Flashback Friday: Love, look at the two of us

My blogging buddy, Anne Glamore of My Tiny Kingdom, has pulled this week's Flashback Friday theme from a line in the Carpenter's hit song "For all we know". Here's Love, look at the two of us...



I love the episode of Sex and the City when an exasperated and exhausted Charlotte said, “I’ve been dating since I was 16! Where is he?!?” Man – that was me. Enough with the frogs. Where was my prince? No, I was (and am) far too pragmatic to be looking for a prince. But a nice guy? Good grief. How hard could it be?

Pretty hard, as it turns out.

I didn’t really want a nice guy – at least not in the generic sense. I was looking for a lot of fairly specific criteria. You could argue that I was being picky, but I had enough friends ending painful “starter marriages” to determine I’d like to skip the starter marriage and go straight to the one that’s going to last.

One afternoon in 1996, I got out a sheet of notebook paper and made the list. I outlined the characteristics of my ideal guy – and I was specific. I listed 3-5 characteristics within each of 6-7 categories. I covered everything from appearance to education to interests to career to religion. I had identified the ideal guy and now I had to find him.

Turns out? I already knew him - sort of. And even weirder? We had a long list of near misses over the years. We attended the same Christian youth conference as teenagers in the 1980’s. We both went to college at Auburn and had surprising overlaps in our circles of friends. We lived 30 minutes from each other in Tennessee at one point after college. We both interviewed for jobs in Dallas in 1996. (I took my offer – he turned his down.) We had friends wanting to fix us up in 1999, but we lived in different countries. We’d both been back in Auburn dozens of times since college to go to football games.

By 2001, I was living in Dallas again and he was traveling there regularly on business. But did we meet in Dallas? Nope. I ran into him at my parents’ church in Auburn on a Sunday morning after the Auburn-Mississippi State football game. Pure coincidence.

I can’t tell you how happy my mom is that I didn’t meet my husband in a bar. Ha!

Bryan and I swapped business cards and the rest, my friends, is history. Shortly before our wedding in 2003, I dusted off that list and Bryan met every single criterion – even the silly ones.

By the time we found each other, I’d found contentment in remaining single. I had quit looking for a guy who could meet my criteria – surely no such person existed. I had a buddy who could stand in as a date for weddings and office events. I had an awesome circle of girl friends. I had a rewarding career that took me all over the place. I didn’t feel a big gaping hole in my life that needed fixing…

And yet, here was Bryan whose presence brought sunshine and spice. Marrying him and having babies with him has added more. I find myself watching him with our children and I feel so grateful that I didn’t marry some knucklehead along the way just so I could meet an arbitrary deadline (e.g. get married before thirty) or bend to social pressure (e.g. there must be something wrong with you if you’re still single).

So none of this played out according to my plans, and yet it all worked out really nicely. (This is the story of my life – categorically.) But if I could change one thing? Bryan and I would have both taken those job offers in Dallas in 1996 and gotten a five year head start. Ah, but you shouldn’t look backwards. As a person who struggles to grab onto a nebulous concept like Fate, I really have to wonder sometimes.

Happy Valentine’s Day, Bryan.