To My Future Spouse

In one of my anxiety-driven googles this morning, I stumbled across To My Future Spouse, a tumblr where people post anonymous messages to their potential future partners. I've been thinking a lot about how much I hate forcing social interaction that I'm not comfortable with, and where I am with my life, and honestly I think I'm doing okay. I'm trying to be open to things, but I'm genuinely pretty happy where I am right now. And it's going to get better.

TMFS will edit this for his blog, but in the meantime, this is what I concluded, and I wrote in with this:

To my future husband,

You might not actually be my husband. You might end up being a permanent companion. You might even end up being a woman, although deep down, when I imagine you, you're always a man.

You're always faceless, too, because I don't know who you are yet.

I don't know where I'm going to find you. I don't think I'll find you here in DC. Maybe I'll find you when I start my new classes, or when I finally get my shit together in however many years I want to take to get my shit together and move to New York where all my best friends are. And I may be young, but at 22 I already know you will be a quality person and I'm not going to meet you at bar, or a club, or a dance party. I get no satisfaction from that kind of interaction, anyway, so I don't bother.

I'm not even all that desperate to find you. I will admit, though, that I am neurotic and more comfortable with familiarity, and that getting me to warm up to you completely is like walking on eggshells. I believe that all the "you've got to leave your comfort zone" stuff everyone keeps trying to convince me about is bullshit. I'm not merely being picky - I'm being safe. Because when we find each other, it should be safe, and natural, and easy. If anything, you're going to walk into my comfort zone instead of me leaving mine. And that's how I know that I'm not just sitting around waiting for you, because I truly believe that there will be a moment when I'm not expecting it where you'll just blindside me. I'm sociable, but not wholly social, and I don't need a lot of stimulation as much I just like to go out and know that I was with people for most of my day, and I probably won't ever actively start dating as a hobby.

If you've read this far, it means you're still interested. Maybe you feel the same way - i hope you do. More than anything right now I'm enamored with the idea of you, but the idea of the time leading up to it frightens me. Don't take that to mean I'm non-comittal! I'm far from non-comittal. But I have next to no experience with dating in a traditional context, and even less experience with intimacy. When you walk into my life you will be so perfectly natural to me that allowing myself to be vulnerable with you won't feel like something I'm doing out of an obligation not to miss out on something that's supposed to be critical to adult development. You may be my first, and that will be amazing.

Sometimes I get down on myself and try to force myself to go out and find you, but then I'm just disappointed. I believe in fate. Nothing's ever told me that the future of my happiness RIGHT NOW depends on forcing myself out there.

I do believe that you are out there. I do believe that we will cross paths accidentally when neither of us is looking. I want to believe I can be open to an opportunity to find you without forcing anything I don't believe in. I don't believe that I am any less of a successful, independent, stable young woman just because I live with my parents and enjoy spending time at home. I want to be with you because I'll still enjoy spending time at home - wherever home is - with you, just being.

My life is pretty full right now. It could be fuller, and one day it will be. I'm in no hurry. When I find you, everything else we do won't matter, because we'll have each other to come home to and, naturally, we'll just...fill each other.

Find me. I'm always here.

E.