Deciding which man to marry.
When did you realize you were a worry wart?
Ever had one of those weeks where maybe you get too much sun or have been spending too much time at the gym running on the treadmill alone with your thoughts? Maybe there’s been too much fresh air or not enough. Anyways, somethings happened where you have random memory files that comes through your neural networks and you stop to think through a memory route that you’d completely forgotten about. Join me in this winding memory road.
This week it was me revisiting the forgotten memory of me as a teenager being incredibly worried about what I was going to do when TWO men wanted to marry me at the same time. Not if, when. Now I cannot stress to you enough, dear friend, how much I wasn’t dating as a teenager. This hasn’t changed drastically as an adult in her thirties, but for the purposes of this essay, we’ll be focusing on the teenage and young twenties time frame.
Now, where did this worry come from? Was I subject to the adults in my life crying over glasses of wine about the many flower bearing suitors waiting in the parlor for their hand in marriage?
No.
Was I eavesdropping on others sadly pontificating on the unfairness of the love of their lives choosing Daniel over them and how they would never get over her?
Also no.
I was not even in the midst of watching lots of garish and scintillating entertainment of wildly dramatic, but ultimately slightly sad, love triangles! I wasn’t even reading lots of angsty poetry or indulging in soap operas of bursting feather dresses and questionable plot lines and gossip drenched episodes.
None of the above.
As I thought about all this, what I remembered the most about this specific worry was having all these questions. Like:
What would I do when these two men I was involved with became serious? Who were they and why couldn’t I make this decision? Why was I dating two men in the first place? How was I going to make said decision and why couldn’t I choose one? How would I let down the man who I decided I couldn’t marry because I just couldn’t live without the man I decided to be with?? No frame of reference, but clearly this was an issue that I would struggle with at twenty and needed to figure out right now, so how would I decide?
And, just so were clear {details being important and all}, I had no boyfriend. No suitor. No dates. No mildly interested crush who looked even slightly sideways at my 16 year old self while making vague wobbly heart eyes at me. No one awkwardly asking for my phone number. Not at 17, 18, 19, 20, or even 21 was there one, let alone, TWO men who were so magnificent that I dated them AT THE SAME TIME and then really ran the stats on trying to figure out who would be my forever Mr. Darcy.
Now, what I’ve realized from all this memory sifting is that more than being worried about ridiculous problems, is the fact that I may have been a bit of a worry wart. For far earlier than I’ve ever really considered. When you look at this it is a subject matter that someone in their mid-twenties might be worrying about, let alone thinking about. Also someone actively dating said multiple men or at this point, just the famous two I was so worried about. But there I was in my teens, nary a skinny teenage boy in sight, crunching the numbers on the dual decision marriage market. I was worried about a problem that didn’t exist and put serious brain power to trying to figure it out. I was worrying about worry. Don’t do this to yourself. Not ever, but really not in this economy.
All this to say, if you’ve ever thought that maybe you shouldn’t worry so much and that so called issue is probably not worth worrying this much about, you’re more than likely right. Having now mulled on this resurfaced memory throughout this week and how utterly absurd it looks in the daylight through these 33 year old eyes, I should not have been so worried. Not about anything really, except drinking enough water and hanging out with my sister and driving with the windows down when the sun was out, but especially on a non-existent problem that had no speck of reality to it. So just some food for thought for your Sunday, if you’ve been a worry wart for a little while, that’s okay. But it's also okay to not be so worried all the time about the things that are probably never going to happen.
Really.
Sincerely,
the woman not dating two men and trying to decide who to marry.
.WHERE DID I GET THIS NONSENSE.
Sheeeeeeeee’s baaaaaaaackkkkkkkkk