A writer openly ponders the concept of ‘The One’. Her main question? Is there a ‘One’?
Love, relationships, partnerships — it isn’t always the fairytale the Disney movies make it out to be. There isn’t just one person on this earth, holding your glass slipper, jailed in the body of a beast, waiting to wake you from a hundred years sleep.
There isn’t always just one Prince or Princess Charming, no Cinderella nor Sleeping Beauty to complete your life circle. There isn’t just one missing puzzle piece, because your life isn’t a puzzle to be sorted out completely.
There isn’t just one missing ingredient, because as much as you try and make it one, your life isn’t a recipe stripped from the pages of your favorite book and ready-to-make at any time. There isn’t just one seat missing from the table because there isn’t always a table to gather around.
There isn’t just one person out there for you because the one isn’t really real. He or she was written into the pages of a fairytale – and that’s where he or she should stay.
I hate the idea of thinking that there’s one person out there fit to satisfy my every need every moment I have it. I hate thinking that there exists, somewhere on this earth, a person who is my equal, my partner, my one.
I hate thinking that maybe he’s not even on this earth, but in a place that even space, time and intergalactic travel haven’t found a way to bring me to yet. I hate thinking that I have to find him – or that he has to find me. I hate limiting my thinking to just one.
There’s enough pressure on just waking up in the morning and making it to work without spilling my coffee all over my white shirt.
There’s enough pressure to get the job, to keep the job, to fulfill your own wants and whims, that the idea of searching for someone to fill a space inside of us that I’m not sure even exists yet is downright exhausting.
But what’s equally exhausting is befitting just one person with everything you need/want/desire/dream/wish for in a partner. He needs to be sarcastic and totally genuine at the same time: Ryan-Gosling-and-Ryan-Reynolds hot and Adam-Brody dorky in each and every moment.
He needs to be a man who is exactly what he says he is while also simultaneously worth the chase: everything and nothing and everything and everything. It’s a lot of pressure. It’s tiring to try fitting that into someone, running on the assumption that there is enough space from head-to-toe to pack all the world’s most desirable qualities into this person without making him or her 20 feet too tall.
Who’s to say that what you want now is what you’ll always want? What if the bad boy biker was the one for only three weeks – and he’d never hold a candle to what you imagine your one would look like today? What if your one was your high school boyfriend, once captain of the football team and now local Walmart bagger?
And what if your dreams have driven you well past the football field and into the big city? Just because he was your one then, does he have to be your one now? No… and no. The idea of having just one is a little like an on-sale sweater you love for a season. You’ll always love sweaters, but you won’t always love that same style.
The problem with just one is that it’s just so static. It’s just so traditional. And while there is absolutely nothing wrong with being static and traditional, it’s not realistic. For some people, yes, there is just one. And yes, they’ve found their ones and they are knee-deep in building a future and foundation together.
And while that dream is beautiful and something that maybe we all (however quietly) lust after, the idea that just because it works for some of us does not mean it’s a rite of passage for all of us. Because for every six people who get it right on the first try, there are 600 of us who get it right on the fiftieth try. We’re all different. We don’t all move at the same pace. We don’t all go off and into the world, in search of just one.
Some of us have enough hope to build our castles in the sand – and some of us know better than to ever do that.
What if there are lots of ones? The one you need now, the one you’ll need five years from now, the one who makes you cry and the one who dries your tears? The one who forces you to date outside your comfort zone and the one who keeps you inside your safe space? The one who makes you out-of-your-mind crazy and the one who keeps you calm even in your roughest moments? My point is, there are lots of ones.
Like red fish and blue fish, there are red ones and blue ones, smart ones and true ones, ones who make you smile and ones who make you sigh, ones who keep you chained to the earth and ones that make you fly. There are smart ones and sad ones, good ones and bad ones, bright ones and glad ones. And it goes on, and on… forever.
Maybe by freeing ourselves from the idea that there is just one to find will allow us to celebrate the ones we’ve already found: The first date gone horribly wrong, the guy who sends you flowers on Tuesdays in September, the girl who always manages to get a little froth on her upper lip, the girl who’s lost in a mystery novel on the train that you’ve been dying to date for months. Maybe all we need is a little welcomed separation from the idea that we have to have just one.
Maybe all we need is just an excuse to have plenty.
Originally appeared at Elite Daily
Photo Elite Daily
About the author: Kylie McConville. Kylie is a writer and editor with a deep love for cheese, Harry Potter and bad celebrity gossip. Lover of the Internet, hater of technology and devout believer in any- and everything Beyonce does (all hail). Watch me make a fool of myself on Twitter, @kyliemcconv.
“If you’ve been through enough relationships, you begin to suspect there’s no right person, just different flavors of wrong. 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.’ I will find that special person who is wrong for me… Read more »
Once upon a time I believed in a one, but it truly is simply a fabrication of the media. It’s simply an idealization that a perfect other is out there existing.
It’s rubbish!
There can be good ones and bad ones, but no single ONE. As Kay said, ask anyone who has been widowed or divorced and you will find some wisdom. This was a good article, perpetuating this fallacy is incredibly unhealthy for all relationships and generations.
My grandmother told me, when I was 16 after my first boyfriend died, that “the one” didn’t exist because then otherwise widows would have no hope. She believed that there is “the best fit” for you “right now” and the challenge of relationships is to keep being eachothers “the best fit, right now” most of the time (because we all have quarrels and rough spots). She had been widowed 3x (fiancee in a gas station robbery, 1st husband in WWII, and last husband in a freak farming accident) and had boyfriends and “dance partners” until she passed away. She was… Read more »
way ahead! =)