Dear Future Husband,
I thought of you last night. I don’t know who you are, what you look like, where you live but I know you’re out there somewhere. Maybe under a rock, but you’re out there. Maybe you’re on a mission to save the children of the world, maybe you’re just sitting on your couch strategizing for the upcoming football season and carefully picking your fantasy football teams, maybe you’re still learning about who you are and what you want, maybe you’re thinking about me too, maybe you’re healing from that terrible human being who broke your heart, maybe we’re right in front of each other but you haven’t figured out I'm the right woman for you as yet. It’s cool, no worries. I'm just here, carrying on, building foundations that I hope to share with you one day. I'm waiting patiently, but am I?
I was advised to write a letter to my future husband. I thought it was the most ridiculous thing. Obviously, I'm not sharing the entire letter. When he comes along, I’ll definitely share it, but for now, you get my random thoughts.
A surprising thing happened as I wrote this 5 page letter. I learned more about me, I dug deep about my expectations for myself as a wife, as a mother and what my expectations were for him and our life. I wrote about my dreams I had for OUR future.. At this age, we’ve both lived a lot of life — I wondered how we’d fit the puzzle pieces together.
But here’s the thing- this isn’t really about a husband, this exercise I was given was to remind me of my own dreams I've always had. For the past 8 years I've shoved the dreams I had for my life, for a family, for marriage so deep down that I forgot what I wanted. I convinced myself that I didn’t need any of that, that it was all a fantasy, that this didn’t exist for me, that I wasn’t worthy of having the things I see everyone else have, until one day, someone came along who reminded me how to live again. He has no clue the influence he’s had on my life in such a short time but I will forever be grateful for him.
I have everything I could ask for in life. I am beyond lucky and so grateful. I've built a life most people dream of and struggle to achieve. I've worked hard to get here and I know that no matter what, life will turn out ok for my son and I. I technically don’t need anyone but I realized I want someone to share all of it with. My life is perfect in every sense, but I'm missing the husband/life partner and second child. HE reminded me that what my heart wanted was a complete family. He showed me how my external actions and words were not matching my internal desires. So I sat down last night and I completed my exercise, got on the phone with my cousin and had a conversation about him that lead to an epiphany: I was so caught up in my attraction and the desire for him to want me that I forgot the gift he gave me and as much as I've said I wanted him to be happy that I didn’t realize I felt that at a soul level. Maybe it’s because I've never truly felt this deep need to see another human being (outside of my son) happy before him. He’s easy no matter how difficult the topic and I have no idea why I’m so completely exposed and open when it comes to him.
“That’s the realest thing I’ve ever heard you say. I felt it in my core when you said it. You wanting someone else to be happy even if it’s not with you and letting it go with your full heart. Sounds to me like you are unaware that you just might have found the right one, at the wrong time, twice, and your soul recognizes the possibility of a deep love you’re too scared to admit to but you also can’t make him want you the way you want him.”
That was an excerpt from the conversation between my cousin and I. An exercise writing a letter to my future husband lead me to a realization that god might have dropped an angel to deliver a message that it was time to stop running from the dream, to stop suppressing it and to head instead, right into it.
We spend so much of our lives worrying about the future, dwelling on the past and we forget that in this very moment, there are people in front of us willing to love us with all of our broken pieces. We form ideas of who we think is ideal for us, we paint pictures of lives we want but we don’t realize those aren’t the lives we need. We become so caught up in the lust, crush, desire — that we forget to look at the person looking back at us with all of the care and compassion our hearts are begging for.
No, you can’t make yourself love someone that you don’t, you can’t make yourself become attracted to someone that you’re not into, but you can open your heart up a little, let the walls come down some, put a little more effort in and give someone a chance because what you don’t see is that this could potentially be your future husband/wife. This could possibly be the person you’ve waited your whole life for.
An exercise in writing a letter to my future husband lead to an epiphany that I have to let someone go find his happiness because when you truly care for someone — all you want is for them to be happy because he is deserving of that. He hasn’t chosen you — even though you have continued to try to get him to. At some point you have to admit to yourself that your intentions were indeed leading to expectations and he means more than either. And if he has a chance at happiness, let him take it with whoever he chooses. So you have to let go of those desires, that wish for more, stay in the friend zone and care for him deeply while cheering him on from the sidelines. Life is too short to wait anymore. Maybe one day I get to tell this story to my future husband about the man that reminded me to stay hopeful we’d find each other.
