Too Picky? Or Too Complacent?

My dad always told me, “Stephanie, you’ll pick and pick until you pick shit.”

It was hard to hear, but certainly provided me with the wake-up call I needed to differentiate my wants from my needs when it came to choosing a partner.

So the other day, when a reader asked me to write a post about how we know when we’re being assertive with our standards or whether we’re just being too picky, I couldn’t believe I didn’t think of it first.

One time, my sister suggested I write a list of everything I could ever want in a partner. Everything. From his background to his bad habits to his interests and his hobbies. Then she suggested I draw a picture of him on the other side of the page. Well aware of my inability to draw, I figured my imagination would suffice. Trust me; I had already seen his face a thousand times over in my head.

During the process of composing my list, I wrote down pretty generic things. I tucked my list into a drawer and kept it there.

Then, a few months ago, perhaps the most thought-provoking and empowering professor I might ever encounter gave an interesting anecdote during a journalism lecture. She discussed her lifestyle choices that made everyone question her sanity; pursuing a higher education, getting married a little later on in life and deciding not to have kids.

She told us about how people always asked her and her husband when they were going to have kids. People would tell her, “You two would have the most beautiful children!” But it wasn’t a part of her agenda.

Keyword: her.

She said that if she cared about what people thought, she would have gotten pregnant and reluctantly had children, only to result in her having a mid-life crisis in a few years’ time because she didn’t stick to her plan. The lesson she wanted us to take was to always differentiate between self-agency and performance.

When I got home, I revised my list. I didn’t want to be with someone who I had to perform for just to be in a relationship with them, and I certainly didn’t want to be with someone who was performing for me.  So I changed “able to hold a conversation” to “able to discuss things that I find important”. I changed “a good listener” to “someone who cares about the things I talk about”. I crossed some of the things off, like “someone with similar cultural interests”. I could live with someone who wouldn’t follow me to a steel pan performance. And after that class, I held on to “someone who wants children around the same time I do”.

Truthfully, there are a lot of things we just can’t live with. And while some of them can sound frivolous to other people, only we know how deeply it will affect us in our relationship. For instance, I couldn’t date someone with a child. I knew I wasn’t ready to for that much responsibility at this point in my life. I also couldn’t live with someone who wasn’t passionate about something, anything! While some people take these things on, I had to accept that I could not.

At this moment, I realized that the only way for me to not follow what my father thought would be my fate was to distinguish between my needs and my wants. Otherwise, I would continue to pick guys I knew were defying my list.

Sometimes, we find ourselves so desperate for companionship that we settle for less than what we deserve, and we stick it out just for the sake of being part of the population with a partner. This is a performance.

But when will we learn that life is not a theater production? We don’t have to act like we don’t have our own agenda, our own plan, and our own list of what we want and need in our partner and what we want and need from our life. But for some reason, we feel the need to, only to disappoint ourselves and wake up in the middle of the night ten years from now wondering where we went wrong.

We go wrong in not listening to ourselves when we make important decisions. Sometimes we feel like we’re being picky because we have yet to meet someone who looks like the human version of our list. We are then faced with a pressing decision: do we change our list, ourselves, or settle?

So the answer to the question of when we’re being too picky is simple. It is to distinguish between your wants and you needs. You have to decide what is and is not a deal-breaker.  

The thing is, you have every right to be selective of what you want in a partner. And yes, you even have the right to be picky. But in being picky, you must also be realistic. When you encounter someone you think you could become romantically involved with, you need to be aware of what could make or break it for you.

Keyword: you.

Single? Me Too. Here's Why.

If you’re reading this you’re either:

     A)     Single

     B)      In a relationship that you want to get out of

     C)      In a relationship you don’t want to get out of

     D)     Hoping to get a laugh at what the skinny bitch has to say

Luckily for you, I’ve got something for each category of reader.

Let me begin this brief statement by saying 2013 was a very good year for me. I survived two and a half break-ups, two get-back-togethers, and lots of awkward encounters in between without having to change my number. I’ve made a lot of progress this year.

After watching my sister’s boyfriend execute perhaps the most insanely romantic proposal I have ever witnessed on Christmas Eve (yeah, Christmas Eve, can you believe this guy?) I started to panic. After the whole proposal ordeal was over with, everyone in the room looked at me as if to say, “You’re next”, and then the look of “Ah, who are we kidding? You’ll never get married,” followed.

But after a few days of evading stares I felt were coming at me from all directions, including the Rosie the Riveter poster I’ve got hanging in my room, I came to the conclusion that no one was looking at me like that. Sure, they looked, but that’s not what they were saying to themselves in their head.

I just thought that they must have been saying those things.

The problem with single people is that as independent as we may be, a lot of us live our lives through the eyes of other people. We get insecure about the number of people we’ve slept with because of “reputation” and “etiquette”. We feel we should be in relationships because all of our friends have partners and we don’t want to be the third, fifth, or seventh wheel on a group outing. We don’t tell our parents where we are or who we’re with because we don’t want them to ask too many questions about Mr. or Miss Two Weeks, and they can’t remember anyone’s name anyway.

But 2013 taught me to fuck all of that.

I don’t usually swear in my blog posts in case a future employer ever reads these and thinks, “How preposterous! She can’t possibly think she can write for our esteemed publication with such a potty mouth!”

But 2013 also taught me to fuck all of that too.

For now at least, I might have to delete this post right before I graduate university so read it now.

Plus, I’m not blogging so much as I am reaching out to my readers to share with them this huge piece of wisdom that many of you already know but I want to reiterate because, well, that’s what I do.

And here it is.

In love, you must not fight the current.

I have always believed that our parents and our grandparents were able to commit because it was so easy for them. They just met someone and settled down and had kids and raised families and…died.

But it’s a different day and age.

We’re afraid to give our hearts to people because there are a lot of terrible things they can do with it. And we’re afraid to hold someone’s heart in our hands because chances are our hands are a bit shaky. But we give our hearts to people anyway in hope that they’ll do good things with it, and we take hearts knowing that we very well may not.

If you think about it, all of that comes down to one thing, and that one thing is not being ready for love.

This year I learned that the reason my sister has a ring on her left hand is because eight years ago she entered into a relationship and decided that she was ready for it. She was ready for the good, the bad, the ugly, the hurtful, the miscommunication, the high fives, the lies, the truths, the victories, the failures, the pain, the agony, the tears, the beginning, the middle and the end.

The reason my parents have been together for just a bit longer than I’ve been alive is because of the same reasons as well.

So when I sit and wonder, “Why am I single?” The answer is because I am not ready.

But the problem with single people is that we keep forcing ourselves to be ready everytime someone gets engaged. We keep forcing ourselves to be ready everytime we think we find “the one” in some party or trashy bar or crossing the street with us or at our workplace.

But we have to realize that who we meet is nothing without the timing of when we meet them.

The other day, while venting my love trials and tribulations to someone, they said one of the simplest and most profound things ever.

“Stephanie, whatever you think you’ve felt thus far cannot even compare to the love you will have and share with the person you will be with,” then she said, “I promise.”

I’m not sure if it was the statement itself or the promise at the end, but I felt that it was safe to believe her. I felt myself ease up at once upon hearing her remark, and I gave myself an apology in my head. It went something like this:

“Dear self, I’m really sorry for being such a douchebag. You’re still pretty young and you have a lot of life left to go and you really shouldn’t even be focusing on boys anyway. School is a lot more important. And a lot more expensive. You should go to the library and rent some books instead.”

In that instance, I found my peace. I had my aha! moment. I felt the way Tom Cruise must have felt when he jumped on the couch except the love that I had wasn’t for Katie Holmes (although she was great in Dawson’s Creek).

It was for me. Just…me.

The truth is, I have probably met the man of my dreams fourteen times over and over again. But he wasn’t the man of my dreams because not even my dreams had solidified themselves at that point, and certainly not even this point.

So what is the big frickin’ deal with not having a date to stupid Christmas parties? And why does it have to be even numbers when people wanna go out?

We don’t. And it doesn’t. It’s just the way our society is. And who can blame us for feeling a little rushed and giving in to the pressure at times?

No one. No one.

So until then, I march on. Alone, but certainly not lonely. And not looking for love, but looking for myself.

I think I’ve found her fourteen times over but not even the woman I will become has solidified herself.

And that’s the key.

Some people find out who they are and what they want a lot earlier than the rest of us. Like our parents and our grandparents, who quite frankly had no choice, hence the marriages and baby-making at like, sixteen. Others need a lot more experience, encounters, time with others, and especially time alone to decide that.

So don’t feel like you need a passenger when you know your sports car only has room for the driver. Especially if you’re not ready to upgrade to a two-passenger vehicle, let alone a family van. Sure other cars on the road might be at full capacity, but you’re on the freeway.

And until you reach your destination, or the area signs tell you to slow down, change lanes, exit here or there, or pick up that hitchhiker, just ride the open road; enjoy the scenic route.

And no matter what you do, don’t fight that current. It's one of the only things that will get you to where you need to be.