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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Here’s the latest of my ridiculous parody shorts. It crossed my mind Tuesday to wonder what a slick and fast-talking car dealer might do right now to try to turn the high price of gasoline to his advantage. So I conceived of a fat and lovable character who tried to sell cars that don’t use any fuel — and then I started wondering if it would be funnier if all the characters were felines. Designing the King Cashpaw character took about four hours, but the rest took only another four hours, so this was a relatively quick piece that virtually wrote itself. I know it’s almost impossible for these parody videos to find a larger audience, but at least they amuse me — and there are 19 of them on my YouTube page now. The first few were very limited, but they’re getting more complex.

The Republican Party is dead. It still exists in name, of course, but it’s nothing but a shell. All that’s left are idiots and stooges and con men of the MAGA party. When Donald Trump is gone — which won’t be long — those populist idiots and pragmatic fools will have no one to follow. Democrats will thrive. They will take more power than ever and they will push the federal government further to the radical far left than ever. When that happens, don’t just blame Trump if you’re a conservative. Blame every person who has claimed to be a conservative and has given up on principles, character and everything else that Republicans once claimed to stand for. As someone who worked as a GOP political consultant for many years, this is disgusting and disturbing to me. Those who have enabled Trump to have almost unchecked power are going to be shocked when they see what they will unleash in the long run. It’s been plain all along what this narcissistic con man is. It’s your fault that you chose to pretend not to see what he really is.

We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

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.

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