All of You

I am the black sheep of one side of my family.

I'm in my late twenties and unmarried. I don't have kids. I seem to be allergic to serious relationships. When I was talking to a family member about my recent whirl-wind trip to New Orleans I said that I had never been so grateful to be unattached, childless, and without a pet in my entire life.

She rolled her eyes. I gracefully changed the subject to her grandchildren.

In a similar conversation with my younger brother and father I said, a little flippantly, "I can barely even balance my own checkbook, what the hell would I want a boyfriend for?"

My family doesn't miss a beat. "To balance your checkbook."

"My hypothetical family," I reply, "is going to be a two bank account kind of a household."

They roll their eyes. I gracefully change the subject to baseball.

Let's be honest. I've got some relationship hurdles to clear. I'm a recovering Catholic with all the attendant hangups that come with being a recovering repressed Catholic. I'm convinced that anyone who comes home with me that I haven't known for a billion years is secretly a serial killer. I talk about space constantly. My younger brother gave me a USS Enterprise Christmas ornament and I almost cried out of sheer happiness. I can be the worst frickin' culture snob. I sing constantly and completely out of key.

Charming, huh?

Additionally, I've never met a married couple and thought to myself "Yes! That is a totally stable and sane relationship. I WANT THAT RIGHT NOW AND FOREVER." I say this with all due respect to my parents and many of the lovely married couples I've met. Their relationships, while they may be stable or sane or perhaps both, are not what I have in mind for relationships I want to be committed to for the rest of my life.

In addition to the aforementioned problems (as if those weren't enough) I identified another, um, hurdle over the past couple weeks. While I was with my social worker friends last week, I brought up a question that appeared when I registered for online dating. The question was, essentially, "your partner has a minimum wage job and no ambition to ever have a higher paying/more prestigious/world-changing position. Would this bother you?" My answer, shockingly, was "Totally unacceptable."

Some of my friends have really run me through the wringer over this one, indicating that someone's work doesn't necessarily have to do with their ambition and they might be interesting and blah blah blah. All right, I'm not so shallow that I want my hypothetical boyfriend to make tons of money at a soul-crushing job just for the sake of money and power. But I want them to have work that they find interesting and meaningful and, quite frankly, that I can be proud of them for doing.

I asked the question to my social worker friends and praise be to the gods above, they agreed with me. That wasn't entirely unexpected, but it's nice to have independent verification that you aren't a vicious harpy because you expect your signif to be ambitious. My friend Carliene put it best. Women like us are running at top speed most of the time. If you can't have someone who can keep up, you might as well be speaking different languages.

I've spent my entire life as a skeptic of the "one true love" or "love at first sight" kinds of stories. Partially, I suspect, because my parents are utterly forthcoming about how they both kept dating other people after they met. Partially because I'm just a skeptic. I mean, one true loves and love a first sights make for great music and books (Ugh. The Night Circus. *pfffffffffffffft*) but in real life? And if those things aren't real, what's the point in mingling lifestyles and credit scores and DNA?

***

I'm the Grinch of weddings.

Don't get me wrong. I love wedding receptions, provided the music is danceable or I know most of the people in attendance. But that doesn't keep me from mulling over divorce rates while I'm sitting through a Roman Catholic wedding mass or watching the first couple dance to some terrible Tim McGraw song (honestly, people, Ella Fitzgerald has some beautiful love songs.) It sounds and is horrible, but I can't help but think about all of the weddings I've been to where the bride and groom are clearly not suited to one another and wasted their life savings on a huge, expensive, crazy party that they'll look back on and regret.

For the record, it's not every wedding that has me contemplating divorce attorney's rates and how much your credit score drops when you do divorce. It's just some and the thoughts come to mind completely unbidden.

You know what? I'm going to stop justifying this. Just don't invite me to your wedding.

***

A few years ago a friend of mine called to announce that she was engaged.

I started crying over the phone.

I was crying out of happiness.

I love this woman. I love her husband. I love them both so much it makes my heart hurt. Their wedding was one of the happiest, most joy and grace-filled experiences of my life. When my friends get together and we talk about the best wedding we've ever been to, we roundly agree on this one. It was incredible because of the people getting married and the obvious love that they have for one another. But it was equally incredible because of the generosity and love they showed for their friends and family and their friends and family showed for them.

For many years this was an atypical wedding for me. Many of the "celebrations" I attended included bridal freakouts, family drama on the dance floor, weird wedding party dynamics, etc ad nauseam. However, as my Minnesota family--the friends with whom I'm closest and love the most--are slowly getting engaged and planning their weddings, I'm discovering that those weddings, the dramatic, overblown, overly expensive affairs, are the exceptions. The other weddings, the ones that are full of love and respect and joy are becoming (thankfully) more common.

Oddly enough, the more of these weddings that I attend, the more convinced I become that love at first sight and one true love don't actually exist. Or perhaps they do, but they look a lot different than I always imagined. Instead of shared bank accounts and, I don't know, saving one another from huge-unconquerable-on-your-own problems, it's separate banks accounts and sixty hour work weeks and still taking a lot of meaning from your job. But also, curling up together in front of an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and learning, day by day, that the one you love is not, in fact, going to kill you in your sleep.

At least, that's what I'm hoping it is.