As I was importing some old blog posts over to my new blog, I found myself reading and reflecting on the content I created over 6 years ago now at the ripe old age of 21. Interestingly, I was thinking about similar topics back then, as I am now, however being 6 years older and wiser, I wanted to revisit some of the topics I was contemplating back then, to gauge whether my opinions had changed in any way. One of the posts that grabbed my attention was about the existence of ‘The One’, which I posted originally on 12th May 2012. You can find the post here.
Having grown up watching films where people are always out to find ‘the one’, I used to believe that one day this would happen to me and I would find the perfect guy that would sweep me off my feet, but admittedly, I never even knew what this would feel like myself. I just hoped that one day I’d meet ‘the one’ because that’s just what you do in life, isn’t it? Technically, I did meet somebody fantastic. In 2009, mid-way through my first year of university, I met the most good looking, cool, indie guy who I fancied from the minute I laid eyes on him across the club. It was only after I had the pleasure of getting to know him and realising how wonderful he was, that I contemplated whether he was ‘the one’, and whether it did exist after all.
People over the years have said to me ‘do you think James is the one?’, and I’ve always replied with ‘of course’. Because he is the love of my life, the one person I want to share my life with, the one person I love most in a romantic/friend/life partner sort of way, and he is the one person I have met so far in my life who I feel like this about. And I’m not into polyamory (though thanks to Louis Theroux I have just discovered it – what an interesting concept!), so does this make him ‘the one’ for me? Maybe. But it depends on what you mean by the ‘one’.
Do I think he is the only person, on a planet of over 7.5 billion people, that I just so happen to have been lucky enough to find as my sole (or soul) match in life? No. Do I think that he is an absolute perfect match and that we were destined to find each other and be together because our two souls were intertwined before we were even born? No (but nice sentiment). But am I glad we did find each other and have chosen to spend our lives together? Absolutely. Have we been willing to put in years of hard work, take the good with the bad, work through arguments, differences, despairs and bad times? Yes. We have made each other the one, because we have chosen to spend (hopefully) the rest of our entire lives together. An active choice surely means that it is not something already pre-determined, but something you are in control of, and something that you work on when you love and care for somebody enough to want to work on it. Those seeking a relationship have enough pressures without having to assess every person they go out with and decide whether they are the one person on the planet who is supposed, by some divine power, to be with them and spend the rest of their life together. Surely it’s better to decide whether you want to be with somebody in the here and now, enjoy it, and take it from there? Maybe I’m biased, and it’s easy for me to say from my current position. But that’s the point of this blog, to give my opinions, not facts.
That’s not to say that I think it’s all doom and gloom, and that people don’t have a ‘love of their life’. Surely if you choose to spend your life with somebody, and truly and inherently love them, then you already have your answer – they are the one for you. So are you not creating your own fate? I realise now that 6 years on, I have answered my question. I always thought you would just ‘know’ when you met the one. I do still think that could be the case – as I said, I fancied James from the moment I laid eyes on him and I wanted him to be a constant in my life. And so I, working together with him, made that happen. You know when you are happy with somebody, and you know when you are not. You may also know that you may not be happy right now, but that your relationship is worth working on and fighting for to become happy again. It has been years of hard work and effort at times to develop our relationship, which I believe can be attributed to us and only us, and not some pre-determined fate.
And I do think that this could also work the other way. People can get so tied up working and investing into not-so-ideal relationships because they believe they are with their soulmate and are destined to be together, that there is just nobody else out there in the big wide world of over 7.5 billion people for them, that they maybe don’t give themselves a chance to find somebody more suited. But even then, I suppose that they’re creating their ‘one’, so maybe the concept still exists under such circumstances. And to answer another question from my original post, I do still think there is a person for you at certain times of your life, but I think this is a different concept to ‘the one’ in a romantic, spend your life together kind of way. You choose ‘the one’ because you want to spend your life with them, and I guess the idea is that you’ll spend as long as biologically possible with this person (or people, if you are poly-amorous).
So there’s my 6-and-a-half-years-on, older and wiser stance on the topic. I think that you choose ‘the one’, and surprisingly, I much prefer this idea than that of ‘the one’ being a pre-determined aspect in your life. I’ll maybe check in in another 6 years, with another blog post, to see whether my thoughts on this topic will still be the same. I mean, given that I’m marrying the person I’ve chosen to spend my life with next year, I really hope I’ll still believe what I’m saying now! But I guess we’ll have to wait and see! 🙂
Reflect and Introspect 