‘The One’

How do you know when you’ve met ‘the one?’

Is it first sight? A first impression is often a good sign in job terms, and we all go off instinct and gut on that one, so why not a relationship? Is it after a few dates, when you can work out what their core values are and you try to see them meeting your parents and you either think, ‘yes, absolutely!’ Or ‘nah, bit too intense for that’. Is it the first time you’re intimate together? When heat and passion and chemistry and desire all melt together, then either explode or dissipate or leave you wanting more. (That’s a very good one for working out whether you need to ‘try again’, just to be sure). Is it after the first trip away-that extended time together in each others company when you have to share a bathroom in close proximity and can’t hide the morning bed hair or open mouth sleep noise.

Is it when you say, ‘I love you’?

Those three words signify so much in so little time; commitment to each other and vulnerability and openness and willingness to change or move forward. A coupling. Is it on your wedding day if you have one, when you stare into each others eyes and say words that mean nothing and everything all at the same time, in front of a bunch of people you love and a load more you will barely know in a years time? Or is it once you have your first child, or second, or fifth, if you decide to have them? You can finally sit back and say, ‘they are the one for me’, once you’ve shown all these things, like evidence for an experiment.

But the truth is, no one’s story has come back with a formula for the answer on this one. I was walking with a friend just the other week, and she posed this very question to me. I realised right then how far my thinking has come since the teenage middle class Christian girl living in a southern, suburban semi utopia, ‘its different for everyone’ I replied, ‘and that’s what makes love so exciting’.

And it’s true. For some, it’s instantaneous. ‘I saw her across the room and I just knew I was going to marry her’, I’ve heard a friend say. They are still married, with children, and work hard to keep their relationship going, even though it’s not been easy. ‘I hated him to start off with’ said another friend over drinks, her describing how she detested everything he said and did until one day, somehow, detest turned to desire. Now they have 3 beautiful children and make an incredible team, neither of them looking at love like a pill you happen to fall upon that makes life all alright. Another friend confessed that ‘the one’, can not come without the crash bang wallop of feeling head over heels. Not for them anyway. They are still searching. My mum would argue it’s a gut feeling, a ‘you just know’ feeling, deep down. I trust this gut feeling more now I’m older and have experienced a similar thing myself, from decisions I made about my life earlier on, and I associate with the uneasiness of not feeling like something was right. My gut wasn’t ‘all in’. I trust my Mum’s opinion also because she told me honestly she was young and naive and unsure when marrying my Dad, but in having a second chance and marrying again, that second time round she was ‘absolutely in no doubt’. Sometimes ‘the one’ comes with perspective and time. I told my inquisitive friend this as we lapped a field in windy sunshine. She nodded in contemplative chewing.

My honest answer, that is my opinion only, is that there is no, ‘one’. I of all people am the biggest hopeless romantic, and I earnestly believed at 17 that ‘the one’ was out there somewhere, waiting just for me. This theory is also hugely celebrated in church circles amongst zealous young Christian teens, and can be detrimental I believe in crushing their view of God and love in general when things don’t work out how they expected (spoken from my own experience, and notice I don’t ‘blame’ church here…I built up the notion). As I got older and made my own mistakes and learnt that everyone made mistakes, I guess that thought lapsed into, ‘they won’t be waiting necessarily, but I will at least know’. This theory was again profusely rebuffed when I married the man that I genuinely thought at the time was ‘the one’ (I even ripped out the last few pages of my ‘romance encounter diary’ once we got engaged as I thought that part of life was well and truly finished), only to be so unsure myself of my own theory throughout the entire time we were married and spending most of my 7 year marriage trying to hide my fear from everyone, and him. (I did genuinely believe at the time that I had found ‘the one’. I made a pros and cons list and everything!!) ultimately it caught up with me, and so my view of ‘the one’ was quickly and loudly quashed along with my confidence in love. It has only been in listening to others stories of love and lust, desire and companionship that I draw my own conclusion; the one for one is one. The one for another is many. For another it’s God, yet another it’s all. It’s simply how you define ‘the one’. Another walking friend told me that I was asking the wrong question, instead arguing that the real question is, ‘what is love?’ Everyone has a different opinion on this topic, so maybe that’s the greater question?

Does this person have to be the one you end up with? Are they the person who taught you how to love? (If we’re acknowledging this idea, then my grandad was ‘the one’. He remains the man I learnt about love from to this day, and I’m grateful for his advice and role modelling to me in the way he loved and treated his family). Are they the one you know you would never be in a relationship with (because they were dangerous or a mess or attached or mentally unstable), but they were the one that made your heart beat so fast you thought you might take off? Are they the stabiliser; the best friend, the one you never end up with but know you only ever gave your whole heart to them, and you can’t do that again. They remain instead your closest friend, or a distant memory that you often think of but no longer know. I know for me right now, that I’m experiencing ‘the one’ as someone very different to what I imagined all those years ago. I’ve had the sensible, cheeky, charm offensive adventurer, who has all the right words at the right time. I’ve had the ‘oh my gosh I can’t breathe because I feel you’re the one’. I’m now experiencing the slow burn. The ‘show me you’re the one’ kinda experience instead of words or feelings. I’m not saying that any of these are right or wrong, but they are all different. Maybe that says something about my journey with my thoughts of ‘the one’, rather than what or who I believe it is?

The only thing I can be sure of, is that NOTHING lasts. Planting flowers in this lockdown, I am taking every moment I can to go out and look at, smell and take pictures of the beautiful signs of colour in my garden while I can, because I know the open, colourful beauties will not continue to do this all year round. Some will flower again, but some will die, only to be replaced if I put the effort in to go buy more the following year. Some last two weeks, some keep going throughout the year, or years.

And so it is with love. ‘The one’ in my mind, is a fantastical concept we have dreamt up to give us hope. Or to remind us that the decision we made was the right one, for better or for worse. Or indeed maybe, as in my case, ‘the one’ was not a positive, but I took positive from it because I now know better what values and attributes I hold the most dear when engaging in a romantic relationship. I now totally believe that ‘the one’ can be both temporary and permanent. It can be a lesson and a hope for the future. It can be a soulmate, a long lost unrequited love or a friend. It can be God incarnate, the 3 in 1, who releases me to love in the way I need to.

Or, ‘the one’, could also simply be…me.