There Is No Such Thing As Mr. Right (Thank Goodness!)

We spend so much time and energy searching. Looking for this man who will somehow be everything we’ve hoped for, who will slide seamlessly into the complicated puzzle of our lives, who will be the perfect, flawless, dream-guy we’ve been unconsciously wishing for since we were little girls.

It’s beautiful, isn’t it?

To imagine a soul somewhere in the world, wandering around, looking for us? To think that one day we’ll have a fairytale encounter in a coffee shop, at a street corner, in the seat of an airplane and somehow spark a love so big and beautiful it was meant to be all along?

I think we all wish for that, even though we know it’s pretty unrealistic.

I asked a guy friend his perspective on love once. And he said something along the lines of, “love is all around us,” implying that love isn’t something you search for, but something you find.

It was beautiful, but that wasn’t quite what I was thinking. When he asked me when I thought I’d fall in love again, I gave him an imagined, romantic story of bumping into my future love on the street. Something about making eye contact and exchanging numbers and the thoughts of one another burning holes in the back of our minds until we saw each other again. An unexplainable connection. The man I’d been searching for suddenly becoming a reality.

My friend thought I was crazy.
And he might be right.

As much as we try to imagine this ideal scenario, ideal guy, ideal relationship, there really isn’t.

There isn’t a perfect love, perfect man because love is imperfect. Because love is flawed and complicated and thank God for that. Because we’re human.

There isn’t a perfect guy. But this is a good thing. Because our lives are built on imperfections. It is our flaws and quirks that make us unique, that define who we are, that shape the decisions we make and the life we create for ourselves.

Thank goodness there’s no Mr. Right. Because we’re not Miss Rights ourselves.

We have our own baggage, our own disappointments, our own struggles. And even if we aren’t dragging them behind us, they still have defined who we’ve become.

We all come from different places. Imperfect places.

And we can’t expect to find a shiny, wonderful Ken-doll type of guy when we aren’t plastic, unrealistically-shaped-and-contoured Barbies.

And who would want to be that anyways?

Who would want the type of significant other, the type of relationship that was so ideal it could fit into a little box and be put on a shelf with thousands of others? Booorrrrringggg.

So there’s no Mr. Right. Who cares?

When it comes to love, I want real.

I want a guy who isn’t always going to follow the rules because I’m not the type to color in the lines of love. I want a guy who isn’t afraid to mess up, to be silly, to make mistakes and love me a little too much.

I want a guy who isn’t the one I’ve dreamed about, but the real, complicated, beautiful man who’s even better.

And I want to be the girl, the imperfect girl that matches that crazy kind of love in our own kind of fairytale, or own happily ever after.

One that’s messy. One that’s real.
 

Marisa Donnelly is a poet and author of the book, Somewhere on a Highway, available here.