The One That Didn't Get Away, or, A Very Long Post
I’ve been thinking lately about the concept of The One. I’ve been pondering this because I’ve just finished reading a non-fiction book called The One That Got Away, about a guy who lived his whole life yearning for the girlfriend he had when he was 17. I’m a sucker for a good crossed-in-love story, so I bought it from Paper Plus on a whim for $6. I should have left it there - no good book is sold for $6 at Paper Plus. At Hard to Find, yes. But not Paper Plus. Anyway, this book was so whiny, so endlessly annoyingly introspective and self-pitying that I only finished it because I simply couldn’t believe some clueless publisher had loosed it upon an innocent world. (The “soul mate” quotient was unforgivably high - we’re talking every second sentence.) This guy basically blamed his inability to form a sincere attachment with a woman on his old girlfriend, because he’d elevated her to such a height that no mortal woman could ever aspire to her memory. His rationale is “she was The One - therefore I’ll never be able to be happy, because the only person for me got away.”
I’ve always thought the concept of The One was a very dangerous (albeit seductive) idea. I’ve always thought the concept of The One was a very dangerous (albeit seductive) idea. It would be so easy to think that because there’s one person out there for us, all we have to do is find them and our troubles are over. This, however, completely removes the idea of free will or of diversity or of working at a relationship. The truth is that within reason, we can marry whomever we like. We have brains and hearts and there’s no magic predestined meeting, no single event that guarantees our future happiness. “The One” is also a very illogical concept. Of all the billions of people in the world, what are the odds that the One lives within reach? Pretty slim.
(Don’t get me wrong through - there are people you meet who could never be a successful life partner in nine billion years. But in everyone’s acquaintance there are probably three or four people that you like and respect and find attractive and could happily marry if things went down that track. There certainly were in mine.)
So how on earth do you choose? With all that endless possibility and diversity, at what point do you stop looking and say “OK, this is it.”?
In my experience, that point isn’t the proposal day. About a year into my relationship with Steve, I thought, “It’s been a year now. Is he The One? Well, what are my options? I could break up with him now, break both our hearts, spend a year or so recovering, start looking for someone else, find them, get to know them, date them for long enough to get married... or I just stay here where I’m happy.”
That, I think, is where a few of my friends have made mistakes. They’ve found that kind of relationship relatively young, but break up with the person because “what if there’s someone better out there?” I know a girl who ended a lovely ten-year relationship for that very reason and now, six years on, often glumly says “I just should have married him”.
But there is a fly in my “there’s no ‘The One’” ointment. My mother prayed every single day for my sisters’ and my future husbands, as did I once I was old enough. Because I believe in God I have to believe he led me to the best man for me. In fact, I know He did. Every time I dated someone who wasn’t right for me, God let me know. He would gently tell me every day that perhaps this wasn’t the best thing to be doing. (Except one time when He told me so forcefully that I broke up with the guy after 48 hours. I think perhaps He did this because He knows I’m romantic almost to the point of mental illness and needed some sensible guidance.) However, I could have chosen to ignore that and might well have gone on to marry someone else and probably have a very happy life.
But I did listen, and along came Steve. I clearly remember meeting him at a church ball, but my only thought about him the next day was “there was a nice guy across the table... wasn’t there? What was his name again?” His thought was “Well, there’s a nice girl I’ll never see again.” And that was it. No bolts from the blue, no angel choirs. We thought no more about each other for ages, and it took two years of steadily-growing friendship to get anywhere interesting. When we did start dating, God didn’t say a word. The cool thing is that there are things in Steve’s personality that when we met ten years ago I never even noticed, or knew I needed. As I’ve got older I’ve needed different things in a partner, and it seems like every time I identify a need, there it is, hey presto, in Steve. God knew what He was doing.
My example aside, I then look at my parents and grandparents. My grandparents saw each other precisely six times, then wrote for a year through an interpreter between New Zealand and Trieste. He proposed in a letter and she replied via telegram; “Imminsely happy to become wife”. Racked with TB, she got on a ship for NZ, and after a month recuperating from her illness in a metal shed in Egypt, got to New Zealand and married the soldier she hadn’t seen for over a year. She didn’t speak English, he didn’t speak Italian. How did that happen? Well, my grandfather prayed seriously about who he should marry, and while he was in a little church in Trieste, God told him he’d met his wife that day. He listened, and they ended up being happily married for 56 years. (I asked her a few weeks ago whether he’d met any other girls that day, and she laughed fit to kill herself.)
Then my parents. They were both engaged to other people. Mum prayed very hard about whether she should be marrying the man she was engaged to; God said no. She did the unthinkable and broke the engagement, and met Dad not long after. They got married having never spent any time alone (there was a complicated church situation) and hardly knowing each other at all, but have built one of the happiest marriages I’ve ever seen. Had they not listened to God, they might both have been very unhappy.
So what if I hadn’t prayed? What if Mum hadn’t? What if I hadn’t made the first move when I realised Steve wouldn’t? Would I be married now? If I hadn’t married Steve, who would my sisters have married, seeing as they met their husbands through him? Thinking about it too much could really bake your noodle.
I think my conclusion is that if you’re sensible and self-aware and are with someone kind and faithful, who you’re intellectually compatible with, find attractive and love, they’re probably the one for you. If you’ve asked God to guide you and you’re with someone who fulfils the above criteria, there probably is such a thing as The One.
I’ve always thought the concept of The One was a very dangerous (albeit seductive) idea. I’ve always thought the concept of The One was a very dangerous (albeit seductive) idea. It would be so easy to think that because there’s one person out there for us, all we have to do is find them and our troubles are over. This, however, completely removes the idea of free will or of diversity or of working at a relationship. The truth is that within reason, we can marry whomever we like. We have brains and hearts and there’s no magic predestined meeting, no single event that guarantees our future happiness. “The One” is also a very illogical concept. Of all the billions of people in the world, what are the odds that the One lives within reach? Pretty slim.
(Don’t get me wrong through - there are people you meet who could never be a successful life partner in nine billion years. But in everyone’s acquaintance there are probably three or four people that you like and respect and find attractive and could happily marry if things went down that track. There certainly were in mine.)
So how on earth do you choose? With all that endless possibility and diversity, at what point do you stop looking and say “OK, this is it.”?
In my experience, that point isn’t the proposal day. About a year into my relationship with Steve, I thought, “It’s been a year now. Is he The One? Well, what are my options? I could break up with him now, break both our hearts, spend a year or so recovering, start looking for someone else, find them, get to know them, date them for long enough to get married... or I just stay here where I’m happy.”
That, I think, is where a few of my friends have made mistakes. They’ve found that kind of relationship relatively young, but break up with the person because “what if there’s someone better out there?” I know a girl who ended a lovely ten-year relationship for that very reason and now, six years on, often glumly says “I just should have married him”.
But there is a fly in my “there’s no ‘The One’” ointment. My mother prayed every single day for my sisters’ and my future husbands, as did I once I was old enough. Because I believe in God I have to believe he led me to the best man for me. In fact, I know He did. Every time I dated someone who wasn’t right for me, God let me know. He would gently tell me every day that perhaps this wasn’t the best thing to be doing. (Except one time when He told me so forcefully that I broke up with the guy after 48 hours. I think perhaps He did this because He knows I’m romantic almost to the point of mental illness and needed some sensible guidance.) However, I could have chosen to ignore that and might well have gone on to marry someone else and probably have a very happy life.
But I did listen, and along came Steve. I clearly remember meeting him at a church ball, but my only thought about him the next day was “there was a nice guy across the table... wasn’t there? What was his name again?” His thought was “Well, there’s a nice girl I’ll never see again.” And that was it. No bolts from the blue, no angel choirs. We thought no more about each other for ages, and it took two years of steadily-growing friendship to get anywhere interesting. When we did start dating, God didn’t say a word. The cool thing is that there are things in Steve’s personality that when we met ten years ago I never even noticed, or knew I needed. As I’ve got older I’ve needed different things in a partner, and it seems like every time I identify a need, there it is, hey presto, in Steve. God knew what He was doing.
My example aside, I then look at my parents and grandparents. My grandparents saw each other precisely six times, then wrote for a year through an interpreter between New Zealand and Trieste. He proposed in a letter and she replied via telegram; “Imminsely happy to become wife”. Racked with TB, she got on a ship for NZ, and after a month recuperating from her illness in a metal shed in Egypt, got to New Zealand and married the soldier she hadn’t seen for over a year. She didn’t speak English, he didn’t speak Italian. How did that happen? Well, my grandfather prayed seriously about who he should marry, and while he was in a little church in Trieste, God told him he’d met his wife that day. He listened, and they ended up being happily married for 56 years. (I asked her a few weeks ago whether he’d met any other girls that day, and she laughed fit to kill herself.)
Then my parents. They were both engaged to other people. Mum prayed very hard about whether she should be marrying the man she was engaged to; God said no. She did the unthinkable and broke the engagement, and met Dad not long after. They got married having never spent any time alone (there was a complicated church situation) and hardly knowing each other at all, but have built one of the happiest marriages I’ve ever seen. Had they not listened to God, they might both have been very unhappy.
So what if I hadn’t prayed? What if Mum hadn’t? What if I hadn’t made the first move when I realised Steve wouldn’t? Would I be married now? If I hadn’t married Steve, who would my sisters have married, seeing as they met their husbands through him? Thinking about it too much could really bake your noodle.
I think my conclusion is that if you’re sensible and self-aware and are with someone kind and faithful, who you’re intellectually compatible with, find attractive and love, they’re probably the one for you. If you’ve asked God to guide you and you’re with someone who fulfils the above criteria, there probably is such a thing as The One.