Posted on June 6, 2011 by everydayisa
I don’t know who you are but I want great things for you. I want you to have romance and committed love and something real. Something that lasts. That’s really hard to come by these days but I want that for you and I want that for me, too. Here are some of the things I wish I could tell my future children about love. To be honest, I don’t know if I’m ever going to get married and have kids but that’s okay. I’ll pass these things on to you instead. You, my friend, are worthy of great, authentic love.
Please never settle.
The person I want you to date exists and I want you to wait it out until you meet them. Because, in case you haven’t yet, you will. Waiting is for the brave – it means watching years pass, noticing yourself growing older and sitting through wedding after wedding after wedding. It means bottling that slow-rising fear. It means questioning your standards and running the risk of settling.
I wish someone had told me that the person I was meant to be with was a real actual living person, breathing in some part of the world and waiting, too. I did not believe in romantic destiny so I projected all my hopes into the wrong people and tried desperately to make these wrong people right. In the end, no one won and the aftermath was a combination of devastating grief, self-loathing and crippling regret. I do not want that for you.
Wait.
The person I want you to date might be making morning coffee right now or sleeping through a thunderstorm or getting a degree in Physics. Wait. I mean it. Every other person will be a cheap imitation of the real thing.
The person I want you to date believes in big things. This person has a passion and pursues it with a hunger that could set the world on fire. This person believes in setting goals and making them happen. Trust me: you will never regret being with someone who is madly in love with their purpose in life. When you meet this person — this unstoppable ball of good fury — I want you to have a vision of your own. A goal you can shape your life around. I want you to have a desire to change the world, whatever pocket of it you belong to. You can’t be stagnant when the person you’re with is active and dynamic. Life is a grand celebration of doing great things that matter and you (yes, you) play a huge part in all of it.
The person I want you to date has character. When you’re young, all you’re looking for is personality. Charm. Compatibility in music and book taste and food preferences. I think these are all well and good but character is what sustains a relationship when all of these things change. Personality is ever-evolving, character grows and amplifies in time. Character is when a person does beautiful things without seeking credit. It’s when someone doesn’t quit — even if every fiber of their being begs them to. It’s the ability of someone to graciously expend back-breaking heart-wrenching love to someone who has disappointed and failed them. Character is that beautiful thing that gets molded over time and experience. Be someone with character and never settle for someone without it.
The person I want you to date will be into you. Really, really into you. There will be no need for pointless mind games, no room for even the slightest bit of emotional confusion. The person I want you to date will be crystal clear about their intentions towards you. They will not win you over with sweet nothings or romantic gestures. Their love will be bigger than the superficial trappings of courtship. The person I want you to date will take the time know you. They will see everything there is to love about you and they will look at the core of all the bad stuff and not balk. They will not run at the first sign of ugliness. Instead, they will love you through it.
I want you to know that the person I want you to date will fail you. Give them the grace to be human. (You are one, too.) Don’t listen to those stupid quotes that tell you that the person who loves you will never make you cry. I want you to realistically approach this thing we call human relationships. Hurting one another is part of the messy dynamics of getting close to someone. But the person I want you to date is a person who knows how to resolve conflict especially when it blows up in both your faces. Their ego will never be too big to own up to their mistakes.
And when it comes to their love for you, YOU WILL KNOW. Their love will be the most painfully obvious thing in the world that though you will come to question many, many things in life, you will never — not even once — question them.
And you know what? They will believe in you so much that you will never feel compelled to question yourself. You will put all your insecurities to rest because the person I want you to date will, more than anything, make you feel that you matter. Always. And you know why? Because you do.
I’m sure it sounds like a long shot but what if you dared to believe that the person I want you to date is real? Love is greater than cynicism and this is what I believe — yes, me, the last single girl in the world: While some people think this all sounds too good to be true, there is a God who is out to give us things that are much too good to be false.
Believe. Don’t settle. And in the meantime:
become the person that the person you’re looking for is looking for.
