Marriage has always been an interesting topic of discussion. Sometimes when Im sitting with some of my friends they will be complaining about their husbands and how marriage is difficult. How their husbands are lazy and insensitive, how they wish their men would care more about them and then they will turn around and say with a sigh, "Well at least I'm not alone."
After that comment I usually get "the look." The look that tells me that my life is so incomplete without a man, that I am going to end up alone and sad because I am not in a relationship with someone. I have been told quite a few times, "Tami, a partner is a partner -- no matter how good or bad."
The other group of my married friends tell me, "Hell yea, you go girl!! More power to you if being single makes you are happy."
This obsession with being in a relationship really is beyond my understanding. Don't get me wrong it is obviously great to have a partner in life. However the concept of needing someone "to complete us" (thanks Tom Cruise!) in my opinion is a total sham. I believe that we were born whole and a partner should enhance our life -- not complete it. People look at me with pity and despair that I don't understand the importance of being with that special someone. I would love to have someone special -- a soulmate, but if I don't know myself, how do I know what I want in a partner?
My answer to them is that I don't just want a relationship, where I need someone to make me feel whole. That needs to come from within me not from someone else. I think two incomplete people don't make two whole people; they make two unhappy people in one miserable relationship. I believe that only two people that are whole from inside, enjoy their own solitude, know how to accept themselves and can love themselves first, can then eventually go on to have a great relationship. This to me is the "learning to love myself phase," which I am going through right now. I am learning things about myself that I never knew before.
So then I say to myself: "Tami, you're the only one that completes me!"