abaya

And I quote YOU for truth. I hope a lot of people (both men and women) stop in to this thread to read what some of you are writing here. I think it's golden.

I started making a "list" (albeit short, but very key) of things I wanted in a man, when I was about 19-20... after a relationship went bad, of course. A good friend of mine at the time challenged me on that, and instilled in me that building up ideals (in order to find someone to meet those ideals) is a very unhealthy way of going about life. It took some convincing, but finally I got it... and learned to let go. Having such ideals was unrealistic, and actually quite selfish and limiting. Had I stuck to what I "thought" I wanted in an "ideal" partner at the time, I would be up shit creek without a paddle right now. Instead, I gave myself a few boundaries, and decided to see what happened.

And I married an "Arab atheist from Lebanon" (a label for him, but of course it actually says very little about who he is as a person, as my husband)--and like gg, I never, ever in my wildest imaginations would have predicted that path for myself--and thank goodness things do not go as we want them to go, when we are young and still have so many mistakes to make!

I think that just being open to what life hands you, and then throwing yourself into those experiences (in a healthy manner, I assume) is what life is all about. When I met ktsp, I just couldn't find any reason to say no... regardless of where he was from, what language he spoke, or what he believed. That says more about where I was in life than who he was--a few years before that, and I wouldn't even have given him a second glance, because my mind was so closed and built up with ideals and lists, etc. But hey, we fell in love--and the timing was good, there were no major incompatibilities, and so we decided to build our life together. And we just keep going, and getting better and more intimate together every day.

I don't think that's anywhere near "settling," but it's certainly nothing like what I thought I'd want, 5 or 10 years ago. I changed, and I gave myself room to change.

__________________
And think not you can direct the course of Love;
for Love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
--Khalil Gibran