Finding Mr & Mrs Right: The settlers

I have often wondered why people get together.  Some have nothing in common, their tastes range so drastically, but yet, they’re together.

And sometimes, these people that I don’t understand make the best partnership.

John liked Jane, she’s cool.  She’s super active and is always up to something, and he likes that.  He wants to be more exciting, and the best way to be exciting when you’re boring, is to have a partner who is exciting.  It is sometimes that easy.

Jane had a string of douchebag boyfriends, and she was just over it.  When John expressed his interest in her, she didn’t quite know what to do.  John was of a different guild.  She decided that she had nothing to lose in settling for him.  He wasn’t what she desired physically, but he was nice.

Jane’s interests became John’s interests.  He was happy to be the second in charge of their relationship, taking her lead.  At work, John was efficient and climbing the ladder, a performer.

Jane knew that she settled for John, there is no illusion in her mind that she did.  With this clarity, she is able to make the most of the relationship.  Theirs is a life partnership of shared interests and goals, one of friendship and support.  Is it a happy life? I don’t know, but it is definitely a content one.

There have been many times in the course of their relationship where one of them has lusted over someone else, and the thought of having an affair has crossed the mind.  When you settle, inevitably there comes a point when you are tempted by others.

We watch movies and shows which depict the magical feeling of love.  Something we desperately want to feel for ourselves, and when you don’t have it in your life, you inevitably long for it.

The problem with looking elsewhere is that you are playing with lust more often than not.  Jane lusted after Kevin, dreaming of how hot their potential relationship would be.  Luckily, Kevin wasn’t interested in Jane.  She was unable to end her relationship with John, knowing how good he’s been to her.  She wanted him to end their relationship, but he was content, and that’s all he wanted.

Jane found herself going through quite a few very difficult periods in her life, and John was right there beside her.  He held her up and was the rock she could lean on whenever she felt that life was getting too much.  For this, she will always be grateful and will never leave him.

Though they did not start off their relationship pining for each other in lust or love, they have grown into a great couple.  They’re best friends who are partners in life.

Another couple who settled for each other, didn’t quite make it.

John had been in love with Amy for as long as they had been friends, but she was not interested in him.  Yet, they continued to be the best of friends, him always wanting to be more.

John always had a girlfriend, he couldn’t be alone.  However, he always made abundantly clear to Amy that if she ever wanted anything more, all she had to do was tell him.  It was an unhealthy friendship, but Amy liked the attention.

John met Jane, finally a woman who was his intellectual equal, someone who could rival Amy for his affections.  Or at least, that’s what we thought when he first brought her around.

Amy hated Jane, it was childish and selfish, there is no other explanation for it.  She didn’t want John, but she didn’t want him to be happy with someone else either.  She liked the devotion he showed her, and when his affections went elsewhere, Amy was unhappy and projected it by altering from being passive-aggressive to downright hostile towards Jane.

For four years, Jane avoided Amy.  She didn’t like Jane, and left it at that. John and integrated Jane into the group and she knew that she had to be friends with everyone in order to keep John happy.

Amy’s hostility became more evident with each passing year.  She would try and turn others against Jane, but we all knew the motives behind her bitterness, and ignored it.  Amy had a tendency for being childish when she thought other kids were playing with her toys.

John was fast approaching 30, and that was the magic marker.  As his friends scrambled to the marriage line, he felt it imperative for him to also be settled in wedded bliss.  After all, with them being slightly older than us, their school friends were all getting married every other week, and they had to keep up with the Jones.

The engagement came, and we weren’t surprised, nor were we excited.  It’s is weird when you are told of someone’s engagement and all you can feel is “Oh, OK.” Followed by a mental shrug and you hoping that you’re not invited to the wedding.

John proclaimed that he was madly in love with Jane and she was the love of his life.  All the while, looking at Amy when he was addressing us as a large collective.  So, my cynicism was ripe.  I felt bad for Jane, knowing that the only way she could possibly have happiness is if Amy were to be completely out of their lives.

John was unwilling to end his friendship with Amy, their birthdays were several days apart.  He continued to insist they celebrate their birthday together in a combined party, lamenting their special bond.

Amy, upon much self reflection and honest conversations with some true friends, decided that it was time for her to not be such close friends with John.  John and Jane needed to start their life together, and with her in it, there would always be an unwanted third party in their marriage.

It was strange to be around John during that time, he knew that he was being distanced from the general group.  He was the only one who was getting married amongst a group of couples and singles.  We weren’t in that bracket yet.  He was also distancing himself from us, perhaps Jane had finally gotten through to him, that she was going to be his wife, the woman who was going to be beside him for the rest of his life, not Amy.

The hostility between Amy and Jane was palpable, so thick was the tension whenever we actually managed to hang out as a group.  The two women would outright refuse to acknowledge the other’s existence, no exchanges of pleasantries at all.  Eye contact was not exchanged either, each girl was invisible to the other.

We would sit around so that they would be on opposite ends and would not have to talk to each other, whilst the rest of us worked around them.  It was childish and stupid.  I was Amy’s best friend, sad to say.  She had many great qualities about her, but she could also be a massive bitch.  And she was.

Jane was a sweet girl, she just wanted to get married before she was 30, just like her friends. She wanted the lavish fairy tale wedding, she wanted to be the centre of attention.  She wanted her man to love her above all others.

Six months passed after the engagement announcement.  I didn’t really care one way or the other.  I didn’t like John, I thought him an incredibly weak man who was pretentious and a know-it-all.  His ego was massive, and he definitely didn’t have the intelligence, skills, looks or physical ability to back any of it up.

John and Jane threw an engagement party.  Amy and I were to go to it together, as the rest of our group weren’t keen on attending the party themselves and had made their excuses.  As you can gather, John was not the most popular of man amongst men.

We arrived to find the party in full swing, actually packed with people we’ve never met before.  Amy and I separate and I start chatting with some random people.  I’m telling them a story of my getting blind roaring drunk in Toronto following some medication that didn’t have any warning notice, to a group of unfamiliar faces.  Amy suddenly pulls me aside and tells me that we have to leave now.

I look at her questioningly, “What?  We just got here.”  I had driven for over half an hour and I was making some new friends, I wanted to stay.

She’s not happy and seems a little distressed.  “What happened?”  I ask.

“John came up and hugged me from behind, with his arms around my waist.  Then he whispers in my ear ‘This could have been you.’.”  She’s genuinely horrified, it finally dawned on her how inappropriate the premise of their friendship really was.

“Let’s get out of here.”  I automatically say.  I say goodbye to the new people I had just been entertaining.  Oh well, sometimes, you just don’t get to make new friends.

We talk on the drive home, Amy finally understands that she must let her friendship with John die, and they can no longer hang out.  It was one thing for her to think that their friendship was being threatened by Jane, it was another for John to openly admit that he wanted to marry Amy.

With that, John and Jane were able to progress in their wedding plans without much interaction with our group of friends.  Quietly, Amy extricated herself from John’s life, and John had in turn came to his own realisations and did the same with the group.

It wasn’t until the wedding that Amy next saw John.  I was overseas at the time, and was unable to attend the wedding.  In truth, I thought that the marriage was doomed and John was not worth the effort.

After the wedding, John dropped off the radar completely.  The next time I took any notice of him, it was on Facebook. He changed his relationship status to “Married”, it was close to a year after the wedding date.  Naturally, I made a smartass comment on the change of status.

And yes, it was a sign.  The marriage was on rocky ground, and the change of relationship status on Facebook was a Hail Mary for his marriage.  Something that was obviously wrong, and he had kept it to himself.

The marriage was well and truly over two weeks after that status change.  She served him with divorce papers.

Theirs was a marriage that was doomed right after they got engaged.  It turned out, they had not had sex for the six months prior to the wedding day.  And yet, that was not enough for them to call it quits.

The sad truth is, as a society, we have placed so much emphasis on the wedding day itself, that we neglect the amount of work a marriage actually is.  We’ve somehow managed to put more importance on having that one perfect day than being with the perfect person for the rest of our lives.

Jane deserved to be with a man who loves her, and not in love with someone else.  She had settled for a man who was less than desired because she wanted to be married and afraid of being alone at 30.  Whilst John, deluded himself into thinking that he was in love with her, when he was clearly pining over Amy.

Settling for second or third best in this case was disastrous, especially when you delude yourself into thinking that you’ve not settled at all.  Jane and John thought that they were a perfect pair, a match made in heaven.  It was clear to everyone that they were anything but.

No-one believed that their union was going to work.  And the signs were there for both of them beforehand that theirs was a doomed relationship, yet, they persisted with it.  Their relationship had become about the wedding day, and not the marriage itself.

After the divorce, John went right back to pining for Amy, as though nothing had changed at all in the last two years.  Having Amy in his life was not healthy for his development, it wasn’t until Amy had found herself a steady boyfriend that John finally moved on with his life, and stopped seeing Amy altogether.

The majority of couples I know are settlers for various reasons.  And the majority of them also delude themselves into thinking that they’re in love with each other beforehand.  The cracks in their relationship quickly appear and the unhappiness settles in soon thereafter.  And yet, they continue to tell the world and themselves that they’re happily married.

When you’re settling, at least make it with someone you actually like spending time with and talking to, rather than the person that you’ve just so happen to be with when you turned the “OMG, gotta get married” age.

Statistically, over 50% of marriages end in divorce over the course of a lifetime, with the remaining marriages, how many of these are actually happy marriages?  Not everyone is happily married, in fact, few are.  Of my friends and acquaintances, I can only count seven happily married couples.  The others vary from downright hostile and neglect, to content.

With these statistics already against you, you really need to go into this lifetime commitment with more than a grand delusional lie to yourself.  I have nothing against settling, I think that it may make for a very good relationship, so long as all parties involved know that this is the case.  And they’re not deluding themselves and the other person into thinking that it is more than it actually is.  Know what you’ve purchased, don’t expect a Porsche when you’ve clearly purchased a Daihatsu.