Here is a dangerous myth that is perpetuated in many books and movies and magazine covers and celebrity stories: a person can complete you.
I don’t live inside Jerry Maguire, partly because I eat way more sandwiches in a week than Renee Zellwegger does all year, my husband could put Tom Cruise in his pocket, and I’ve never been trapped in an elevator with two deaf people signing their hearts out to each other.
But also because I know that a person can’t complete me.
I love love. LOVE LOVE. I want to be a romance novelist when I grow up. THAT’S how much I love love. It’s a wonderful, buzzing feeling. I saw a couple walking down the street the other day, and the (pregnant) woman stopped to try and tie a shoelace that had become undone, but the man put her hand out, bent down on one knee and tied it for her. In my mind he was a devoted spouse that couldn’t bear to see her struggle with the shoelace on the dirty sidewalk and did it for her. Happy, contended sigh.
Right?
Well, no. Because maybe they were brother and sister. Maybe they were actually strangers. Maybe it was just a gesture and they were talking about divorce and child custody. I was just projecting my own picture onto them, of what I wanted them to be to me. But reality is no fun, and they will forever remain the sweet couple, because ignorance is bliss.
But it’s not bliss. It’s a temporary reprieve from reality, and fantasy can only get you (me) so far. And love, even undying devotion, even tying your shoelaces in the middle of the dirty sidewalk type of love, can only get you so far. It’s all up to you (me). This is an extremely pragmatic and unromantic and stark view of reality, but it’s also the thing that for me, makes love better.
I’ve been having this problem with my escapist romance novels lately. They are just fantasies and I TOTALLY GET THAT. And yet they make me angry. They make me angry that the end of the story is always a play on “and then life was good because they were together.” I asked this last week on twitter, but the problem keeps niggling at my conscience, especially as someone who loves to read and write romance stories: are romance novels unfeminist?
The answer was a resounding NO, definitely not. The romance genre makes money for women, from women. A woman should be able to read whatever she wants, whenever she wants it, and that’s what feminism IS. There were a few “but it depends on the book,” because of course there are the (numerous) stupid heroines of the romance genre, and lo, they give a bad name to women, as if half the population could be represented by Bella Swan.
But. But. Maybe the question I should have asked was, “Are romance novels bad for love?” Because they give a false impression that the man/woman is going to fix anything. And if there is anything I have learned in being in the same relationship for fourteen years, it is that love can cause more problems than it can solve. I think we admit this more openly with children: Children are amazing additions to our lives that fill us with boundless joy and love and HELL IT SUCKS TO BE A PARENT. It’s the dichotomy: I want this, but it is not easy to want this. It makes me happy in the long term, but it doesn’t solve my problems. If I were without this child, I could do/be/act in a freer way. We get this, and then we make the sacrifice.
But…but romance novels make it seem like we’re walking around with half of our souls missing. Are we? Are we as women and men not complete without the other person, the other half? I had a big discussion with Gregg this weekend where I admitted that I was a weak idiot to do a lot of the things I did for him in the beginning of our relationship. I was rolling around, looking for my missing half, and when I found Gregg, I thought, ‘Aha! Life is better now!’ But I was 20 when we met. And it turned out that the feeling of finding my missing piece? It was temporary, and fleeting, and I mistook my feelings of love for Gregg as feelings of being complete.
And so I did things I shouldn’t have done: I moved to Seattle when I really didn’t want to, for him; I lived in apartments and towns I hated, for him; I worked around his schedule; for him. Because he was my missing piece!
And then when I started to feel like I was still incomplete, I thought, “It’s because we don’t have a child.” And then we had some miscarriages, and I had woes that I would never feel complete. But then I had a child, and another child, and some more miscarriages. I didn’t feel complete. I blamed this as not having the “right” number of children. I was still missing a piece of my family. We were incomplete. I was incomplete.
I don’t have that feeling so much any longer, even though I always imagined myself having three children, and we “only” have two. I don’t feel like we’re incomplete, though. I think if we were blessed enough to have another child, it would feel good, but it would also be a sacrifice, and I would feel as complete as I feel right now.
I don’t feel complete, exactly, but more like I have all my missing pieces now. They weren’t found lying around in other people, in Gregg and Keshi and Sachin, in friendships or families. They were actually lying right next to my feet, waiting for me to look down and see them, and lock them into place. They were my fears and my wants and my interests that I squashed out of fear of failure and ridicule and successes that I wasn’t ready to face. I feel like now I’ve seen them, but I don’t have the courage quite yet to put them into place, and to roll around feeling this way. I don’t know why, but that’s up to me and lots of therapy to find out why.
But at least I know this: it was me. It was me who projected that I could be complete only with other people. It is me taking pieces of escapism like romance novels and movies and shows and celebrity gossip and making them into realities. It was me purposefully ignoring the missing pieces of myself.
And if I think it’s very much up to me, and to you, to show the world that we’re people. We’re not puzzle pieces waiting to fit into other people’s lives. We’re whole framed pictures all on our own, and one day maybe we can be grouped together in a nice frame cluster in a DIY blogger’s photos, even if we’re damaged or alone, we’re still totally and completely whole, all on our own.
this is a beautiful piece.
it’s interesting, i went through almost the OPPOSITE of this. in my 20s, i actually *did* feel complete. or, if not complete, certainly not that the missing piece was going to be found in a man (or a woman). and i felt BROKEN for feeling that way. i felt like i must not understand what love felt like, or that something was wrong with me for not “needing” this other half of me, or most prominently, that i would be missing out on this wonderful feeling of clicking with someone and that “you just know!!” feeling people who DID find their missing piece got to feel.
we girls can find almost anything to feel insecure about. geez.
Wow – great post!
Girl, yes. YES! We must be the ones to complete ourselves, not our loved ones. I think of love as that something extra…and it was that something extra that came along after I assessed what was making me angry all the time (one of my old roommates–I moved), what was making me unhealthy (eating too much and never exercising–I ate more veg and less junk and started exercising for, like, the first time in my life), what was making me feel aimless (not writing–I started writing). I was whole before, but I was better (and less bitter) after.
The most attractive things about me to my boyfriend are my joie de vivre, the fact that I work hard at things (cooking, working, learning how to play games), my independence, and the general fullness of my life that I can share with him (but don’t always because sometimes I like being by myself). I would not have those things if I were not complete, with all my shit together.
I don’t think I would be able to really love someone if I were in pieces. I’ve known lots of young women and men who tried to do that and the relationships always seemed to be fraught.
I’m somewhere between you and Alice (comment #1)–but it doesn’t even matter, does it? what you said (I especially loved third-paragraph-from-end) is SO human, SO spot-on, so just TRUE and universal to humans. Thank you. I needed this today, although I think I could stand to read it every day
I like this. You know where I found my missing pieces? On the internet. I’m not saying all y’all Twitter ladies “completed me”, but you told me where the damn pieces were and how to pick them up.
I couldn’t agree more. Same with me.
I’ll be 50 in a few months, so I might be a bit older than many of your commenters. From my perspective, I’m not sure it would be entirely healthy if we ever felt truly complete. Feeling so complete might lead to a lack of self-reflection. I imagine that most people have episodes of reflection and evaluation at least once a decade, and this is what keeps us moving forward. We might feel fairly complete for certain periods, and then there comes some feeling of dissatisfaction, and it prompts us to take time to look back at what we accomplished, and forward to where we want to go. I like to think of life divided up into these sections, where being close to complete requires something quite different each time. I’m old for it, but I’ve been in the fog of parenting for the last 12 years. It’s beginning to lift, and I’m beginning to think about what I want to do next
This was extremely thought provoking and I must say right on the money. I enjoyed reading and related to every word. Excellent read. I am so glad that Already Pretty featured you so I could enjoy reading your blog
I love this so much.
Wow. So much honesty and truth and wisdom in this piece, I will need to digest it over some time. One thing that came to mind: my husband and I also met early on in life (23) before graduate school, children, moves, careers, etc. I only now feel, in my late 30s, like I have really come to know who I am and what I’m about. But you are right, it was not about him completing me, it was me having to grow up through those formative, personality shaping years, trying on jobs, attitudes, clothes, lifestyles, to find what is me. My ongoing image for us in our marriage is that of two vines — because we met so early, we have grown up together, shaping ourselves and our lives so that we are intertwined and shaped by each other, but each still our own plant. Does that makes sense?
Lord, yes. I feel like I clawed my way out of the insecure flood of my teens and twenties onto the solid ground of “I am enough”. Those words made me cry when I started therapy. Sometimes they still do. But I really believe them. Your writing about your process provokes a lot of thoughts/feelings in me about mine. I hope you take that as a compliment.
Thank you for this.
This one is a REAL goodie. I’m glad someone has come out and said that you don’t need other people. Hello, I’m Rooth and I’m a whole person. I may enjoy the company of other people but do I depend on them to be me? No. For some reason, that’s construed as a bad thing. Or a cold thing. I don’t know, I just think it’s my thing.
You’re amazing. This deserves a very long reply which I’ll do tomorrow on the plane.
This was beautiful, Shalini. I totally agree — with a little touch of “me”.
Some of us were MEANT to be mom’s. I remember when I broke up with my first real love, Mike, because I knew he was never going to marry me. I broke up because I KNEW I wanted children. Living without him was going to be really hard–but living without children–no way!
My other thought was about how totally incomplete I felt when Wayne died. I didn’t marry Denny for that reason–I just fell head over teacups, but (eventhough I had 3 children and one was still a teenager) I felt like I had lost my reason to be. It took me a while to get over that. It is tough to be single–but then it’s tough to be married some times