Stop Expecting It To Look Like What You Thought It Was Going To Look Like

I worry that this man is wrong for me somehow, that he fails to live up to some image I've created of who I'm supposed to be with. I had this picture in my head, you understand. Of a very particular kind of man. It makes me slightly sick to think about. It does.

Because I saw something, something I wasn't even aware of. It involved nothing less than a master's degree, it involved a certain background, a certain educational and occupational and class status. It involved a big old boatload of pretension. And I wasn't even self-aware enough to realize it, I didn't know that this was my bias.

And if you'd asked me, in the abstract, I would have denied it. I am not one to conflate intelligence with education. I am not impressed by class status. I'm not. My parents never went to college. I don't believe that anyone is his job. Tax brackets mean very little to me. Advanced degrees impress me for the work involved, but I don't think that people who've attained them are somehow better or smarter, more interesting or more desirable than those who haven't. And I don't care about money; this is not what motivates me. And no one told me that I should date men with particular degrees, or jobs, or aspirations. No one told me that.

It just happened that the world I fell into was a world in which the people have or are attaining particular degrees, and jobs, and aspirations.

And this man does not.

He is not that.

And it makes me sick to my stomach, ashamed, even, that this is even an issue.

Because he doesn't look like what I thought he should look like, propositionally. Aesthetically, sure, he is perfect. Better than perfect.

When I met this man, when I first laid eyes on him, I thought: this man is physically stunning, beautiful beyond reason. And attraction to his utter gorgeousness is where it started, and I thought at the time, ended. And maybe it is. I want(ed) him to lie on top of me as soon as possible, and be done with it.

But.

I am realizing, very slowly, and to my consternation and surprise, that I am not done with it.

Something else is on the table, here, as my dear friend pointed out to me tonight.

You thought you wanted one thing from this man, he said, and it turns out, you could want something else entirely.

And he is right.

I want to know what, if anything, this is or could be. I want to cast my preconceptions into the water, and drown them. I want to learn more of who this man is. Because he is beautiful, and kind, and earnest. Because it doesn't need to look like what I thought it was going to look like. Because life is complicated and messy and strange, and this could turn into something other than what I thought, after all.

And yes, I want this man on top of me. That is self-evident. If you saw him, you would understand. But I want something else, also. Something I haven't wanted from a man in years, really, not since the likes of my last serious boyfriend, much-adored and terribly wrong for me. Something surprising, and rare.

I want to see where this could go.