guy/girl thing?
so i was having a conversation with a friend the other day about relationships. he had currently broken up with a girl after dating for 3 years. apparently she broke up with him b/c he wasn't sure if he wanted to marry her or not. according to him, he would still like to be dating her b/c he enjoys spending time with her and just isn't sure if he wants to marry her or not. now my question to him (and anyone else) is this: how can you not be sure after 3 years? i'm thinking if you're not sure after 3 years, then clearly she's not the one. and here's where it got strange (for me at least). he claimed that "knowing" you've met the right one (after a certain period of time) was a girl thing. he said only girls "knew", and he thought it was b/c of the whole biological clock thing. i wholeheartedly disagreed (and those of you who know me would be very proud...i was not at all offended, i did not get defensive, and i was quite pleasant throughout the entire conversation. i think i was really intrigued by his thoughts b/c it was such a foreign idea to me). anywho, i said i thought it had to do with experience and personality rather than gender, but what the hell do i know? i mean when you're 23 and don't know who you are, i can see not "knowing" after 3 years. but to be 33 or 34 and still not know? i just don't get that. maybe i'm just a really perceptive person...(ok, the HUGE irony (and exception) here is the last guy i dated). but is that it? are some people just more perceptive than others? or do some people, whether they're perceptive or not, really just not know? damn, maybe i'm missing out on some really great relationship b/c i haven't given it 4 years... ;)
posted by paige @ 3:58 PM
3 Comments:
First off, I think you're spot on: if you're an adult with a reasonable level of self-awareness, you should be able to tell (whatever it is you need to be able to tell) before three years. If you can't, something is amiss, either with one or both people or the relationship or some combo of the above.
I'm also not convinced of the idea of 'the one'; there are probably several thousand people on the planet in the right age bracket whose personalities and/or temperaments would be a good match for any given person. A healthy and happy marriage is a lot more about work and mutual self sacrifice than it is about "the one."
Mike I totally agree on your "the one" theory.
Seriously....if you are putting any kind of serious effort at all into the relationship, I think you would know after a year or so if that is something you will want to do the rest of your life. My take on it is that it's now so much an "I just knew" thing, it's more like - "I love this person and will choose to do so from now on."
I put the "I just knew" thing a little on par with "falling in love." I think people put to much emphasis on the falling part and not enough on their own choice to love - love is a verb. As long as people lean on the emotion of it, then it will always be a piece of cake to get out of any relationship, see divorce rates for a good example.
Maybe I am too old fashoined.
i agree. when i talked about "the one", i didn't mean that there was only one person for each of us. just that if you didn't know that the person you're dating is a person with whom you could spend the rest of your life, then it probably wasn't. and i wish more people knew that marriage was hard work. we have a generation of people who give up too easily. if things aren't going well, or if people simply aren't "happy" any more, they get divorced. sheesh, when was the last time you heard of someone who was happy 24-7? surely those people must be on something!
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