Annoying Things People Say After a Break-Up: “You’re too good for him.”

“You’re too good for him.”

Thanks, but that doesn’t make me happy. It makes me feel worse. It makes me wonder what’s wrong with me and why I still love someone who’s not deserving and why my taste in men sucks.

And, as already mentioned, love is not about deserve. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (1 Corinthians 13:7).

And sometimes I wonder if I’m one of those “too good for this sinful world” types. Thing is, I don’t want to be one of those types because those types always wind up miserable and dead. I don’t want to be Saint Irene, I don’t want to be a martyr– I want to live and love and be happy. But this “deserve” thing just makes me wonder if there is anyone out there who is “worthy” or if I’m going to be alone forever while other (apparently less worthy) people get to fall in love and get married and be happy.

I once heard this thing about how valuable girls are like the best apples grown on the top of the tree where they are made yummy and ripe by the sun or something like that and most boys are too lazy to climb the tree to reach her and so they pick the ones closer to the ground. It’s supposed to make you feel better about being single because hey, you’re a yummy, nutritious, sunkissed apple, but girls and apples really aren’t comparable. See, when apples aren’t picked, they fall off the tree and rot. And when apples are picked, they get eaten. If the apples aren’t used for eating, they’re considered wasted. And I’m sick of boys always being the “pickers” in these stories and girls always filling the role of “inanimate object”. So I find this analogy rather sexist and depressing.

And whenever people say “he doesn’t deserve you”, they always suggest I go out with men I have no romantic interest in just because they’re nice guys and I’m just really sick of it because if I’m going to spending the rest of my life with this person and having sex with him, I’d better be attracted to him and going out with someone just because they seem nice is setting the bar pretty low. I mean, if I choose my life partner based solely on whether or not they’re “nice”, I’ll be married to pretty much everyone I know(#necessarynotsufficient).

And I get going out on a date isn’t the same as committing to marriage, but I just don’t see why I should act like I’m romantically interested in him when I’m not. It doesn’t seem fair to either of us. I mean, if he wants to keep hanging out knowing I’m still in love with my ex half of the time, on his own head be it, but to act like there isn’t still anything between me and my ex and to act like I’m more gung-ho to be this new date’s girlfriend than I actually am… Because I recognize that I’m dealing with another human being here, someone with thoughts and feelings who is capable of being hurt by my poor decisions, I don’t feel right about that.

“Well you can’t be expected to be interested in him after only a couple conversations!” Really? Guys get interested enough in girls to ask them out after one conversation but if I expect to be attracted to him right away, like, around the time I have to answer yay or nay to a date, I’m expecting too much? You don’t think that’s a double standard at all?

Ugh.

When Philosophy Students Get Set Up On Dates They Don’t Want

So, in philosophy, we have these terms “necessary” and “sufficient”. “Necessary” means a certain thing is needed for an event to happen. “Sufficient” means a certain thing guarantees that event will happen. These categories of “necessary” and “sufficient” are not mutually exclusive, so a lot of new philosophy students, including myself, were confused by the whole thing.

My professor gave the example of fire. Oxygen is necessary for fire to exist, but it is not enough on its own to be sufficient. It also needs fuel, like wood or gasoline, and a catalyst, a spark, in order to exist. So any one of these ingredients is necessary, but not sufficient on its own. However, all of these ingredients are sufficient when they are taken together. That is, they are necessary and jointly sufficient.

However, it wasn’t until my friend’s mom kind of tried to set me up with this guy that I understood it. She says she wasn’t trying to set us up, but this one time I come home from an event with her family and the whole way home we’re listening to this Jewish matchmaker CD and then I’m carsick and drinking water on their couch and she plops down across from me and starting singing this guy’s praises–“He’s so sweet, he just came over out of the blue to mow our lawn for us! And he’s learning Hebrew!”. After that, the times I come over just so happen to be the times he comes over.

I talk to my friend about this turn of events and she says “Yeah, Mom thinks you two would be really good together.” I was horrified. See, he’s a lovely person and all and treats people with kindness and respect and is very generous with his time and labour, but there is no attraction whatsoever on my end. And really, I just want to hang out with my bestie, not be awkward trying to interact with this guy who seems very interested in me who I know is really keen on getting married ASAP because he’s in his mid-twenties now and in the Bible Belt, that is officially old-maid status.

And that’s when it hit me: his qualities are necessary, not sufficient. Do I want to be with someone who is kind? Yes. But I also want to be with someone I am attracted to. “Kind” and “attractive” are not mutually exclusive traits, yet people keep acting like I have to pick one or the other and if I insist on being attracted to the guy then I must not really care about whether or not he is kind. But those qualities are not sufficient. They are necessary and jointly sufficient.

And if person A has the quality of being kind, but there is no attraction, and Person B is attractive to me, but is not kind (of course, it’s difficult for me to be attracted to someone who isn’t kind, but let’s just ignore that for the sake of this thought experiment), then you know which one I pick? Neither! Because picking neither is totally an option!

I’d sure love to have a spouse to do things with and have all kinds of fun and adventures with, and honestly, sex sounds kinda cool too, but you know what? I don’t need that to be happy. I’ve gone a lifetime without sex already and am doing fine, though I do miss kissing and stuff. I have family and friends to go on adventures with (a friend and I are planning our Disneyland trip for one of the summers in the next couple years), I have a cat to snuggle, I’ve got a job I love and I’m getting an education, which means it’s only a matter of time before I get a second job that I love (!!!). I’ve never wanted to get pregnant, so I don’t really feel my “biological clock” ticking and if I really want kids, I can adopt, provided that my financial situation is stable. And between two jobs, I should be able to manage having my own place; it’ll be tight, but it’ll still be my own. So I don’t need a significant other to accomplish most of my major life goals.

I really want to get married and yes, I do have a wedding board on Pinterest, but I want the person I choose to be the one who has everything I’m looking for, not just one thing. And I don’t think that’s unreasonable. I mean, there’s seven billion of us. Surely someone out there fits the bill?

And if nobody does then I guess it’s good that I live in a time and place where I don’t have to marry to survive and that I have such a positive outlook on my life. I can be happy, with or without a husband. I am free.