This blog post is not new, but a friend who is a teacher forwarded it to me:
It is far better to not be in a relationship, wishing you were in one, than to actually be in one, wishing you weren’t. Be willing, I pray you, to be single for the rest of your life, if that’s what it takes to not settle for second best; as that would be far better than marrying a man who cannot love you.
And I thought that is good advice for girls/women, who, at times make bad choices with precisely the opposite idea–that it is better to be with someone, no matter who it is or how they treat you, than to be alone.
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Véronique adds: That’s always my piece of marital bliss advice whenever I’m asked by a single person: don’t settle. Marriage is a lot of work even when the person is your dream-come-true so imagine being married to someone who leaves you lukewarm. As the mother of 4 daughters, I have sympathy for arranged marriages on a theoretical level (as in: “In theory, I would like to spare my daughters the pain of marrying losers by choosing their spouses for them.”) But I think that in today’s age of instant gratification and Hollywood romance, the odds are tightly stacked against long term commitment and the inevitable grind of living in close proximity with someone else. Being swept off your feet is a must, in my humble-but-somewhat-educated opinion.
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Rebecca adds: A friend called Tanya (not our Tanya) told me this, a decade ago, and it stuck with me. “You are created a cake, a whole, perfect, delicious cake that is enjoyable all by itself. Now with the right icing, a delicious cake becomes even better. But the wrong icing is not only unenjoyable in its own right, it spoils your enjoyment of the cake. It is far better to be a delicious cake without icing than paired with the wrong icing.” Silly, but it gets the meaning across very well.
Put another way, being lonely when you’re single is unpleasant. Being lonely when you’re in a bad relationship is worse.
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