For most of my life, I'd have sworn the answer to that question was marriage and family. For some portion of my life that was probably true; but it's been decades since that time, and I only just realized it today.
My life plan in all its incarnations has centered around being married with a family. As a young girl, I dreamed of ten or twelve children, and picked out their names; as an early teenager I moderated my family size somewhat, but I still thought my greatest gift to the world would be my amazing, Christian children. I knew that as a young woman I had made many choices contrary to pursuit of this goal, but I assumed that I was being tempted away from what I truly wanted.
It's dangerous to take life lessons from the movies, but a line in "The Wedding Date" has always stuck with me: "Every woman has the love life she really wants." The point of the sentiment (and the movie) is that you choose the kind of relationships you have and the way you want to react to them; if you choose to hang onto destructive ones, it is because you've decided that is the kind of life you are most comfortable with. So I figured my series of terrible relationship decisions was about some underlying belief that I was unlovable, or a deep-seated fear that no one would love me forever and so I'd rather pick relationships I knew were going to end, or some other such thing. The real answer requires far less psychobabble.
I do want marriage and kids, and to a degree my insistence that I treasured these things was genuine. But what I failed to acknowledge is that the more important goal for me, going back some 20 years, is this: I want to prove that I am irresistably desirable to every man I meet, regardless of his race, age, business relationship, partner status or other obstacles. If all men don't want we and don't at some point yield to that desire in ways small or large (preferably large), my true life goal remains naggingly unfulfilled.
Of course, the trouble with that goal is that it's fairly incompatible with my marriage (not to mention those of most other people around me); I can't exactly focus on being a suitable life partner while pursuing the attentions of every man I come into contact with. And so I prioritize: if I have to pick an objective, go with the one that I hold most dear.
The end result is that I do have exactly the love life I've chosen. I have a magic number so high that I've lost count and forgotten some of the associated individuals. I have married men pining for me. But because my goal is unachievable - I mean, let's face it, I'm no supermodel - I am constantly unsatisfied. Not, as I thought, because I don't have my dream family; nor, as I also thought, because my lust is insatiable. My disappointment is simple, basic: I'm not able to do what I set out to do.
Which leaves me with a few questions: now that I've acknowledged my goal and the impossibility of getting there, can I give it up? Knowing is certainly half the battle, but what exactly is that other half? And if I were able to apply my zeal to the kind of relationships I say I want, could I still be successful?
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