Julie B. Beck once suggested organizing our lives into things that are essential, things that are necessary, and things that are nice. And I thought "How could this relate to dating?" Well, if you remember, in a previous
post I resolved to throw out the checklist until I'm actually dating someone seriously, which just made my "are you worth my time" checklist into my "should I marry this guy" checklist. So I thought I'd give it a little read through using this "essential, necessary, nice" classification...
Is it too long? Possibly a little too demanding? Is my desire to have my future husband ride in on a Harley decked out in leather and smelling of sweet musky man unreasonable?
Probably. Which means it's time to revamp the 'ol list, starting with the essentials:
So what is the difference between essential and necessary?
Essentials, for me, are those things that would allow me to be confident the two of us could make it work if
and only if we were the last two people on Earth:
- Regular Temple Attendance
- Personal relationship with the Savior
- Complete conversion to the Gospel
- Honors his Priesthood
- Doesn't believe divorce is an option (not that that would matter if we were the only two people on Earth)
Then we have the Necessary things, those oh-so important personality traits that I need to ensure I don't stab my spouse:
- Sense of humor
- Communicates well
- Understanding
- Listens
- Self-Esteem
- Social aptitude
- Physically active
And the Nice things, these are usually the things we think we need, but don't:
- Assertive
- Outgoing
- Strong physical connection
- Has a budget
- Doesn't like Will Ferrell movies...
Now, obviously, these are just off the top of my head and nowhere near a completed list, but the point is that I feel like our ideals may get skewed just a teensy bit by that list we make in Young Women's:
- Returned Missionary
- Eagle Scout
- Blue Eyes
- Likes it when I twirl my skirt like this...
- Rides a white steed
....that might have been an exaggeration, but you get the point. What I'm trying to say is that I feel like we often spend so much time making these lists, that we forget what we actually
need in a companion and end up creating an unaccomplishable ideal. So, men and brethren/ sistren, I ask you:
Is everything on your list a necessity?
Is it even reasonable?
Can you live up to your own list?
If you answered no to any of these, you might be a hypocrite. It's ok, I am too.
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| Really? Still not essential? |
But seriously, I've been revamping my list, and in doing so, I'm realizing that some of the guys I decided to give the boot, probably deserve a second chance. Because as I've been observing the great examples of happy marriages in my life, I'm discovering that the things that I love about them are the things they've developed over
years of marriage. Just like we can't start out with the nice house, a Harley and stable job, you can't start a relationship with 20+ years of shared experiences and understanding the small things about your spouse. These things are the blessings of hard-work and we can't expect rewards for a work we haven't done now can we?
I love your blog! :)
ReplyDeleteAnd to add to your final thought - I think that sometimes your spouse only has refined their A qualities because they are with you. Or their B qualities don't fully bloom into their A qualities until they are matched up with you.
I think we all agree that our boys should bring out the best in us - make us laugh harder, prayer more, etc. And in turn, we need to remember that sometimes pretty-good, regular guys will/can/want to transform into FANTASTIC guys when they find you/me/us/their girl. Love unlocks all sorts of talents and completes all sorts of efforts that are incomplete otherwise. I'm not saying we should expect our boys to change for our list of needs, but that we should give lots of room for them to change with us into someone better. Relationships SHOULD change us. We should be different because someone else has come into our life.
And to be clear, I am not talking about the lazy guys who won't work on themselves until a pretty-enough girl comes along for motivation. I mean when you find someone else who really completes you/makes you feel at safe/your brain buzzes with epiphanies/you fall in love without meaning to and suddenly both of you are EMPOWERED to be better people than ever before. Because I believe in that can happen. I believe that you can work really hard on yourself/for improvements by yourself (and we should be!), but that there is a power that we can't compete with that stems from the super-power experience finding your match.
this one made my head spin....i think i might be reading it a couple times in the next while.
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