A Love Letter by Count Tolstoy

 

I already love in you your beauty, but I am only beginning to love in you that 
which is eternal and ever precious - your heart, your soul. 
Beauty one could get to know and fall in love with in one hour 
and cease to love it as speedily; 
but the soul 
one must learn to know. 
Believe me, nothing on earth is given without labour, 
even love, 
the most beautiful and natural of feelings.

Lists

It all started in our childhoods with a seemingly innocent wishlist for Christmas. Growing up we overcame the legend of Santa more or less successfully and switched to the simple, easy to fulfill, grocery list. Both lists proved themselves as so useful that we created the famous to-do list which was soon to be followed by the sex-list and turned into the my-perfect-man list. Somehow it seemed we ended up right back where we started, addressing our lists to the very same person: Mr.Santa himself. Not a very reliable man, considering the fact that he works one day a year...

The "my-perfect-man list" can be anywhere between 3 words or 3000 words long and its single purpose is to describe HIM in order to let ourselves know what we are looking for, what it is we think we need and, last but not least, what we want in a man.

One of my girlfriends described this list as a female computer program that we install in our heads in order to successfully download a very special file. The better the program, the less chances of getting a virus. In order to settle, we need to swap from Windows to Mac.

This very same girlfriend used to have so far the most extended version of mpm (my perfect man) list I´ve ever seen in my life: very detail orientated, with rows and columns, categories like sports, religion, views on family, relation with close family etc...going all the way to sexual behavior, job, eye colour and even body hair quota and location.

Not a single category was left out. Everything was perfectly planned.

My friend indeed found her perfect man who was everything she thought she was looking for - her list only approved her decision: check, check, check. Barbie and Ken had finally found each other and it was pink all over.

Ken never left his soon to be ex-wife, whereas Barbie had not only her luggage packed but also her flight booked. Barbie was ready to go. Ken too - but unfortunately away from her.

I am still wondering what caused their break up. Did she left out a column on her list? I wish I could ask her about her own thoughts but Barbie left and the pink vanished while I am still here with the list I started a year ago and that I never ended....

There are things we know we need and others we know we don´t want. Very easy compared to the mpm list. For example: I know I need fresh cut flowers every now and then and I don´t want a liar. Everything else is in a grey zone and subject to change. Maybe we should leave it like that because maybe this grey zone is the only reason why there are still realtionships out there. Because maybe this grey zone is what compromising means: settling for something we don´t really care about.

I do, I don´t or I don´t know

A young, handsome, italian man who is a regular at a lovely pink restaurant on the upper east side came for his usual espresso one morning. Until this day we had only exchanged the regular "hi & bye". This day I asked him how he was and he replied that he´s sad. I didn´t have much time to wonder about how we jumped from being professionally polite to being friendly intimate. But hearing him saying that, made me not only feel for him but also ask him immediately and without hesitation the ultimate question: why?

Today his girlfriend, that he loves, had broken up with him after two years of relationship. He had asked her to marry him. I didn´t quite know what came first: the break up part or the marriage but figured the question was as old and relevant as "the chicken or the egg" dilemma.

He showed me his hand where a missing ring was, at least to me, her answer. He was asking me for advice and me, being aware of the delicacy of such a situation, decided to ask him a question instead of giving him my answer.

She had not say yes, neither no. But to a question as clear as this one, isn´t everything but a clear and loud non hesitating yes, a clear and loud no?

A marriage , the institution that in the best case lasts a lifetime, raises fear in many people. What we all have in common is that we unconsciously know that it is easy to step in, hard to step out and that the hardest thing above all is to maintain it.

A clear yes is the fundament on which a marriage is built and the best chance to a possible "happily ever after". A hesitation is no fundament - even Sleeping Beauty, who had just woken up after a 100 years of sleep, was not sleepy at all when it came to answering this question.

Are we so desperately wanting to get married that we are willing to spend the rest of our lives with a person who simply doesn´t know? And can we ask from one to be faithful forever if this very same person shows us she cannot remain true to herself?