I suppose we have the Brothers Grimm to thank for the myth perpetuated throughout the centuries that there is a single perfect person out there for all of us! Just The one! This idea born on the wings of stories such as Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella that we all cut our teeth on when growing up. That, in this great wide world we live in ‘the one’ love of our lives is out there somewhere waiting to be found.
Really ? Are we fated then to fall,in love only once and if that fails, dies or disappears we will never again experience such joy ever again! Eh errrr… I thought I’d found the one back in the 70’s . My first real relationship, I was completely mad about him! with all my newly awakened hormones rising to the surface in a rush of newly lost virginity. I was quickly besotted and absolutely heartbroken when a year later he dumped me for an old girlfriend.
I then spent some months in love with Steve McQueen and Davy Jones both at the same time before meeting my next ‘the one’. A quick sex filled courtship where I spent most of the time on my back!. He proposed within weeks. I was so sure this was it! this was ‘the one’ I allowed myself to be swept off my feet and despite having a panic on the day I married him. Looking up at him through the most enormous rose-coloured glasses with the eyes of an innocent who didn’t have a clue.
‘The love‘ died of course as soon the children and ‘other women’ turned up hand in hand! and in quick succession. But I stuck with it! I had made a commitment and he was the father of my children. That was until I fell in love with someone else’s husband!.
I couldn’t eat I couldn’t sleep This must definitely be ‘the one’. But being old fashioned and loyal I just couldn’t bring myself to fuck his brains out. But boy did I want to. The merest touch would send me into a swoon and I was gagging for it. I pondered that maybe this was just lust but it was at this point I began to wonder if there was any bloody difference! Either way the penny dropped..love or lust I had moved on and my marriage was as dead as a Dodo.
Enter ‘the one’ number four. Younger than me our relationship was a frenzy of highs and lows of fights and flowers. This was absolutely ‘the one’! The love of my life. One wedding and another child later the battles began but so determined was I that this had to be my Prince Charming that I virtually laid on the floor and let him walk all over me. Nineteen years later I find out that he thinks he has found his ‘the one’ disguised as the woman who lives next door! Oh crap! it wasn’t me then ? As he rode off with her into the sunset I took off my rose-coloured spectacles laid them on the ground and stamped them into tiny little pieces. Time for a change.
So this was how my older woman! single life! began along with this blog. I decided to give up on looking for ‘the one’ and play the field instead. My new found freedom meant I could date prolifically and looking for ‘the one’ became looking for the many. The choice of guys available blew my mind. It felt like Christmas had come early and I had the pick of the presents. It felt so empowering and was such an adventure that once I had accepted the fact that the myth of finding just ‘the one’ was indeed a fairy story, I began to have the best time of my life.
I think it’s time we all got out heads around the idea that unlike swans we don’t mate for life anymore. As we live longer and have more choices the idea that we are stuck with the same partner for the duration begins to seem absurd.
Good luck to those that manage it I applaud you all. But please give us singletons a break. We can’t all have the fairy-tale and some of us would rather stick pins in our eyes than keep up the pretense that we can .
Love is still to be found and enjoyed as I have discovered during my travels. It has brought me great joy and pain in equal measure and I have loved more than one. Maybe the love I felt in the 70’s was different to the one I feel now. But then it is not seen from behind the blind eyes of the innocent teenager I was back them. With a lifetime of experience to draw on I can see things from a different perspective. My eyes are wide open.
So take my advice and give up on the idea of just ‘the one‘ and keep an open mind. While you are searching for the love of your life with a list of must haves you are missing out on the ones that are right under your nose. If your heart gets broken stick it back together with sellotape if you have to and start again. Love yourself first you are not perfect and neither will your man/woman be. How does the song go ? “Love the one your with” and who cares if it doesn’t last forever.
