To see how I’ve changed over time, notice which women I’ve fallen for

By David McElroy · December 19, 2018

When I got married at 24, I assumed it would be my only marriage. Don’t most people believe that about themselves?

I came across this photo in an old album tonight and it felt as though it was from another lifetime. But that’s me up there next to the lovely woman in the white dress. That’s my best man, Larry, to my right. That’s her best friend, Monique, on her left. That’s Rev. Leroy Anthony officiating. That’s his wife, Martha, at the organ on the right. That’s my father and his second wife on the right side of the second pew.

And that’s the woman who I married back then. In the interest of her privacy, I’m not going to be much more specific or show her face. There’s nothing to hide, but I just see no reason to drag her face into my musings tonight.

I still think very highly of Melissa. As far as I know, she still thinks highly of me. (She once told me that she would be happy to be a character witness for me with a future romantic partner if I needed one.) But she is a stranger to me now. She remarried quickly after we divorced and she has a wonderful husband and a beautiful little boy. I’m happy for her.

But when I look back on her — and on all the women I’ve dated or fallen in love with along the way — it occurs to me tonight that they tell a story about where I’ve been and what I’m becoming.

The first time I fell in love, I was a freshman in college. She was someone I had had a crush on back in junior high school. I had gotten over her eventually, of course, but then we were thrown together as college freshmen. We fell in love, dated three years and almost got married.

I haven’t talked to Gail in many, many years, but nothing ever changed my opinion of her character or worth. I still think very highly of her, just as I do Melissa.

But as I sit here tonight and think about them — and other women along the way — I see a pattern. I realize that the person I am today never would have been attracted to them. And I don’t think they would have been attracted to the person I am today.

I can’t quite explain that, but I wish I could. It’s not a slight to them. Not in the least. I’ve just changed in radical ways. The person I was at the time thought they were perfect candidates for me. The person I am today is attracted to someone far, far different.

If I made a list of the women who have really mattered to me — who I’ve fallen in love with — there wouldn’t be that many of them. But if I arranged them in order and you knew everything about them, you would see some patterns.

The women I was attracted to back then were more conservative. Not politically, but maybe socially. Or maybe more “traditional” is a better choice of words. They were more the sort of woman who might be cast to play the role of an old-fashioned wife of the stereotypical sort from my childhood years. This is not a bad thing, but I find that the women I’ve been attracted to more recently are much, much stronger women, at least in outward ways.

This is tough to explain, because it might come across as though I’m saying Melissa was someone who was passive or unambitious, but that would be mistaken. She has a Ph.D. and is a researcher and professor at a university. She’s fantastic at what she does. But there’s some essential difference in stance and presentation between her and the woman I would want today.

I’ve always wanted a partner in marriage, but I think I saw that role in a more traditional way at one time. I don’t mean as someone to keep “barefoot and pregnant,” of course, but something essential has changed in how I see my wife’s role.

I suppose I’m trying to say that I once saw my wife’s role as secondary to my own, whereas I now see someone who is an equal partner in the eyes of the world.

I think I once wanted a wife whose intelligence and beauty and charm would reflect well on me. The difference now is that I want a woman whose intelligence and beauty and charm reflect perfectly on her. I don’t want someone who can be an adoring woman in the shadows. Yes, I want her adoration. (I need that.) But whereas I might have once seen me as the one getting the glory — as a wife watched and supported me from the shadows — I now want a wife who stands in the spotlight for the glory with me.

Here’s something I don’t like admitting. I think I would have been put off — all those years ago — by the kind of woman who seems like my kind of woman today. Maybe I’m wrong, but when I look at the most recent woman I fell in love with, it was someone whose accomplishments made me burst with pride for her. I wanted her to be a star in her own right — and I wanted her just as much for her star power and ability to achieve as I wanted her for her beauty and charm and personality.

If I met someone today who was just like the women who I fell in love with when I was young, I think I would like them, but I can’t see me falling in love with them.

If I met someone back then just like the sort of woman I fall for today, I don’t see me falling in love with her. I suspect I would find her fascinating and even somewhat dangerous, but I would have seen her as too different from me.

I have changed radically over the years — and I’m seeing tonight just how much what I want has changed.

When we get married, we promise to love someone forever. That’s the romantic goal. It’s been the standard that society has pushed us toward through both culture and religion. For some people, that works and I wouldn’t suggest they should change it. I’m just certain that many of us change rapidly — and we soon discover that we’re no longer anything like the person we married.

I’m not going to get sidetracked on whether this is a bad thing or not. At one point, I thought divorce was terrible, but my views are far more complicated and nuanced today. I’ll leave it at that.

I just know I’ve changed. When I see who I was at 24 and I married Melissa, I simply don’t know that man anymore. I don’t know her anymore. For her sake, I’m glad she isn’t married to me anymore. I’m simply not the man she thought I was — and I like the person I am today far better.

I still think very highly of Gail and Melissa. I still think highly of the other women I’ve dated and had serious relationships with. But it’s noteworthy that the only one I would choose to marry today is the most recent one — not any from the past.

Something about me changed in radical ways. I like those changes. And those changes in me changed who I wanted.

If you could see and meet the woman I want — this star prototype, so to speak — I assure you that you would fall in love with her. I can’t take my eyes off her face in my mind. I wish I could tell her that.

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There was a time when I was idealistic enough to believe that if a writer expressed his thoughts clearly and simply enough, any bright and honest person would understand his point. I know better now. We all bring so many unconscious assumptions to the things we read that we often see what we expect to see instead of what the writer intended. This is incredibly frustrating to me as a writer, but I’m trying more and more to just say what I need to say — as clearly as I know how — and then ignore the inevitable responses which show that others perceived something which was not intended. I have to write for those who “get” where I’m coming from, not for those who see my words through personal filters that change my meaning. I hope my intentions are clear to you and I hope what I write can be useful to you, but if not, maybe my work just isn’t right for you. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

I found out this evening that someone I casually knew killed himself last Wednesday. I didn’t know him well — and I never found him personable — but he had started work a couple of months ago at a restaurant where I go. He was a 26-year-old who struck me as a confused and unhappy person, but I didn’t think much about it since he stayed to himself and resisted my efforts to chat with him. It turns out that he had a history of depression and had a lot of gender confusion. He seemed very androgynous to me and I learned today that he presented himself as female in some situations. He was rejected by a romantic interest last week, so he went to the woods and killed himself. His body wasn’t found for three days. It’s tragic how miserable people around us can be and how we so rarely know the truth about things they struggle with.

I’ve been with people for most of this day, but I feel lonely tonight. I’ve had things on my mind for the last few days that I feel the strong need to talk about. I need someone to share my thoughts with — someone who’s interested in ideas and how they affect us. Someone who gets excited to discover new things and can find joy in seeing new ways those things might change our lives. I feel lonely tonight because I painfully remember what it feels like to have that — and I’m craving that sort of connection. I miss having someone I can call and say, “I’ve been reading something and it’s sparked some thoughts I want to share with you.” Those sorts of conversations have lasted for hours for me in the past — or for thousands of words if it’s an exchange of mail — and it feels wrong that there is nobody who wants to hear such things from me tonight. I used to think being lonely was about being alone, but I understand now it’s a longing for one particular person. The loneliest place to be when you need one person is in a crowd composed of people who cannot be who you need.

I don’t agree with everything the late Neil Postman wrote, but I would argue that no other recent scholar gives coherent structure to the last few hundred years in the way his books do. I’m currently re-reading his book, “Technopoly,” and I’m comforted to have a scholar give structure and definitions to things which I’ve observed and barely understood. I was enough of a technophile when I first read this book that I bristled at much of what it said. I didn’t want him to be right and it was easier to dismiss him as a Luddite. But as I see technology continue to enable an information glut which is changing society for the worse, I find comfort in his explanations for how we got here. I don’t yet know the solutions, but I finally understand the problems more clearly. I suspect that much of what we need to make life more meaningful can be found in things we accidentally threw away in the past to make room for technologies. I strongly urge you to read the book and think about its implications.

I’d like to write a modern version of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” — a more cynical one — with a realistic ending for today’s audience. In this new version, the little boy points out on social media that the emperor is naked but nobody listens to him. Instead, everybody keeps posting grander and grander praise for the emperor’s non-existent clothes. The cognitive dissonance makes the people unable to hear the child who tells them the truth, because they’re getting social media praise — likes and so forth — for their lies. The confused child eventually feels so defeated that he shuts up and walks away. He’s so hurt and disappointed by this that he withdraws from the world and spends years in therapy, trying to figure out whether the rest of the world is crazy or if he’s the crazy one. Ever since I was a child, I wanted to be that little boy, but few want to hear the truth today. Either I’m crazy or else our culture has gone insane.

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