No Regrets

In view of the lengthy rant coming out soon, I want to set the record straight. I have written at length of the disappointments of my young adulthood with respect to women, disappointments the cause of which I have integrated into one of the themes of this blog and of those on the blogroll. And as I said, I don't plan on stopping.

But . . . the fact is that things really did seem to work out for the best. And I don't even mean this in the I-really-love-my-wife-we-have-a-great-relationship kind of way. It happens to be true, as it is true for any happily married man, that I continue to find my wife attractive into our middle-age because of the quality of our relationship. Love, to some extent, really is blind.

That's not what I'm talking about though. What I mean is this: objectively speaking, with the passing years, the list of women to whom I was attracted in my teens and twenties who have held up favorably compared to the woman I actually married is very short. And getting shorter.

I recently reflected on this recalling one such young woman, a member of a church singles group I frequented. Very cute. Nicely put together. Tantilizingly unattached the whole time I knew her. No apparent career-path to speak of that would crowd out a stable relationship. (To be fair, she may have seen the matter differently.) And, uncharacteristically for the women who turned me down, she always treated me with reasonable friendliness. And there I was: a newly-minted officer, in good physical shape if not yet at my peak, with a Mustang GT, and at least one interesting hobby (flying). So you can see how it was a lingering source of disappointment to me that I couldn't get an audition.

Well, she recently turned up on a friend's whogotfat.com facebook friends list and . . . well, damn girl, you went and turned into a shapeless meat-sack! And this despite having natural advantages that Mrs. Φ never had.

And then I looked at the pictures of her husband, and . . . well, I can only assume they are happy together in their shapelessness. Most couples who make it to middle-age seem to be. But . . . Mrs. Φ gets up at 0600 and exercises for an hour 3-4 times per week. I stop off at the gym or the pool every evening. And we both like the results of this a lot better than the alternative.

Rejection wasn't fun; it's lingering side-effect is that here I am, blogging about it some twenty years later. But as much as I might want to look back and ask why, I should remember this: to the extent they misjudged me back then, they saved me from the consequences of my own misjudgment. And for that I am grateful.