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You may have realized, while working out exactly what your goal or goals were, that you want a family, or financial security, or to reproduce, or to be involved in the lives of young people, or to be accepted as an adult by your family of origin. Rough out plans for attaining your goal without having encountered, recognized and convinced Mr. or Ms Right to hang with you in the standard role on the path to that goal. If you want to raise a family, investigate foster parenting, adoption for singles, artificial insemination, surrogate motherhood, careers that might satisfy the parental itch. I'm not suggesting you act on any of these outlines of plans. Certainly, you should not do anything that you are confident would not satisfy the goal. But going through the learning process may help you understand why you have selected the goal you have. At the end of this process, I expect that Mr. or Ms Right will still be an important part of your idealized future. But I hope this process reduces any desperation you might have been feeling that you must find someone now, or it will be too late and your life would have been horribly wasted. Few things in life are more repulsive than desperation. Possibly nothing at all.
Experiment with the parameters on your goal. Does Mr. or Ms Right have to marry you? Live with you? Bear or beget your children? Stick around until death does you part? If you are looking for sex, does it have to be with a steady or permanent partner? If you are looking for novelty, does it have to be different people or could you find novelty with one person similarly committed to novelty? Can you supply novelty in some way yourself? By yourself?
If any component of your goal relies upon meeting someone you've never met, or on someone making decisions in a particular way, you are very dependent on that person. That's not psychologically a wonderful place to be. That place is where desperation grows. It is the breeding ground of failure. You may covertly desire that, because a fear of failure is your primary motivator. I would argue that you would be a happier, healthier person, with more and better friends and probably a longer life ahead of you if you could find ways to motivate yourself positively, through anticipation of pleasure and happiness, rather than negatively.
If your major goals revolve around one person, even if you should be lucky enough to meet that person, and able to convince them to play the role you have envisioned for them (none of these either guaranteed, nor even necessarily a good outcome for you), what would you do if you changed your mind? What will you do if they die before you? Before you have done together what you had in mind?
I have, to my recollection, always been opposed to the idea of "The One". It's a big planet, billions of people. If there is one for me, when would I meet that person? Would I recognize them? Are they alive now? Have they died, and I've already missed my chance? Did they live and die centuries ago and we never had a chance (there's a Terry Pratchett novel with this as a background joke)? What if my One were taboo for me -- a parent or child or sibling?
I believe we can find happiness with many people. That doesn't mean we have to find them all and hook up with them in succession or simultaneously. It means, instead, that when we do meet a person we can be happy with, we have the sense to do the work of the relationship and be happy with them. I believe that living this way increases one's opportunities to be happy.
While you go about your life, working towards your goal, whatever it might be, do not lose sight of those basic needs you reconnected with in earlier chapters. If one day you hope to be a parent, spend time with friends who have children, offer to babysit. If your criteria for a partner in life involve them taking care of certain, basic life tasks for you as well, remember that they are not in your life yet. While you are waiting for your aristocrat to arrive with megabucks, a big house and a car bought for you to commemorate one month of dating, keep your credit card debt down and contribute to an IRA or 401-K. Why eat frozen food and walk on empty pizza boxes, waiting for someone to pick up after you? You don't need to go all Martha Stewart, but you can certainly pick up after yourself, which will make it a lot easier to invite Mr. or Ms Might Be Right over for a romantic evening. If you take out the garbage, kill the spiders and cook your own meals in your own clean kitchen for long enough, it may even occur to you that you care less about certain attributes and a whole lot more about others.
Whatever goals you select, plan your future to allow for the possibility that your goal is not, ultimately, satisfied. Find alternates that, while not as good, help reconcile you to daily reality. If, thus far, none of your work in satisfying basic needs has turned up a no-calorie, inexpensive, readily available way to make yourself feel better about yourself and your life, begin a search for one. Meditation, yoga, listening to music, looking at art, reading, praying, attending church services -- anything that requires little directed effort on your part, but which helps you find tranquility in an imperfect world -- will be useful throughout your life. The capacity to be calm and spread that calm to others is as attractive as desperation is repulsive. That capacity is learned and grows with appropriate nurturing.
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Copyright Rebecca Allen, 2002.
Created February 9, 2002 Updated February 11, 2002