Childhood Love-Dreams.

When I was a kid, I was pretty certain that I knew what I wanted in a mate.

I say "mate" because I don't know what else to call the person that you spend the rest of your life with. At one point, I would have chosen "boyfriend," but, let's face it, boyfriends and girlfriends are what you have in highschool when you think you want to spend the rest of your life with someone but you're too young to get married.

I might have said "husband" before the divorce brought me to the realization that husbands and wives aren't necessarily the people that you want to spend the rest of your lives with, though you might be inclined to think so when you're standing in city hall in a dress you'll be taking back to the Dress Barn after you're done with it. (Maybe that should have been the first clue.)

"Soul mate," well, it just sounds dumb to me. Something that I might have believed in when I was dating an inadequate guy, like hoping for Superman when you're being held at gunpoint. I mean, it's a nice idea, but it's one that's probably left a good many people wishing for more than is actually possible when dealing with breathing, flawed humans.

But when I was a little girl, I had this image in my mind of what perfection would be when speaking in terms of a mate.

First, I should note, in my vision I was a professor of English literature. Hmhoha. Needless to say, I was far more intellectual in my early imaginings of myself as an adult than I ever became in actuality.

My mate was a mathematical and/or scientific sort of guy. We would sit in front of a fire, and he would explain quarks and fractals and that sort of thing to me with love and patience and kindness. And then I might read a line from a novel or a poem to him, and he would make some insightful comparison with a quote by Einstein or Hawking. And we'd have these beautiful conversations.

It makes me sad now because I've settled for so much less throughout my life. I've settled for people who couldn't have cared less if a thought ever flickered in my head, who weren't the least interested in me. Maybe I was a body or an idea, but I wasn't myself. I wasn't worth a conversation in front of a fire.

And I don't imagine I'm alone in this sense of alone-ness. I wonder how many of us settle for anything or anyone just to keep that fearsome solitude at bay. But harboring, somewhere in dark corners, these childhood dreams of love (in which, I may note, we were better people than we ever turned out to be, too).

I think of the Price is Right. You can have the car, or you can choose one of three doors in the hopes of a more desirable prize. But you were lucky to just get the car in the first place, weren't you? And who knows what, if anything, is behind the door you choose? Shouldn't you just take the car? I don't know anymore. I used to think desperation was a sad state of affairs, but I'm beginning to think that it's the status quo when dealing with human relationships.