What Are You Waiting for, Cinderella?
We all grew up on Cinderella. High on “Forever After” and Dot, dot, dot.
We expect, on some powerful, inexplicable level that “love” means BOOM! It means immediate, it means definite, it means certain. I’m 27… there is lots I don’t know… but I do know this: Love, the forever kind, cannot always be captured in a 20 page children’s book.
It’s more complicated… and necessarily, beautifully so.
I have countless friends who are self-proclaimed romantics. They are waiting, often painfully, for “The One.” The person who will make all their nights alone worth-it. They refuse—chest thump—the “settle.” If he isn’t “husband material” he isn’t “worth my time.”
I hear you, friends. The thought, the WORD “settle” makes me vomit a little in my mouth. And if deal-breakers are being violated? Amen, sister, dump the fool. But please… please listen to me when I tell you that the boom doesn’t always happen right away. That patience may very well be your (under-appreciated) ticket to happily ever after.
Keep this in mind:
a) Men in love change, often dramatically, to deserve the woman they want.
b) Love grows. And that magical “knowingness” moment (He’s the ONE!) may come days, weeks, months later.
c) If you believe we only experience what we are ready for, then naturally you’ll understand that sometimes it’s the right person, but the wrong time.
d) All relationships end eventually, even marriages. Therefore, there is no such thing as wasted time, unless you don’t learn anything.
I fell in love with James Dean on November 14th, 2010. Just over three months after we started dating. Three MONTHS after. And it was a boom(!), a moment I will never forget. But until then… there wasn’t that spark for me. I liked him. He was sweet and kind and interesting. But I knew I needed more connection to really commit. And he just wasn’t capable or I just wasn’t ready to receive or something. I’m really not sure. But I just know that if I had judged him on the man he was superficially, rather than the man he might be underneath, or if I had called it quits one month in because he wasn’t opening up and he was “wasting my time” I would have missed it. Totally. Missed him—this devoted, passionate, perfect-fit of a partner for me. I would have missed him—high on Forever After… waiting for my Cinderella moment.
