The Quest for Love

If you are one of the lucky few, you will have found your one and only, your true love, your "soul mate" and have been with him or her for a really long time with no plans to go anywhere. Your search, or quest as I like to call it, for love has a very happy ending.

On the other hand, if you are like me, you have been searching for love for a very long time. There may have been times when you thought you found it, but discovered at some point that what you found was not true love but something you invented with the hope of being happy.

I realize that I am only 43 years old and have not lived long enough to have a wisdom about anything. However, as an observer of life, I have noticed that some of us, maybe even most of us, are constantly searching for "true" love. But our requisites for a life partner change through the years. As we get older, and as we discard those that don't live up to our expectations, our ideals for our perfect mate change.

When we are very young, our idea of true love comes from the fairy tale stories to which we are subjected. Especially if your parents' love lives didn't feel or look like what you were reading about in the stories. If you grew up in a very loving environment, you probably wanted to duplicate that environment when you became a wife or husband and had children. If, however, your home life wasn't quite so idealistic in the love area, you probably created in your imagination something that was the opposite of what you were living. In either case, whatever you imagined when you were very young probably did not last very long.

In our teen years, our eyes open a little wider to the world around us. The rose-colored lenses of childhood begin to fade and we begin to form real-life opinions of the world around us. We temporarily forget about our idealized goal of marriage and/or children as our hormones begin to rage and focus our attentions, instead, on just finding a boyfriend or girlfriend. We want to be validated in the eyes of our friends and to be perceived as normal as possible. If we are unable to secure a boy/girlfriend, we begin to think that there is something wrong with us... Why can't I get a boy/girlfriend, we think? What's wrong with me? Some of us will go through many, many different relationships, presumably to "test the waters." Most of us won't find our ideal love in our teen years because we don't yet know what that is. Some of us, however, will figure it out during that same period and will find the person with whom they will spend the rest of their lives. They are the lucky few.

As your teen years turn into your 20s, if you have not found your life partner, you will go one of two ways: you will either decide to get as many men/women into your bed before seriously searching for that one with which you will want to settle down; or you will immediately begin your search for serious love.

In the first case, you throw all ideals of a mate out the window and decide you are just going to have fun. Fuck it! (literally and figuratively.) You no longer care what qualities a potential partner can bring into a relationship, but focus instead on what physical qualities attract you to him/her. This can have an advantage in the end if you are observant. With each partner, you will begin to take note of what qualities he or she has that are attractive to you in non-physical ways. For instance, you may discover that you like the person that cleans up after him/herself, but not the person who becomes obsessive about cleanliness. And without even realizing it, you are cataloging in your head all the qualities you want in your life partner. If you're lucky, you will find all of those qualities in one person right about the time you are ready to settle down.

If you have decided to immediately begin your search for true love, you will seriously date each potential mate, maybe even living with one or more of your boy/girlfriends. But you will, in reality, end up doing exactly what the person in scenario one is doing - cataloging traits. However, because you are dating seriously, you are not seeing a lot of people. Probably one or two over the period of a decade. In this instance, the traits that you are cataloging are the negative ones. You are making mental note of what you DON'T want in a life partner. If you are lucky, you will find someone who has the least amount of negative traits (or someone who is willing to work on his/hers) by the time you are ready to settle down.

Wanting to end your search for the perfect mate in your 20s, you probably settled for someone who came as close as you figured they would get to what you think is your ideal mate. If you are extremely lucky, you'll stay together "til death do you part." Most of us who married in our 20s have already gotten divorced, having discovered our partner wasn't even close to what we really wanted. We then begin to realize that we weren't really in-love with the person to whom we committed ourselves, but were so sure that we were ready to begin our idealized life of marriage and children, we took the leap with the wrong person. There are a few who decide to not take the plunge of marriage in their 20s and continue their quest for their Mr./Mrs. Right.

Whether you were married and then divorced or remained single through your 20s, your perception of love and a life mate change when you get into your 30s. You are growing up now. You feel like an adult for the first time. You are maturing in your thought process as well as your actions. You realize that relationships require work and your search begins to take a different approach. You begin to look for someone who is willing to work with you and has similar life goals. If you're lucky, you will find that someone. And you will fall in love, probably for the first time. You will decide to take that final step and you will get married. You will believe that you have found true love. And perhaps you have. You will have children and will relish your role as a wife and mother, or husband and father. Your relationship will have ups and downs, but you realize that it is normal. If you are lucky, your relationship will last regardless of the fights and quarrels, because you are working at it. You learn that compromise is part of the equation, and you are willing to compromise. Life, for the most part, feels right because you have love.

If you are not lucky by the time you reach your 40s, you either did not find the one who is willing to work with you for a lifetime and never got married, or, if you did get married, one of you will stop working at the relationship. If the last scenario describes your life, you will divorce because you realize that when one of you stops working at the relationship, the relationship stops working. When that happens, everyone in the family becomes miserable with the home life and something has to change. You might seek counseling to fix it. Sometimes that works. Sometimes, the one that quit working at the relationship will refuse to go to counseling if it's requested. In any case, it either works or it doesn't. And your perception of love changes yet again. In your 40s, usually you have decided that you are where you are and that's where you'll stay, whether your married or divorced or never have been married. You have reached that age where you are completely comfortable with who you are and how life works. You realize that there is still a lot of lessons to be learned, but you now know in what areas of your life you are willing to compromise and which areas you are not. You think you know definitively what you want in a partner. If you have it, great. If not, you will no longer settle for anything less.

When I was a little girl, I wanted to be married and have two children - a boy and a girl - by the time I was 25. I wanted the ideal homelife - a husband to take care of me and my children. I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom and raise my children in a loving environment. When I was in high school, I just wanted a boyfriend. I wasn't looking for that one guy to spend the rest of my life with... just someone to ask me out and say he was my boyfriend. I never found that at school. The boy who did become my boyfriend went to a different school, which meant I saw him very little. Being so very young, I was also very stupid and I broke up with him after only months of dating. I never had another boyfriend in my teens; therefore, I was very unhappy. I thought that not having a boyfriend meant that I wasn't worthy of love. I was positive I would never find anyone to love me.

In my 20s, I took the "fuck it" attitude and began sleeping with whomever would sleep with me. Eventually, I figured, I would find someone who was willing to settle down with me. And I did. I ended up marrying the first man who asked me to marry him. By the time he asked me, I was positive that no one would ever ask me. So I thought I was in love with him, because he asked me to marry him. We were together for 4 years when I realized that I was not in love with the man and I was done with that relationship. I left him, and went back to the "fuck it" attitude. I ended up getting pregnant and had my first child at 26. The man who impregnated me didn't hang around long enough to learn of my pregnancy. He got what he wanted and was out of there. (Apparently, he also had the "fuck it" attitude.) Although technically still married to husband #1, I was a single mom. I filed for divorce before my son's first birthday. And, because I was now a mother, I stopped "dating" altogether. I concentrated on raising my son. And with him in my life, I felt complete and whole because I had found, for the first time, unconditional love. I was content to raise him by myself knowing that he loved me, and I loved him, no matter what. As he got older and became more independent, I realized that I was missing something: companionship.... and sex. So, I started the search for a husband for me, and a father for my son. When I first met husband #2, I didn't know he would be the one who would be my husband... he was just a fun guy to go out with. But in less than two weeks, I knew he was the one with whom I was supposed to spend my life. We were married six weeks after we met. Our marriage was very tumultuous in the beginning. I had some hard lessons to learn. But eventually, things calmed down and shortly after our first anniversary, I learned I was pregnant with my second child, his first. Our marriage worked for about 7 years. Then something in him changed. It was just after the birth of our second son together (my third child) that he snapped. He just decided he was done working at the relationship. So I left. He was in his late 40s. I was in my late 30's. We have since become friends again and can work together in raising our children, but we will no longer be a couple.

Through those two relationships, and the numerous non-relationships that I've had, I have learned what I DON'T want, and for which I am no longer willing to settle. First of all, while I still have young children to raise, and as long as their father is a part of their lives, I will not have a serious relationship. I don't want a boyfriend with whom my ex can find fault and pick fights. I don't want my children feeling as though they are not number one in my life. I don't want complication or drama beyond what I already have. Things are running very smoothly right now and I like that a lot.

But I do miss the companionship of a man (sex) and feeling as though I am worthy of being loved. Ultimately, I miss being loved. I have the love of my children, the love of my family, and the love of my friends - all of which are fulfilling in their own rights. But it's that love of a partner that is lacking. At my age, I know realistically that it may not be possible to find it anymore. So what I'd really like is to find someone who realizes that I will not compromise my life for him and is willing to be someone to go out with once in awhile and maybe have sex with every now and again. But it has to be someone who shares common likes and dislikes. Someone who thinks along the same lines that I do. Someone with whom I have something in common. And he has to be secure enough in himself to not be jealous of the time I am not giving him. Someone, basically, who is looking for the same thing that I'm looking for. Does that man even exist? I doubt it. Will I ever find love again? Only time will tell!