to me because my worldview is so different. So you learn a lot from each other, but it doesn't bode well for the long term.

So this is why it mystifies me that some people just marry the first person they have strong feelings for. That's nuts. There are so many other things to consider. Do we feel the same way about finances, children, religion, fidelity, what we expect out of the relationship? I'm flabbergasted when, say, a spendthrift marries a miser and they spend the rest of their (possibly short) marriage arguing about money. I don't care how much I love somebody; if he's dumping our money down the drain I'm going to start to hate him eventually. And don't even get me started on marriages where one partner wants children and the other doesn't. Didn't you DISCUSS this before you got married? Or what about couples where one person is extremely independent and the other is a do-everything-together type? You're setting yourself up for misery!

Sigh. But even attraction, compatibility and affection alone isn't good enough either. The reason I stayed with my previous boyfriend as long as I did was partly because we we had all those things. There was nothing we argued about. I still think he's a great guy and a lot of fun. There was just something missing, some place that was terribly important, where I felt that we weren't connecting. I knew what the piece was -- I'd experienced it with other people -- but I tried to convince myself the piece was unimportant compared to all those other good qualities.

I was wrong.

Don't settle.

And don't marry someone thinking you're going to change them.

I don't think I'm doing a good job of tying everything together here, but my thoughts are on the page, so there you go.

Now if I can just drag myself away from all this fun gossiping with Michelle over IM, I might get some work done today.

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