A Chain of Broken Events (Part 3 of 4)

In the end, whether you decide to jump into a relationship or not, you are inevitably risking the same thing. Whether you allow someone to enter into your life (with the potential to hurt and disappoint you) or decide against a relationship (risking a great relationship, and perhaps marriage), the heart is always in play. It’s just two sides of the same coin. Try as we may, shielding it from the daily rigors of real life is impossible. And there are only so many times that you can say, “I don’t know.”

My past relationships left me with a maddening sense of regret that I had spent too much time analyzing, and not enough time feeling. Like withholding water from a thirsty plant, my lack of ability to move forward had slowly and painfully choked the life out of them. Truthfully, I think I had too many questions in my head, and all of the uncertainty paralyzed me. And I couldn’t lead by standing still. I determined to let feelings take more of a role in my life. To take more chances. As they say…carpe diem.

So I did. I went out with more people, under the guise of extending myself and moving in faith. I moved in the direction of my feelings. But strangely, the result of this was an even more unstable, drama-filled life. A life with more questions, not less. And confronted with my own selfishness, my life became bipolar, and my relationships unworkable. There were days of complete glee marred by evenings of doubt and fear. Fear that we would grow apart as the years went by. Fear that our differences would turn into unbridgeable chasms. Fear that we would grow to hate each other. Fears that ultimately led me down well-worn paths of self-doubt and self-preservation. And once on a familiar bent, it was almost impossible to find another way. I knew where we were going. I knew what was going to happen, even if I didn't want it to. Habits are funny that way.

At heart, I am a risk-averse person. I prefer slow and steady to extreme highs and lows. I am the proverbial turtle to the jackrabbits of this world, sure to turn over every stone and look behind every tree. And as much as I wish I were not, I am a man of formulas. Given enough time, my compulsion drives me to pulverize and deconstruct any situation into indivisible, sub-atomic particles. Each grain a circumstance. Each atom a possibility. So it comes as no surprise that I weigh relationships with the precision of a scientist, careful not to taint the process and controlling for each variable. Questions like, “Will this person still be with me if…” and “What will happen if…” became my test tubes and Bunsen burners. Each relationship was inevitably driven into a centrifuge, attempting…hoping to extract doubt with dizzying quickness and effectiveness.

In the end, what I found is that examination only yielded more uncertainty. There was always more information to gather. There was always another choice. I think one of the greatest fantasies that people have is that a relationship, if it’s the right relationship, won’t be hard. Or at least, not as hard as the one that you’re in right now. But what I’ve found is that it is impossible to compare an existing relationship to the possibility of perfection. And that you can’t have a healthy relationship with one foot constantly out the window, waiting for the roof to collapse.

Attempting to find the seams of my life has only shown me how imperfect my fabric really is. And how great of a role faith must play in any relationship. Just as a boat must be built on land, and then cast to the ocean to test its seaworthiness, so must a relationship be, at some point, tested and ultimately, trusted. It’s not a blind trust, as evidenced by the wreckage of so many of those “I knew when we first met that we’d be together forever” marriages. Every captain has life preservers in the boat, and tools to fix the leaks and holes just in case a storm hits. But if we always worried about our own weaknesses and differences, we would spend our entire lives on the shore. And I can’t imagine anyone who truly wants to be there, among the driftwood and cast-off shells of all the things that could have been.