Romance is Over-Romanticized

I’ve been happily married for nearly four years now, happily together for nearly eleven.

When you’re single, you resent happy couples, and I get that; however, when you’re a couple, you get tired of listening to single people whine as well.

The most vexing comment we often hear is, “Oh, you two are so lucky.”

Lucky?

Is that what you think?

Was it luck that both of us spent most of our lives focused on our own personal development, goals, careers, and sense of self/center before we ventured forth to find a prospective partner?

Was it luck that both of us spent hours - I don’t even want to recount - plugging away at online dating site questionnaires, reading profiles, messaging sometimes for nothing, blocking unwanted advances, and sifting through potential partners like finding a needle in a haystack?

Was it luck that we put ourselves out there on dates, bad and good, trying to make a connection multiple times until we finally did?

Was it luck that we spent our first year together miserable and fighting, putting in so much energy just to make it that we barely held together?

Was it luck that we continue to spend hours talking things out, arguing, making up, compromising, and acknowledging that our lives are no longer our own?

Oh, sweet lonely fools - if you think romance is all about luck or even some twist of fickle fate, then I would have to say you’re doing it wrong.

Love is work. Love is committment. Love is hard.

The only part luck has to play in it is finding someone else who agrees on those points, when the world likes to think we’re just magical Oreo cookies looking for our missing halves to make us whole. Even in this, your results in finding someone can only be as good as the effort you put into looking.

There are over 9 billion souls on this planet. The chances of not being able to get along with just one of them seem statistically ridiculous. The chance that one will fall on your lap if you don’t go out trying to meet them are also statistically ridiculous.

So if I was given a soap box to lecture on here’s what I’d say:

Pro Tip 1: You need to be a whole person before you go trying someone else on. If you think you need someone to complete you, fix you, or heal you, you’re probably doomed to disappointment. Only you can do those things. A partner is meant to provide balance/support, not life-sustaining mana.

Pro Tip 2: Ask. People. Out. Learn to accept rejection without taking it personally. I don’t care what gender you are either. You know those geeky characters like Howard from the Big Bang Theory, who try and fail so many times trying to flirt/pick someone up? Guess what they get right - they keep trying. As the motivational poster goes, “100% of the shots you don’t take don’t go in.”

Pro Tip 3: Relationships are meant to have disagreements. Your partner is not a picture perfect doormat ready to bow to your whims; they’re another intelligent, unique individual raised differently than you with different quirks, dislikes, vices, and pet peeves. The same goes for you. Learn to compromise and stop looking for “perfect” - instead, try looking for “persistent” and possibly “patient” as these hold up better over time.

These are just the rantings of a “lucky” old married soul, though. Take or leave them as you will.

But if you ever come around me and my spouse muttering the words “lucky”, just know that we have spent ten years as verbal sparring partners - and you have very little chance to survive us when we tag team.