Not Quite Betty Crocker

My husband remarked that I was different when we were first dating. You know me well enough that I don’t have to tell you how I reacted – not well. But the more I thought about it, the more I accepted the truth of the statement.

I was different when we were first dating, and I liked myself better then, too.

Why? Perhaps because I was in the love bubble, the one you float into when you meet someone new. Most definitely, but too simple an answer. Maybe I was trying to impress him, masking my messiness somehow. Of course I was trying to impress him – I thought he was hot! But I’ve never succeeded in hiding anything about myself from anyone despite my best attempts.

“Um, I have something to tell you, and I think it’s going to surprise you.” This said to a new friend, one I already loved and needed. I’m fairly certain I scared her to death. I was scared to death, hoping she’d take this in stride.

“I’m not very laid back. I get all stressed out when I have to, you know, talk about emotions and stuff, and I’m often uncomfortable with depth and connecting.”

She laughed. Hard. Then told me I’d just made one of the understatements of the year, and she knew this about me, had known this about me, for quite some time.

Well, then.

So why was I so much fun then, so silly and fun-loving and light? And how can I be that again? It wasn’t that I was any less angst-ridden. I blogged privately then, and reading through my entries proves I wasn’t any less like this. Sure, he was different, too, but I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for him to suddenly change.

That should have been the clue – he was different, too – but it wasn’t… until I read Austyn’s comment on this post:

I just realized: when I met my husband, I was suddenly focusing on the "fantasticness" that could be my life with him. Of course, I've fallen into my habit of worry and preparation for disappointment.

And then it clicked.

What is the one thing we all share when we date? Hope. HOPE. Hope! How can you date without hoping that something good and right and comforting will come out of all the discomfort and awkwardness and crap? You can’t. To be dating is to be hoping.

And then I found someone, and surprise of all surprises, his quirks and my quirks fit pretty well, and we didn't encounter anything too big or too scary too soon, and the timing was right and the planets aligned and we hoped and hoped and hoped and married. For what is marriage but a commitment to hope?

And then I stopped hoping so much. I found comfort in reality and I stopped hoping. Turns out hope is often born of desperation. Life can’t be this bad, so I will hope it can be better with this person. Hope is joyous and contagious and addicting. Hope flies, soars, giggles like a damn fool at a silly joke made by the object of that hope.

I started expecting, planning, preparing – for the worst, the inevitable, the scary. For some of us it starts with wedding planning, for others with children or house-hunting or who does the laundry and takes out the trash.

And instead of hope we find, well, life. Reality. Except reality isn’t ever this hopeless, so telling myself I'm just being realistic is a cop-out. What I'm being is joyless and hopeless and the version of myself I’d hoped never to become, but I do it because I'm afraid I’ll lose what I have. Ironically, then I do, because what I had then was hope.

I’m a project manager by training, and there is a concept in project management called risk management, and in risk management there is a principle that feels counter-intuitive but isn’t. The closer a project gets to completion, the lower the risk. Doesn’t seem right. If you’ve ever done anything project-like (and everyone has), you know that it surely feels more risky as you approach the conclusion. Around every corner is a new challenge just waiting to throw off your schedule, cost you more money, or dive-bomb your carefully negotiated scope. The last race to the finish is the most stressful part… but it’s not the most risky, because risk is a function of knowledge. The more you know, the less risk you carry.

And I kind of feel like relationships are this way. The more I know, the greater I risk that I feel, and so the harder I find it to hope, because then I’m jinxing myself and I’ll lose all of this goodness, so I need to look at reality and what I have and just be happy with that….

… when the truth is that hope makes you happy. Living in the land of possibility is a great place to be. If you don’t hope, you only see the negative side of reality, and then what you have is much less fantastic.

Marriage feels more risky because you can see the challenges, but in fact, dating is much more so. I didn’t really like dating, but it was exhilarating. For me, someone who needs to know to love, it was a period where I didn’t love or feel very loved because I didn’t know anything or anybody well enough to love. But I hoped much more then.

You have much less risk the longer you’re with somebody, not more, though your risk of losing hope increases.

So let’s all hope more and love more and live in what we call reality a little less. Our lives are much more hopeful than they sometimes feel and the possibility of fantasticness so much greater than when we were dating. We just needed hope more then to overcome the reality of dating (ugg).

Today, of all days, is a day when hope should triumph over reality. Today, of all days, we should be thankful for the timing and the universe and the human capacity to keep trying. Today, of all days, we should use hope to augment the reality of marriage, and family, and life.

Today, of all days, though I'm not home or near my husband or my family, I will be holding onto the hope that our lives are better than they could have been without each other, much like my life is better because of you.