The girl you love or the girl who loves you? : REDUX

Whom would you marry? It’s an honest question. Probably some romantic idealists would say neither, but in a world of 6 Billion people what is the probability that the person you love also found you and only you to love? Or the other way around? Very bleak I would say. And if you are saying that you don’t know the whole world then you are just compromising with the people whom you you know; while your ‘Soulmate’ (if such a thing exists) might be in some other country, speaking some other language and married to someone else.

That leaves me with this question and this very real scenario. Look around and you will find even in the most perfect couples there is always some power imbalance, somebody who first initiated the dialogue; somebody who makes up first after a fight; somebody who is a little insecure; somebody who got laughed on while saying “seriously, this is your girlfriend?, somebody who is always perplexed with “what does she see in me?”. You are now getting the picture, aren’t you? So who do you wanna be?  The lover or the loved? The person who took pity on another because he or she has been there even after rebuttals, insults and being used & discarded?  Or the other person who thinks that the other is the one who he or she was destined to be with and can’t be without?

I think it is better to marry the girl who loves you. It makes better sense logically. It’s just cold hard math. You can count on her loyalty. She will always go the extra mile to please you, she will watch the movies you want, eat the food you like and have sex when you want. She will say sorry first when you fight, go away when you are angry and come back when you need a crutch. It is her problem to make you like her and not the other way around; she will make you look good in front of her friends and will make sure she does in front of yours. She will return your calls at 3 AM and tell herself ‘he would be busy’ when you won’t return hers. She’d be afraid when you are angry and cry in a corner when she is. She’ll throw surprise parties on your birthday and just smile when you forget hers. There’ll be your favorite meal waiting at home when you just say ‘My boss is an idiot’; and a cold hug and “you should have worked harder” will pick her up when she gets fired.  She will defend you in front of her parents and suck up to yours. Bruises will become insect bites and wrist slashes will become cat paw marks.  She will forgive when you cry after cheating on her and smile when you ask her not to talk to her best friend.

And if not for anything else, it is a huge ego boost to have a human doting on you like that.

Maybe you will someday fall in love with her. Or at least you can tell yourself that. She would obviously believe that. Even when her mind would scream that she is a door rug. She will never find someone better than you. Or at least that’s what she tells herself. Love is selflessness and sacrifice. No harm in that, right? Or maybe for you it isn’t.  Ayn Rand had already said. You need reasons to love someone. And whole hearted and blind & stupid one sided love. It is a good reason as any. Any which ways you will get fond of her. Or at least dependent on her. Hell you start liking your dog that has been with you for 3 months.  She is after all a human being. Least you can do is give her attention and an occasional act of kindness. Many people don’t even get that. And for most that is enough from the people they love. It will keep them satiated. One sided lovers have second -hand lives. They derive theirs from their lover; their happiness, their self-worth, their sense of purpose and their gratification. They get drunk on someone else’s high.  It is not a bad life if you ask me, for them I mean. They get happiness out of it. And some ugly-fucked-up distortion of a companionship. It is more than what half of the world is living with. And it certainly beats the bitterness; sarcasm and brewing but implicit hostility. That many couples live with. Who never had or don’t have any love for each other. At least anymore. But most of all you are not giving her the pain. The heartbreak that one gets when the love of their life leaves them. Many can’t get over it their entire lives. And a few end it. It is the biggest favor anyone can do anyone.

Marry the girl you love and you will be playing catch-up your whole life. It is like the deer who runs for a pool of water in the desert and the farther he runs, further the pool of water of gets away from him. Sooner or later the deer dies of the thirst and exhaustion. Which he accumulated running for that pool of water. The pool of water is a mirage, an illusion. Something that is there somewhere but you will never find it. And that search will kill you in the end. The deer would have been better off if he had never started running for that water in the first place. Likewise is the love you would never get.  The constant nagging that if I would have done that or done that better, “she would love me back” will kill you sooner or later. And if that doesn’t, the insecurity will. Every late night, every afternoon lunch without you, every weekend outings with her team, every time she run towards the phone when it rings, every time she smiles at some stranger will stab you a million times. You will stare at your phone for calls that never come and wait hours for a message that says ‘hmmm’. Every time you go to sleep in the night you’d never be sure that in the morning she’d still be there.

I am a Nihilist, ontologically.  I don’t think life has a higher purpose. After we are gone there is nothing. We are ashes or dust. There is no greatness in self-sacrifice, morality or doing good for others.Llife is as Friedrich Nietzsche put it “Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.” 

And finally. Why do I ask this question? I don’t know. It is a good question to be asked. And I like Yossarian. I am a ‘collector of good questions’.