often i have known people that have fallen in love with the potentiality of a person. you imagine what could "possibly be" when you meet someone new, even though its their "representative" giving all the information. as a younger version of myself, i have committed the crime of potentiality love.
i met a young man who was a college graduate and had a prospering job as a commodities trader. he drove a nice car, had his own place and spoke of what his future looked like. i was hooked. we spoke often about the future and what we were going to do to improve our lives. he was interested in my goals and wanted to know my plans for achieving those goals. i was in heaven and he had the "potential" to be the perfect husband. i was ready to move forward and make things happen, but he had a few habits that we needed to tweak.
my future "potential" spouse liked to drink. he traveled a lot for business and always called me from his hotel room. after about the 5th trip, i noticed the calls came only when he was wasted. i am not talking 2 or 3 drinks, this man was about 6'2" and weighed about 265. do you know how much liquor he had to ingest to get that drunk? after a while i got tired and told him not to call me drunk. he was making it hard to like his "potential". when he would drink, his representative would take a seat and let the real him speak. talk about loose lips sinking ships! this was a man that chose his college based on a fine girl he saw, got kicked out of that school and went to 3 more before he graduated because of his drinking. my rose colored glasses were quickly becoming clear. but i chose to hang on a little while longer. i mean he had all that other stuff going for him (SMH).
in one of his drunken tirades, i found out that he did not like to talk about his feelings (red flag). lawd what was i doing? i called my best friend up to discuss this roller coaster situation and she said something so very profound to me.
"you never have anything positive to say about this guy."
WOW! i had not even noticed that nothing good was coming of this relationship. i was so focused on what could "potentially" happen that i didn't see what was really going on. eventually things fell apart because he gave ME an ultimatum. can you believe that? i don't think i was even sad about the situation; i was just tired of worrying about him getting a DUI and killing folks.
after that incident, i was done with potential. i decided that what a man was when met him was all i should expect. if great things happened, they happened; but i could no longer focus on what could be. either you do it or it doesn't get done, i have no time to wait for it to happen.
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He didn't want to talk about his feelings? That's a red flag? Doesn't an aversion to talking about feelings come with the Y chromosome? :-)
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