The Marrying Kind

So many of my past relationships didn't work out because the guy didn't want to be a boyfriend.

But at some point, he changed his mind.

If you were to go through the Facebook profiles of the guys I've hooked up with over the years, you'd see that a lot of them eventually did become boyfriends – and more than that, they got married and had kids.

Not to me, and not with me, of course.

But most of those guys don't matter, really. The only guys that matter are the guys I've loved.

Earlier this year, I found out that one of them got married to the girl he started dating when he was also dating me. It was particularly heartbreaking not only as a nail in the coffin of the relationship we never really got to have, but also as the defining moment that proved that he was The Marrying Kind. He was husband material. I'd picked a good one.

He just didn't pick me.

I loved another man before him, one who has been in and out of my life since 1997 – with two straight years of real closeness and intimacy that ended abruptly, devastatingly, and without explanation. But I knew from the beginning that he wasn't The Marrying Kind. He thinks that settling down – i.e. getting married – is settling. So, in some ways, I am comforted by the fact that he will never commit to anyone, because it's not me, it's him.

But what if, one day, he does? And it's not me?

The possibility haunts me.

The thing is, I thought I'd learned my lesson from him. I thought I'd moved on. I became drawn to the niceness of guys. I realized that I deserved love, and not just any love. I even fell in love with a new guy who I knew, from the beginning, was The Marrying Kind. He said he wanted to get married and have kids. He talked about his future wedding, who would be invited, what it would be like. On our first official date, he looked at me, baffled, and asked, "How are we not already married?"

And then whatever we had started ended abruptly, devastatingly, unbearably without explanation. And I am having post-traumatic déjà vu, suffering a heart broken twice in the same way by two different men, never truly healed in between.

So what went wrong?

How have I been single for 39 years?

I am The Marrying Kind. Despite any dalliances or tangents or distractions or regrets, I always have been.

But those times I thought I was on the right track, that something real was happening, turned out to be a fallacy. Maybe I made it all up. Maybe I imagined the feelings between us. Maybe I fabricated a two-sided relationship when there was really only one side.

But regardless, the problem is no longer that I'm picking the wrong guys.

So what makes me the wrong girl?

Related Posts:
This Is Why I'm Single
Excuses, Excuses
Excuses, Excuses Part 2
Oops, I Did It Again
The Love I Deserve
To Say "I Love You"