Settling

A letter writer to an advice column that I read regularly (with a careful filter) was agonizing over a boyfriend vs. crush dilemma. She felt she might be settling for the former and cheating herself out of a more fulfilling relationship with the latter, partly out of a fear that she might end up an unloved old maid (my words, not hers, but not a stretch by any means).

The columnist's put was that, just as she wouldn't want to spend her whole life as someone whom her partner simply settled for, always wondering whether he should have chosen someone else instead of her, likewise she should grant him the respect of not living their lives with him in that role.

There is a world full of wrong reasons for which people end up together, and a lot of questions that someone in the midst of making that sort of decision might need to consider:

• can I break this mental trap of feeling as if I'm settling for a relationship with you?
• how long should we try to make the best of this relationship, to see how it develops?
• is there a point at which I owe it to you to let you move on and find someone who can love you without looking back over their shoulder?

But once a couple has committed to each other in the sacrament of marriage, more pertinent questions take precedence:

• how can I best kill off the nagging voice of dissatisfaction?
• how do I go about dying to my selfishness and loving you with all I have?
• how can we help each other become the best versions of ourselves?

Though we've thankfully long since passed such a crisis point in our marriage, it remains important for us to tend to our relationship and help it always grow stronger.  Love either grows or dies; it never reaches a critical mass at which that is no longer true, and the old weak spots can still serve as fracture points if we are not careful.