Changing perspectives

I'm somewhat melancholy when it comes to this time of year.  Maybe it's because I'm single.  Maybe it's because all the single people are melancholy and it's become some sort of airborne contagion that single people catch.  Maybe it's because the not-single people are so blatantly not melancholy.  If ever there was some contrived, commercialized holiday for the sake of a holiday it's Valentine's Day.  I suppose I'm just sounding bitter right now, but honestly we don't really need a special day to remember our special someone do we?  I hope not.  Frankly, it just seems to be there to kind of rub it in the faces of those people who don't yet have special someones, but that's not really what this post is about.




Now, I'm not really much of a relationship expert, so you can read this with that sort of disclaimer in mind, but I believe that these sort of revelations to me are things worth considering and exploring.  Now, if you are a girl... go away.

Just kidding. 

I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be giving anyone any deeper insights on how a guy thinks relative to how a girl thinks and vice versa. I'm discussing relationships in general, and this is pretty much what I would tell you anyways if you were to ask me in person, not saying that you would, but if you did, purely hypothetical, because that's the last thing you need right?  More "dating advice".  I think I'm getting a little colloquial with this post, but that might be a good thing.

Someone once told me, "There are no such thing as soulmates."  Which sort of begs the question, what's a soulmate?  The veritable plethora of romantic comedies nowadays would have us believe that there is one person that each of us is meant for, and as soon as I meet my "destined" partner, we'll immediately know that we were made for one another and be together regardless of the cost and live happily ever after, in some way, shape, or form.  Now immediately there are two aspects of that definition, the whole "destined partner" thing and "happily ever after".  Now, if both aspects are required for the existence of what we loosely deem "soulmates" then I would agree with the posit that there are no soulmates.  Which is another way of saying I agree with one aspect but not another.  Given how difficult it is to find someone to spend the rest of your life with, and how marriage is kind of meant to be an exclusive, one-time deal, it's hard for me not to believe that God has prepared someone in advance for me (presuming he didn't mean for me to be the Pauline bachelor).  However, nothing ever just happens "happily ever after".  Relationships take work, all of them, at least all of the meaningful ones.

With that, now comes the question of how one goes about finding his/her "soulmate".  Perhaps that not the cleanest segway, but it's the best I can come up with at the moment.  I don't know about everyone else, but when I consider potential spousal candidates I take said candidate and my little mental checklist and start checking off things that I have on the list.  Not to say those things aren't important, but, I don't think that's necessarily the best way to go about things.  I once heard somewhere, "It is better to be loved than to love."  Now, that sounds a little counter-intuitive to us at first, because at an early age we are often taught, "It is better to give than to receive" which we naturally extend to everything, including love.  However, we can't deny that there is something about someone loving me for me (as cliched as that might sound) that is inherently very attractive.  As much as unrequited love has been romaticized and heroicized (I might of entirely just made that word up) by theater and media and literature and whatnot, when I sit back and think about it, it's really just quite sad.  He loves her but she doesn't love him or vice versa.  I mean, sure, you feel all warm and fuzzy if at the end of it all the two of them get together and the recipient of such love comes to appreciate everything the giver has done, but unless they do, there's really no other word to describe it other than sad.

So if we go along with this idea that one of our goals of loving is to be loved, then the important aspect of the relationship is less on whether I can/will love the other person, but whether or not that other person can/will love me.  It's a two way street, so by no means am I saying that my criteria are no longer important, but, before we go and scientize the whole dating scene, let's understand this; even if there exists a girl that meets all my criteria, she's as good as imagination if she doesn't love me (okay, maybe being a little poetic, but you know what I mean).