The Problem I Want to Have

[Your partner] will make you see more about yourself than any navel gazing in solitude could ever reveal.  And if the process isn’t completely horrifying and frustrating, then you’re just not doing it right.

—Jane Lynch

We’re all seeking that special person who is right for us. But if you’ve been through enough relationships, you begin to suspect there’s no right person, just different flavors of wrong. Why is this? Because you yourself are wrong in some way, and you seek out partners who are wrong in some complementary way. But it takes a lot of living to grow fully into your own wrongness. And it isn’t until you finally run up against your deepest demons, your unsolvable problems—the ones that make you truly who you are—that we’re ready to find a lifelong mate. Only then do you finally know what you’re looking for. You’re looking for the wrong person. But not just any wrong person: the right wrong person—someone you lovingly gaze upon and think, “This is the problem I want to have.”

–Galway Kinnell

~*~

He sold a guitar to buy her engagement ring.  He was going to give it to her on Christmas day, but he wound up proposing two weeks before because he couldn’t wait.

She was horrified by the thought of a public wedding because it would involve too many eyes looking at her all at once.  Besides, who had money to waste on some stupid party? She wanted to elope. Eloping was perfectly fine by him.  Their mothers were appalled by the very idea and pushed for a church wedding.  Suddenly it was ok for the young couple to continue “living in sin,” as the mothers called it, for many months longer if it meant they could plan the wedding.  The mothers joined forces and just started planning the damn thing without the couple’s consent.

“Ok, whatever” the would-be bride said with an eye roll.

The day before the wedding, he got a new hairdo, trading in his 1980s rocker hair for a mullet.

WTF, M8??

The ceremony that took eight months for the mothers to plan lasted 14 minutes.

And time passed….the couple ate a lot of Totino’s pizza, they got a cat, they bought a house, they got a dog, he changed jobs, she went back to school, they argued,  they made up, relatives died, relatives were born, he played guitar, they tried new foods, she graduated a few times, they took care of kids, he took classes, they lost touch with old friends, he studied Kung Fu, they went on vacations, they made new friends, they sold and bought cars, they took a lot of walks in the park, they reconnected with old friends,  she took a job out of state, the cat died, the dog died, they watched movies, she got a new cat, they got a new dog, they sold a house, they bought a farm…

…and 18 years later, she still looks at him and thinks, “This is the problem I want to have.”

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