It all started about a month or so ago, I went on-- brace yourselves-- a couple of really fantastic dates with someone. Considering the fact that I have hated just about everyone I've gone on a date with in the past year, and you've read about several of them, I'd say it was kind of reasonable for me to get pretty damn excited about the potential for romance. I left date one with butterflies and the butterflies intensified on date two. I definitely had a crush, and I couldn't wait to see where it would go.
I was not, however, anticipating that I'd see it go straight down the toilet. The night before we were supposed to hang out, he informed me that he thinks I'm soooo amazing and wonderful, and he really truly wants to be friends, but he met someone. When I expressed my confusion, he said “I can't really explain it but it's like I met her and I knew she was the one.”
I then went through a fairly normal range of emotions. More than anything I was disappointed that I had gotten excited about something that didn’t pan out. But I also thought It was kind of him to alert me so soon, considering he'd just met the girl the night before. And then—wait a minute. He'd just met her the night before and she's “the one?” The next logical step in my thought progression was simple: Bullshit.
I don't believe in “the one.” This isn't because I'm unromantic or bitter or cynical; though those things may be true, I remember one thing from my AP psychology class in high school: correlation does not equal causation!
I believe in the theory of the “more-than-one.” I think there can be several different people who could be “the one,” and it’s all a matter of who enters your life at the right time. I hate the idea of “meant to be” and “everything happens for a reason.” I see plenty of people every day who I find attractive. But who stops strangers on the street just because they think they’re hot and could make a good spouse someday? Creepers, that’s who.
So if I don’t make a habit of being a creeper, does that mean none of the potential relationships that could form with any given stranger are meant to be? If I forget my phone and have to run back into my apartment to get it and therefore miss the elevator that my soulmate is riding, am I not meant to be happy?
I don’t disagree that you can meet someone and “just know.” That happened to me when I was 18. But he and I were young, and not mature enough to put in the work to make a relationship work forever. That right there is a timing issue. Maybe, had we met sometime later, he would have been my one and we would have been married and having babies by now. But we didn’t, so I consider him one of my more-than-ones, who just didn’t enter my life at the right time.
And just because someone “just knows,” I don’t believe that’s a final decision. Feelings for someone can start off as something unbelievably intense, and ultimately they level off into a normal and bearable love. Or they can start out small and build to that same level of intensity. Some people take longer to open up and share themselves, and I don’t love people I don’t know.
I guess I just can’t buy into the whole idea of some cosmic force that brings people together or keeps them apart. There’s nothing planning out every detail of my life, which leads to another detail, which leads to another, which causes me to trip over a curb and fall into the arms of the man I’m destined to be with.
So while I do believe that everyone in my life who keeps proclaiming their love for “the one” truly feels something different for that person than they may have felt about anyone else, I cannot accept the absolute nature of “the one.” I just don’t buy it.
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