Sometimes we don’t really notice perfect match ’til it’s far too late

By David McElroy · May 9, 2019

I got a love letter of sorts tonight.

It was really just a Facebook message from a married woman who’s a friend, but it’s not what it sounds like. She wasn’t suggesting a secret tryst or anything of that sort. Instead, she was just lamenting that she didn’t pay more attention to me before she got married — to the wrong man.

I met Amanda online at least 15 years ago. We met in person a couple of times, but there was no real spark between us, so we never dated. We eventually became Facebook friends and I’ve watched as she moved through life — with career success and then marriage. She hadn’t reached out to me for many years.

But it turns out that she’s been watching me, even though I didn’t know it. And even though she has no intention of leaving her husband — and he doesn’t know she’s unhappy — she wanted me to know that she wishes she had noticed more about me before it was too late.

With her permission, I’m sharing her message here. There is no way that anybody would ever connect the two of us, so she’s not concerned that anybody might know she wrote this.

“I don’t mind if you share it,” she said when I asked her. “If it could help someone avoid what I’ve done to myself, it would be worth something to some girl.”

With very light editing for length and style — as well as to hide a few things about her identity — here is her message:

I’ve been debating for weeks whether to tell you this, but I decided it doesn’t really matter, so I might as well. Nobody really knows this, but I’ve been unhappy with my marriage from the beginning. My husband is a sweet guy and he has no idea how unhappy I am, so he doesn’t know I think we were a mistake. He hasn’t done anything wrong and I don’t plan to leave him, cause it would destroy him.

I knew since shortly after we married [eight years ago] that I wanted something different from what I chose, but I didn’t know what. In the last year, I’ve been noticing you in a different way than before and I realize someone like you is what I needed. You’re smart, funny, kind, introspective and caring in ways I didn’t know mattered until now. I knew you since even before I met [my husband], but I was young enough that my priorities were different. If I had known then what I know now, I would have come after you.

I don’t know if you would have been interested in me, but I see now that you have the qualities that matter to me. I guess I was too immature to understand my needs or who you are. I married someone all my friends love and my parents adore, but he doesn’t know the real me any better than he knows [my pet dog]. That makes me sad since he doesn’t seem interested in changing that.

Like I said, I’m not leaving [my husband] so don’t take this wrong. I just wanted to tell you how much I wish I had noticed what you really are and how different that is back when it might have made a difference. Whoever marries you is going to get a wonderful partner and father for her children. (I love how much you seem to get along with kids.) I hope you don’t mind me letting you know.

I have no idea whether Amanda and I might have been good as a couple. That’s not what I’m interested in right now.

I’m just fascinated by the realization that we often don’t know what we want or need when we’re young — and by the time we gain enough maturity to know better, it’s often too late.

I don’t know if it’s possible to live our lives any differently. I don’t know whether we can find maturity before we make our mistakes. In fact, I wonder whether it’s only through our mistakes that we gain the maturity to know what really matters.

The only thing I’m sure about is that the things which seem important before you marry the wrong person — or spend years in the wrong career or make a similarly difficult detour in life — seem very unimportant afterward.

When you finally figure out what matters in life, it might be too late.

Or maybe it’s never too late. The best time to do the right thing might have been 10 years ago, but the second best time might just be right now.

I appreciate Amanda for being vulnerable enough to share her thoughts tonight.

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I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

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