I Was Blind But Now I See

Something has happened and I'm still trying to get my head around it so please bear with me while I try to enlighten myself!

Firstly I would like to extol the virtues of eHarmony, it appears their matching system knows a thing or two about compatibility.  Yes after my much maligning of online dating sites I have to retract all of my harsh criticism, they could see what was right in front of my nose while I was still blindly stumbling along in darkness.  No online dating sites are not the problem, alas it was I who had the problem.  It is rather appropriate that I do indeed have poor vision and suffer from myopia (short-sightedness) and astigmatism (blurred vision) because quite frankly I'm as blind as a bat when it comes to matters of the heart!

Many months ago eHarmony paired me up with someone who on their compatibility and personality matching calculations was deemed to be a match.  On profile he was everything I was looking for, he lived locally to me, he was within my age range, he had no children (while children were not a deal-breaker for me, I am soon to be an empty-nester so dating someone with either adult children or no children is a bonus), he was gainfully employed, owned his own home and car (which sounds materialistic but speaks volumes about his stability, reliability and maturity which for someone like myself who was once married to a problem gambler are very important personality traits).  His profile blew me away never have I come across another profile where the writer has been so completely honest about themselves, my heart-on-my-sleeve recognised one of it's own kind, an open book, so I established contact. 

Two things grabbed my attention on first meeting him, his blue eyes which I swear could see straight through my soul so I left my trusty sunglasses on for some self-protection while we sat there in the sun at a local cafe chatting about things that elude me now and the second thing that grabbed my immediate attention was his size.  He had described his physical appearance online as being Buddha-like and that any potential partner would need to be OK with having plenty to cuddle (things which I felt I was down with being a fatty myself) and there were recent pics on his profile so whilst I was not shocked by his size, I was taken aback as no one ever quite looks like the image you have in your head that you get when you meet them in the perverse backwards way that is online dating.   However, I am not that small-minded a person that I wasn't prepared to explore our obvious connection further and so I agreed to a date. 

We ended up having several dates and every time I was very impressed by his manners - he opened doors, paid for meals / coffee etc (although me being aware of the costs of living insisted on going dutch once or twice ... well from memory I did, I hope I did!), he was a gentleman and I enjoyed just being in his company.  However, being very familiar with life as an obese person myself and having a best friend who has spent most of her adult life being morbidly obese (through no fault of her own due to chronic illnesses and life-giving medications) I could emphasis and relate to the struggles his weight causes him in day-to-day living.   And I was worried!  

And then one of my worries became a reality, due to a complication arising from an infection from a wound on his leg and his body's low immunity (a side-effect of medication he takes for a chronic condition) he was hospitalised.  Two things happened here which caused my worry to turn to fear, firstly he didn't inform me about it for a few days and this was a bit close to home for a girl who was kept at arm's length by her former boyfriend during his losing battle with cancer , that and the fact that his health is indeed compromised, in one way or another, by his bodily habitus.

However, I wasn't ready to give up until the evening we met up with some of my Uni Visual Arts classmates for an end of semester dinner.  I was talking to one of my fellow students, a lovely older lady, who was also single and had been online dating.  As you do, we got to talking about our dating experiences as divorced single mothers when she mentioned that she couldn't possibly date someone unless there were 'sparks'.   And that got me thinking, I knew I had felt something when meeting my date but I didn't feel it was 'sparks', we weren't all over each other, in fact we hadn't even kissed.  I was confused, what if out there somewhere there was someone for him and someone for me with whom there were 'sparks'.  What if I was cheating him, and myself, out of meeting our 'sparkies' in life?  What if in years to come we were together and one of us met our 'sparky' other half and then we had to go through that whole horrible process of breaking up a long-term relationship over it?  Having been in relationships my whole adult life with men who were just not that into me, I am highly adverse to ever causing someone else that much pain, heartache and grief.

So in my worry, fear and confusion I did what I thought was the right thing to do, I called it off.  And then life does what it does when you do a stupid thing, it kicked me in guts.  This wonderful man found another within weeks (it may have been longer but it felt like only weeks to me) of our parting and while I confess I was jealous, I consoled myself with the knowledge that I had done the right thing and that in letting him go I had left him free to meet his 'sparky' and so I got on with the job of finding my own!   Having no more luck with eHarmony, potential matches living local to me seemed to be a rarity, I turned my attentions to the RSVP and POF (aka Plenty Of Fish) online dating sites and in the words of that great Split Enz song, "that was my mistake".  I was a goldfish swimming with the sharks.

Having been chewed up and spat out by yet another player over Christmas I decided I was not cut out for online dating (again not the dating sites problem but rather my inability to recognise players arising from my skewed foresight, funnily enough I have 20/20 hindsight).  I had a course of action in mind I was off to Table Talk Dining to meet men in the flesh because I hoped that it would be harder for a player or scammer to operate in the confines of a single socials group, no not impossible, just harder!  When something happened that I had not expected to happen and that I am saddened happened the way it did, my Mr Right-But-I-Couldn't-See-It and his girlfriend broke up, the reasons are theirs alone so I'm not going to comment on them here suffice to say that for both parties it was heartbreaking but amicable and they remain friends.  Anyhow that's when I had my light-bulb moment, I had been a hypocritical oaf!  All I've ever wanted was someone who would like me just the way I am (my favourite line, slightly misquoted, from Bridget Jones' Diary) and when life had presented me with such a person I rejected him on the very grounds that I have been rejected on in the past :-(   

Life is unpredictable and no one knows what the future holds in store all sorts of trials can befall us, injuries and illnesses are just some of those trials that can and do happen.  Love too is unpredictable but true love overcomes life's obstacles.  Fairy-tales, the rom-com movies and Mills & Boon give us a false impression of love, love just doesn't happen and then last happily for ever after.  Fact: love has to be worked at, it has to communicate, it has to compromise and it has to evolve or it perishes  Love isn't "sorry but if you could lose some weight I would be attracted to you", it isn't "you have the best personality and I love you but I'm dating a size 6 blonde bimbo because I'm so good-looking that I can".  That's not saying those guys will not or have not found their version of true love but what I've realised is that they are definitely not my version and now I can finally see and can say that in reality I just wasn't into them either.  I've been dating men who think they are God's gifts to women when all along I needed a man who thinks I'm God's gift to him and in turn that makes him God's gift to me. 

And I believe I have found him ... again (because I didn't recognise him the first go-round) and humbly and in the best example of just the type of man he is, he has gracefully given me another chance.  There will be obstacles, there will be challenges, there will be trials and tribulations but when you are with someone who has the strength of character, the inherent goodness, the common decency, the unselfishness and the compassion that this man has in spades then you know in hard times that you have a soft place to fall.  Everything else, our physical appearances, our disabilities, our short-comings all become irrelevant.  Do I still worry and fear for his health?  Yes I do because I want him to be around for a long time.  But I am no longer confused.  I can see clearly now ...