Right Woman, Wrong Time
Sigh … you humans.
A man and a woman are in love with each other and yet they are breaking up. Why? Well, here's what I see: The woman is in her mid-thirties and ready to settle down. The man is in his late twenties and is not. And yet he is. And yet he's not. Do you understand? No?
Sigh.
Let's take a look at the young man as a teenager. He observes his world and in particular the adult men who inhabit it. He observes men who get married, father children, support families and nothing more. These men talk about their kids, their family trips and say things like, 'My children are my Number One priority.' He also observes men who become artists, entrepreneurs, musicians, business owners, men who follow their passion, men who make their mark. The teenager admires those men. He wants to be like them. But he also wants to have a family. He wants both.
So he comes up with a plan. He will figure out the field in which he has unique gifts, he will work hard, establish himself and eventually, when he is financially independent, he will be ready to take on the additional challenge of supporting a family. He reckons he will be in his thirties when this happens. He has it all figured out.
But before he reaches thirty, he meets the woman. She's not his first girlfriend, but it becomes clear pretty fast that there is more to her than any woman in the past. Without a conscious decision, he finds himself living with her. It works. She feels that she has finally met her match and he suspects that he feels the same way.
Except it's too soon. What about his plan? His passion? He's nowhere near financial independence. And those men he observed as a teenager—the ones who supported families and nothing more—would he become one of them? A terrifying thought occurs: Maybe these men also had ambitions to be more than providers, but because they met their women too early they got caught in the trap. Is that what happens? Is that how it works?
But he can't kid himself that he's with the wrong woman. With past girlfriends, he had always had the sense that the relationship was time dated, but he doesn't feel that now. The still, small voice whispers that this is the woman he has been longing to meet, that he has prayed for the universe to send him. He doesn't want to say no.
But neither does he want to say yes. The woman is wonderful, but ye gods she can be hard work! There are times he has no clue what to do and no energy to figure it out. Just get away, get away, get away. But when he does, he can't get past the feeling that he's turning his back on something important. What's he to do?
What would you do?
