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With the high number of celebrity relationship splits, along with a few I’ve heard about in the “real” world where I live, it’s put me in my “what’s the point” mode. From time to time I try to work through the mysteries of relationships and why so many fail. I’ve done this recently with the Sandra Bullock situation and Al and Tipper. I’m not interested in celebrities and their personal lives but those two “stories” actually hit the “real” news. Both couples seemed to have found “true love” and they may have. For a while.
Many of us are familiar with the concept/theory/hypothesis of “six degrees of separation.” It was originally conceptualized by Frigyes Karinthy, later developed into a play by John Guare, and then eventually made into a movie. It’s intriguing to read about so here’s a link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation
Six degrees of separation is the idea that everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on Earth, so that any two people can be connected in six steps or fewer. There are popular games people play utilizing this concept and in particular there’s the Kevin Bacon Game. I’m not sure how it started but actors then others started connecting themselves to Kevin Bacon and amazingly many of us could somehow in some way connect ourselves to him. He could be in a movie and work with a wardrobe employee (1) who has a sister (2) that works in the fashion industry who has a friend (3) who lives in Thailand who visited her uncle (4) in London who is a writer whose wife (5) is an actor whose friend (6) had a bit part in a movie with Kevin Bacon. I made that up and it’s not part of the real game but that’s how it works. These people are not related to Kevin Bacon but are connected. (It’s a small world after all.)
Along with all that, genetics have come so far that we can have a simple test of our DNA performed and the results can tell where we come from and what part of the world our ancestors originated from, from the beginning of humanity, and it can prove we are related to kings and queens and share the same gene pool with movie stars and famous criminals. There are a couple of interesting TV programs that do this with ordinary people and famous people. I’ve included an interesting link on how that works:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_linking
So we’re all connected and there are approximately 6,826,900,000 of us on the planet as of this morning (June 13, 2010, though I won’t be posting this blog until the 19th or 20th). I visited the World Population Clock for that figure.
Along with all of this I once read that there are 250,000 perfect love matches for every single person on the planet. That has probably changed along with the population since I last checked that figure. Not only that but if something happened to your perfect mate you could theoretically go back to your remaining 249,999 perfect mate pool and simply pick out another perfect mate. I’m not talking about simply available love matches I’m talking about perfect matches. Soulmates.
So why do we have so much trouble finding them? My address book looks like divorce court. Very few people I know have dipped into their 250,000 selection pool. They keep finding matches outside that pool and they are far from perfect. And to define “perfect” I don't mean someone you can live with without being miserable or bored to death or burning their dirty socks. I mean, why can’t we find the loves of our lives? They are out there because we are connected (as tediously outlined above).
Early on I kissed a few frogs then found a toad, warts and all, and when the toad hopped away, leaving me with two tadpoles, I decided to call it quits. So many friends over the years have begged me to drop back in the pond but I kept going back to my sad address book with all the cross outs of husbands and wives and kids and stepkids and I just didn’t see the point. I figured out finding the perfect soulmate, though possible, was simply not probable. I think my perfect soulmate might be in Zimbabwe or Iceland. He is not in California. Of the 250,000 that are out there for us, there are no guarantees they will be in any reasonable proximity to our location.
I have over the years had friendships that were solely based on a friend’s endless relationship misery. We would meet for lunch and the entire lunch discussion was about another failed relationship she was experiencing. I could have had open-heart surgery the day before but it wasn’t discussed. Instead I had to listen to yet another litany of complaints about another boyfriend or another husband. Or both.
It was especially amusing to me when friends who were in horrible relationships would nag me to meet someone and “get back out there.” Is it because they wanted me to be just as miserable as they were? Why are we so attached to the dream of marriage and soulmates? I know why. Romantic novels and movies. (I watched Persuasion last night on PBS. I loved it (again) and I love Jane Austen (always). She wrote f-i-c-t-i-o-n.)
I have now lived without a frog in my life for many years. I do not live a loveless life. I have my family, friends, pets, peace, music, books, movies, peace, contentment, tranquility, peace, gardening, traveling, peace, writing, and peace. Did I mention peace? We don't appreciate ourselves and our abilities to create full lives without a mate. And that includes creating financial comfort which we can certainly manage all by our little ole’ selves. There’s a great line attributed to Ann Landers, the famous lovelorn columnist: it’s better to be alone than to wish you were. It’s my mantra.
I know there are some reading this thinking how nice it would be to spend this lovely weekend with family and friends and read outside on a little swing and have coffee with a neighbor, and take the dogs for a walk, and a million other things. Instead, too many of us are arguing with a spouse, or worse, not communicating at all. Too many of us are bone weary of the partners we are living with and dragging us ever downward into despair. Some of us are living with people who not only emotionally hurt us but physically hurt us. There are those of us who though they are not truly suffering they are living lives of crushing boredom and suffocation. Remember my address book.
Of the relationships I’ve known, read about, or heard about in my entire life, only a few can be considered “good.” Of those, an even smaller number can be considered “soulmate” quality. Devoting my life to family, friends, pets, the arts, and other quality attachments has allowed me to develop areas of my life that may have been lost to me had I endured a long sad unfulfilling relationship.
Many people have actually begged me to find a beau and almost in the same breath have told me how lucky I am to be on my own. And countless friends in what they consider good marriages tell me that if something happened to their husband they would not remarry. It’s not puzzling. It’s just a little flash of realism that hits them when they know I am going back to my peaceful quiet life as we leave our lunch and they are going back to numbing dullness and the thought that this was it forever. The human lifespan is short. Too short to suffer years of discontent. Is it any wonder that so many have affairs?
Most of us are in love with love. That type of love also sells products via commercials. Buy this product and find love and happiness and soft shiny hair too. Not all of us are destined to find perfect love but that doesn’t mean we settle. Instead, we find something else that fulfills our lives equal to if not greater than romantic love.
And let’s not forget that love is most often confused with lust. Sometimes the lust can last a long time and even in a bad relationship lust can keep it going. When lust diminishes or disappears entirely, some adult relationships progress to deep committed love and respect. Without lust, some relationships fall flatter than a Julia Child soufflé.
It doesn’t do any good for people to tell me how wonderful marriage is or a committed relationship is because of course I know they exist. But the effort it takes to fly to Zimbabwe to find my soulmate is too much and I’m just not interested in kissing more frogs. At some point we have to love ourselves to find the true meaning of love. If a cute frog happens to hop into my yard, maybe I’ll give it a try. Or maybe I’ll just get the cat.
www.sharonstrawhandgarner.com
Each week in this spot I will report an instance of good customer service (if any) but without embellishment. Just a business or entity that knows how to treat customers at least some of the time if not always.
This week I received excellent customer service from:
VM Fusionware-tech support
[No part of this content may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author. Blog series began in March 2009.]
