“I could see myself getting married one day.”
When she said this it literally shocked me.
Was this the same girl I met a little under a year before?
The one enjoying a romantic friendship with me?
When Cool Girl and I met, a major part of what attracted her was she knew I would never want to marry her. She had seen how the marriages of her close family had gone, and she wanted nothing to do with that “marriage thing.”
But this was several months later now.
After experiencing OUR relationship.
After experiencing “falling in love.”
Being with someone who genuinely loved her.
Another thing she said attracted her to me was, “You’re definitely different.” She herself was a quirky girl, and she really connected to the same thing in me apparently.
But clearly she was also a monogamy girl.
“I’ve got you!” she said, when I told her she could see others.
Though she found our relationship “quite nice?”
I guess she didn’t agree it was because we did things differently.
Three years after her marriage “statement,” the tell tale signs were definitely present. I wrote in my journal, “I wonder if she’ll end up falling for this guy” when she said, “We even think alike!” about her new work trainee.
A bit later she even said, “He’s definitely different.”
Hmmm.
Where have I heard that before?
When she told me her new assistant was doing well?
I said, “I hope your boss lets you keep him on then.”
She replied, “It’s unclear what the future holds for him and me.”
In retrospect of course, that last statement now looks pretty ominous. Knowing her as I do, I suspect she was dropping me a subtle double meaning.
But I recognized none of this at the time.
She seemed to still want OUR relationship.
Being a monogamy girl like she was?
Wouldn’t she let me know, if something like this was brewing?
But she was never good at having those “difficult” conversations. Per her usual eventually she just ghosted me, and a few short months later popped up MARRIED to Mr. “Interesting.”
And so her grand experiment begins.
Is Kel wrong?
Or is he right about monogamy?
Will she beat the odds stacked so heavily against her?
Or will she join the high percentage ranks of the unhappily married?
What do you think? Does this story suggest to you I’m wrong and that Romantic Friendships don’t work out any better, or is it just that your monogamy programming is so powerful that eventually you still succumb to it anyway?
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