Day 092 - Why did they fail?

 Why did they fail? 

Matthew Ryan Fischer

 

I remember watching Ethan and Amy on the dancefloor. If that was the only moment I had ever seen, I would have sworn they were old lovers, old friends, and they type of couple that was going to make it last. I never would have bet on seeing them an hour later on opposite street corners yelling at each other and actively trying to ruin each other’s happiness. Such is life. You can’t predict or control those types of things. The fact is, I had seen many other moments in their relationship, and while they often seemed like a decent enough couple, they certainly weren’t perfect and certainly had their work cut out for them. You either put the work in, or you don’t. It’s either enough, or it isn’t. What else was there to say?

My friend Max recently got divorced. I’m pretty sure he cheated on his wife. I don’t know that. But I do think he’s the sort of guy who would do it, and that she was the sort to not put up with it. Max was lucky, but he never felt lucky. He always had something left to prove. To himself, to others, to the ghosts of dead parents. If you never feel like enough, you’ll keep looking for anything to make you feel it even for a moment. If you hate yourself, it doesn’t matter if there’s a lovely woman at home, some part of you will wonder why she’s there. And some other part of you will want to blow it up to prove that you were justified in hating yourself. Or maybe he was just opportunistic and short sighted and overestimated his ability to lie to his wife. You can’t be too sure of these things.

The two most boring people I know are happily married and have two children with a third on the way. I often wonder if they seem boring to each other. Do they know? Is that their secret to staying together? Or are they both really excited by the other one and feel they each won the love lottery? If you like mundane small talk and avoid deep thoughts, then you probably enjoy those same characteristics in another. I would go insane. But I expect better conversation.

I wonder what, if anything, I’ve learned by overanalyzing the relationships of the people I know. On some level all good relationships have similarities – communication, attraction, similar goals, personalities, etc. And on some level, everyone is too much an individual that no amount of analysis can predict what element will guarantee happiness together. But still I wonder, what am I missing. What am I not seeing or doing or learning?

I miss my wife. I’m not sure which one I mean when I say that. The first one I married, the one I purposed to but didn’t wed, or the one that I imagine in my head? I miss them all for different reasons, just as I can miss some vague memory or some element of any woman I’ve been on a date with. But I miss my wife in that way that the songs or movies or ancient poems talk about.

Still, I’m lonely. I wonder which ones still think of me. Or the me they imagine I was or could have been. Maybe they’d be surprised to see what I’ve become. Or disappointed. My imagination of them is probably better than the real thing too. I still think about calling or reaching out to some of them. Just to pretend for a moment that things could have been. As if perfection existed somewhere out there.

There was some song I heard about Zeus striking mankind with lightning to split soulmates in half so we all wander the earth lonely and looking. I don’t know my Greek mythology well enough to know if that’s a real legend or if the songwriter just made that up. I like that idea though. We all have someone out there, waiting, if only we can find them.

Actually, that’s a terrible horrible idea. We all have to suffer and search. With no guarantee we’ll ever find them. Maybe someone gets a happy ending. Maybe someone finds a soulmate. But what are the odds you’d really ever find your separated half? What a sad depressing world view that we should all suffer in misery because some asshole god felt like torturing humans.

Fuck that song.

Still though, I’m no closer to figuring it out, and I’m still lonely.

If only there actually were some formula.