How Perfect on Paper isn't Always what you Need

As a young girl in this society you grow up dreaming of who your dream boy will be. What will he look like, will he give you that butterfly feeling you see in all the preteen movies. We literally have games and books surrounding this idea.

When I was little I had this Barbie spin book where you would push the middle air compressed button and it would spin to whether "my dream boy" would have blue or brown eyes, be tall or short. It even broke down to what kind of car he would drive. I remember laughing with my friends over wondering if I liked blonde hair blue eyed guys, a concept I was far too young to really understand. We would then take those qualities in someone and use them to fill out the names in our MASH game. As we got older we filled the "who we will marry" spaces in MASH with our crushes at school. We spent so much time focusing on who we would marry, what they would look like and how would we feel.

When my time came to fall in love after a not so great ease into it, it was everything and nothing I expected it to be.

I met this boy in college, we had applied for the same job to be a transfer mentor for transfer students at my school. We both got the job and met shortly after that in training. The first day of training I sat next to him and told him to tell me something about himself. He was around 5 8" with dusty brown disheveled thin hair that perfectly canvassed his face. He had a green three fake button top on and was insulting his laptop for not working. I later learned he was a computer science major so he spent a good amount of time yelling at technology.

Was it love at first sight .... No! We were in that training together for somewhere around 6 weeks together, every Friday for an hour with a few socials between. Honestly, I remember him being nice, but there was no instantaneous spark between us. Apparently at one of the socials he had asked to borrow Tupperware from me as an excuse to meet up at a separate time. However, I don't know if I was oblivious, his flirting sucked or I was still in the process of wrapping up my not so good first relationship, but I never noticed his attempts.

Nonetheless the night I did notice his interest in me was chalked up to a fairytale night of a younger self's dating expectations. He had messaged me about this Cinco De Mayo party that one of the other mentors was hosting at the Airbnb he was staying at. I had no idea about it because I was not a part of the snapchat group chat. He offered to pick me up that night as I quickly showered and assembled a Cinco De Mayo appropriate attire. This outfit included a long blow knee length tea cut skirt with an oversized Hawaiian shirt that I tucked into it.

We show up at the party to frozen meals and vodka, no chips and salsa in sight. With only a few people there, he had offered to go to the store and get some chips in salsa. He noted that he doesn't drink and neither did I at the time so I offered to go with him. When we arrived at the store there was a pop up fair in the parking lot of a JC Pennies. I mentioned how there was a Zipper and exclaimed we should go on it. He told me he had never been on one and then I told him he had to experience it. If you don't know what the zipper is, it is that ride you put yourself in that is essentially a spinning cage that goes around and around as you spin. I loved it, he screamed bloody murder the whole time. But at the time I noticed his willingness to experience something new with me, which is a quality I like in someone.

Don't get me wrong, I had always wanted to go on a fair on a date after watching Aqua Marine, but it was as magical as I had imagined. he was a good height for me and he had nice hair, two things that are a necessity for me in relationships. Fast forward because no one needs to here a chapter book on my relationship. We both liked each other, went on a few more dates, decided to date, and just like that we were dating. Only for me to leave for a 2 month trip to Europe two weeks later. But even then we learned a lot about each other. I wrote emails to him everyday explaining what I did that day and for documenting purposes. Finally after my trip he flew down to my hometown, met my parents and everything was a whirlwind from there.

He was everything I thought I wanted in my life.

I fell so in love with him, I was so in love with him even after a year of ending things. He was everything I believed I wanted and I wanted the everything with him. And probably jumped into the idea of marriage with him and the planning of the wedding before being engaged a little to much. But you live and you learn.

He fit in this story book that I had been writing since a little girl and I invested my entire self into that story. He was kind to me, he thought about me, he made me feel pretty, excepted me, cared about me and invested in me. He was short and cute with the best hands in hair possible, he told me about politics and history without making me feel dumb. He cared about social causes and was cynical but lit up a room with his smile and laughter. He was funny and for the first year he made me feel desired and wanted and that physical touch was something that he wanted too. Maybe I was naïve and the more I write about it at the crisp age of 25 the more naïve I feel, but at that time I was all in on the person I believed was perfect on paper.

But as I dated him, those hobbies he told me he loved so much didn't exist, his photography he cared about was never shown, all the books he said he loved to read were never read. him wanting to travel the world was minimalized into someday when we're old timing. His dreams of a house with a family and BBQ, became more of something he needed to feel accomplished than a dream to build together. Everything he told me about or showed me in a year and a half was everything I thought I wanted, everything that I thought was perfect or right.

But that wasn't case, at least not forever. During the pandemic, when we were living together at his parents house, what I thought I wanted, turned into something else, he turned into someone else, or I just started to realize who he was wasn't what I needed I guess.

Now this my experience, I was young, I was in love, and that image I had always pictured based off movies and friends of finding someone who would put up with me super glued into my expectations. But ultimately, it doesn't matter what they say their in to, or if you think they are so good on paper. It really only matters if your happy and if you enjoy being around them. Any other expectations in relationships are overated and built by the acceptance of others and society.

After that breakup it was hard because I lost who I thought was the love of my life. It was even harder because I didn't know what I wanted in someone anymore and I lost my identity through it. Before ending it I also struggled to let anyone know I was struggling, that because he was such a good guy, there must have been something wrong with me. But that was just it, he was everything I wanted in that time. He was everything I needed to learn about what I actually needed in someone as well as in myself.

That being perfect on paper may be a reason to start dating someone, but its not a reason to stay in something that your not not happy because of what they appear to be.

If you are in this position right now, I can tell you from my experience that perfect on paper person will not leave you easily. However, they will teach you the biggest lessons about yourself, about love and about what you really need in a relationship that goes beyond what sounds like the dream boy/person that looks good on paper. And most of all when you find what you need, heartbreak is always a possibility, but your opening yourself up to someone that can love you for what you actually need where you know what you need will ultimately give you what you want.