ril's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Standards Standards One of my stock sayings in various situations is �A guy�s got to have his standards.� The quotation actually comes from a scene in the movie �Real Genius.� In the movie, Val Kilmer plays an irreverent (but in a good way) college kid who unwittingly helps develop a laser that the evil dean is trying to sell to the military. Typical in this type of formulaic movie, Val is smitten by the oh-so-lovely Deborah Foreman (I think she played the Dean�s daughter). After Val uses a pick up line, the girl asks �Can you drive a six inch spike through a board with your penis?� Val responds, �Not yet,� and she says �A girl�s got to have her standards,� and she walks out of the room� About a year ago I met a girl in Utah. One of the things we did together was to attend a family picnic with her two sisters and their families. The girl I went with and I never really hit it off all that well, but both of her sisters loved me� and we still stay in touch. In late April, I was in Utah again attending a friend�s wedding. When the sisters found out I was going to be in the area, they asked me to come up and see them� and so I did. It was great to see them both again, and we stayed up late into the night talking about all of the goings on in our lives that we hadn�t gotten around to sharing in the various e-mails we�d sent each other. Not too surprisingly, their favorite topic seemed to be my love life. I�ll spare us both the ugly details, but one sister�s theory was that I had some sort of commitment phobia, and the other sister decided that my standards were just too high� I absolutely do not have any fear of commitment� although I�d have to admit that I�ve been on something of an anti-woman kick for the last couple of years� my main point has been that the few woman of my age who aren�t already married are, for the most part, just too� too� well, I�ll just repeat my mantra that all the good one�s are gone� but that�s not the point� On the other hand, that statement may prove the point that my standards are pretty high. It�s not that they�re especially demanding, but I am essentially inflexible when it comes to their application� I prefer to think of it as my not looking for the perfect woman, but rather that I�m looking for the perfect woman for me. And, it just happens that I�m still looking for that woman� I don�t want to get (too) flamed, and so I will freely admit that it is not all about me� this is a two way process� what I think/feel is only part of the equation� and there have definitely been a couple of woman who I might have been interested in who were decidedly not interested in me� oh well� Still� there have been a couple of what I thought were promising candidates� and this particular rant is about one of them� Most people never got past the fact that this woman has five kids� and that never really bothered me (I�d raised five kids already� and if she were the woman I chose to be my companion � and she chose me to be hers � then I would have been perfectly happy to raise five more)� my hang-up (unspoken) was that her most recent marriage (her third) had lasted only a short time (less than a year) and had ended relatively recently (about a year ago). Now, I�ll be the first to admit that none of us (including me) get to this point in our lives without having made some bad decisions� and so I am not about to throw rocks at anyone� but my instincts told me that I needed to be careful regarding her ability to commit to any type of a long-term relationship at this point in her life� � I really wish I�d listened to that small, still voice� She was, by all outward appearances a wonderful woman (and, to her credit, she really is). She is intelligent, warm, attractive, kind� and just an all around good person� She had ended her third marriage by annulment� which I thought was a bit strange� until I found out why� it turns out (and I couldn�t make this up if I tried) that she�d never quite gotten around to �actually� divorcing her second husband before she married the third� � and it gets worse� After she got the third marriage annulled (and she�s lucky she got the opportunity to do that), she then went about �legally� divorcing her second husband� and, somewhere in the middle of that, they decided to stay married� Yeah, okay� I re-married my ex-wife once� and so that�s not really something I complain too much about� and, if they�re happy, then I wish them all the best� But isn�t getting your head on straight (or at least quite a bit straighter than that) something you owe yourself (not to mention others) before you hold yourself out to the world as being interested in having a relationship? Yeah� my standards are too high� - 2003-06-01 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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