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David McElroy

An Alien Sent to Observe the Human Race

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What if the best you can offer to someone will never be enough?

By David McElroy · July 28, 2020

The conversation was making me uncomfortable. I knew what it felt like to be in her position — and I hurt for her, because I knew what she must be going through.

“I’ll give you the moon,” she had said earnestly. “Just give me another chance. Give me time to improve myself. I can be whatever you want.”

This was Sunday evening at dinner. She’s a young woman who I dated for a few months several years ago. Things had ended badly when I broke up with her. She had gotten angry and said some ugly things — and then she called a couple of days later to apologize.

We hadn’t spoken since then, but she recently reached out to ask if we could talk. Just talk, she had said. It didn’t have to be anything more.

Sunday was the third time I’d seen her. I’m not entirely sure why I agreed to it. Part of it was empathy, but part of it was self-interest born of fear. I’ve felt so alone lately that part of me wondered whether I had made a mistake to reject her.

Maybe it would be better to have a partner who really wanted me, even if I didn’t want her. Maybe that would be better than being alone. I agreed to see her.

At first, it had been nice to see her. Despite how awkwardly things had ended several years ago, we were comfortable that first time nearly two weeks ago. Things were relaxed. I had enjoyed it.

In my heart, I knew it wasn’t anything that could go anywhere. I was honest enough with myself to know that what felt good was merely having my ego stroked. I had felt so alone and so unwanted — at least by anyone I wanted — that it felt wonderful to have a woman treat me as though I was special.

The ego satisfaction was enough for the first meeting to be pleasant. She hadn’t changed in the last few years, but my bruised ego enjoyed the attention so much that I left that first meeting feeling good.

When we met the second time a few days later, the ego-fueled glow was already gone. She was still happy and bubbly, but I knew that I was fooling myself to even investigate this. Nothing could possibly come of it.

She’s a good person. She has a good heart. She’s attractive. She has other good qualities.

But she’s not a good match for me. She never will be. It’s not about any of her choices. She simply doesn’t have some mysterious something which interests me. I found myself bored as she talked. I felt guilty, but I couldn’t help it. This felt just like the long weeks I spent with her a few years ago.

I agreed to see her a third time — this past Sunday — because I wanted to make sure things ended on a better note than they did before. But I went into the date knowing why we were here. And she seemed to know that this was where something was decided, too.

She made her case just like a good salesperson. She told me that she knew there were things that had bothered me about her. She knew I hadn’t liked her very rural accent. She knew I wished she knew more about a broader array of topics. She knew I wished she had read more and learned more than she had learned in her one year of college. I hadn’t told her those things, but she was right.

She told me she wanted to go back to college. She told me that she wanted to be more like me. She was ready to promise anything, because she knew she could make me happy. And that’s when she promised me the moon.

Things ended far more amicably this time. She wasn’t angry with me. She hugged me as we left. I felt better than I had at the end the previous time.

In the two days since then, I keep thinking about her and I keep thinking about the earnest seriousness with which she promised me the moon and whatever else I wanted. I have to admit that I still feel a bit guilty — even though I shouldn’t — because I struggle when I can’t give people what they want.

I know that being with the wrong person is the only thing worse than being alone. I know that I would’ve been very unhappy with her. I also know that would have eventually made her unhappy, whether she realizes it now or not.

But beyond this particular woman, it’s left me pondering a longer-term issue. What if you simply can’t ever be what another person wants, even if that person wants you?

When I love someone, I tend to look at it as though there has to be some way I could win this woman. There has to be something I could do, something I could say, something I could become — something that would make her see the possibilities that I see for us.

There has to be some way that I can win her love. There has to be some way that I can convince her to choose me.

But with this woman I’ve recently seen, there was absolutely nothing she could do. She simply wasn’t who I needed. There was no way for her to change that. No matter how hard she tried to make herself into the person I wanted, that would never be who she was.

Even beyond my feelings of guilt, I have real empathy for her. I know what it feels like. There might be worse feelings than not being wanted by the object of your love, but I’m not sure what that would be.

And that leaves me full of fear that the best I can be might never be enough to win the love I need. Maybe I can never been enough — in some way that I can’t control.

I’m not sorry I met her again. It was nice to end on a better note, even though I doubt I’ll ever see her again. Mostly, I’m glad I saw her because of what it allowed me to clarify in my own mind.

I have been unhappy enough — and lonely enough — lately that I’ve really wondered whether it would be better to just have any decent partner than to be alone. I knew better, but feeling lonely does something so painful to your soul that it can start warping your thinking.

Seeing her put that idea to rest.

I don’t want to be alone, but being miserable and alone is better than being miserable and tied to someone you don’t love. That’s a version of hell on Earth that seems even worse than the unhappiness with which I’m living now.

So for that, I thank this woman, even though she’s not for me.

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It was five years ago tonight when Lucy first rode It was five years ago tonight when Lucy first rode in the car with me. She was on her way to her “forever home” with me, but she didn’t know that, so she was terrified that night. It was a much happier and braver girl who took a ride in the car tonight so we could go through a drive-through window and order a hamburger for her — to celebrate five years with me. She had a great time. If she could remember five years ago tonight, she would be proud of how far she’s come, too. #dog #dogs #dogstagram #dogsofinstagram #cute #cutedog #pets #petstagram #petsofinstagram #instadog #ilovedogs #birmingham #alabama
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Briefly

It was five years ago tonight when Lucy first rode in the car with me. She was on her way to her “forever home” with me that night, but she didn’t know it, so she was terrified. It was a much happier and braver girl who took a ride in the car tonight so we could go through a drive-through window and order a hamburger for her — to celebrate five years with me. She had a great time. If she could remember five years ago tonight, she would be proud of how far she’s come, too. If you’d like to know more about Lucy’s journey from scared dog to brave queen of the household, here’s something I wrote after her first year with me. I’m hoping this girl will have many more happy years with me.

I’ve never been attracted to skinny women. There’s nothing wrong with someone who’s naturally thin, but it’s never been my preference. What has shocked me, though, is the judgment I’ve heard from women all through my life — about themselves and others — about who’s “fat.” I concluded long ago that most women in our culture have been brainwashed to believe that skinny is attractive — and that anything other than skinny is ugly. I first assumed that I was the oddball — for preferring women with bigger and heavier bodies — but I’m coming to the conclusion that most men naturally feel this way to one extent or another. I just ran across new research by a couple of Northwestern University psychology professors that shows that women seriously overestimate how much a straight man will be attracted to a skinny woman. In a perfect world, we would all be at a healthy weight, but when it comes to attractiveness, too heavy is more attractive than skinny. At least to me — and to a lot of men, too.

Years ago, I heard a question that seemed very insightful at the time. You’ve probably heard it, too. What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? The question is intended to help you uncover things you really want to do, but which you’re afraid to try — for fear of failure. In an interview today, I heard the great marketing guru Seth Godin give a different point of view. He said the better question is to ask what you would do even if you knew it would fail. That struck me as far more insightful than the original version. We ought to be doing what we know is right, not what will maximize our success or praise from others. There are some battles that are worth fighting even if you believe you’re doomed to failure. Those battles are often for love or important ideas or our children. Some things are simply worth fighting for — and the truth is that you might win anyway. Do the right thing. Take the chance.

The more I understand about myself, about human nature and about the nature of reality, the more I realize I’m a radical by the standards of both Modernism and Postmodernism. Seeing the things which I’m stumbling toward makes me an enemy of many of the core ideas upon which contemporary culture is built. It exposes the culture as a monstrous lie — like a dangerous infection that’s slowly destroying what human were created to be. My “inner observer” has always known that truth was found in the ideas of the Enlightenment, but I’m slowly finding words to explain what has merely been instinct until now. The Enlightenment was humanity’s great leap forward, but shallow and arrogant thinkers for the next two centuries threw away the fruits of that achievement. We can’t go forward as a species until we go back to correct this intellectual and spiritual error — and part of that is acknowledging that our collective attempts to do away with our Creator will always fail.

I’ve come to believe that some of us — including me — aren’t very good at knowing how to be happy. I don’t mean that in the sense that happy talk and positive thinking should be able to make us happy regardless of the circumstances. I mean that some of us had so much experience with being unhappy when we were young that we were trained to be unhappy — and that being happy is an unconsciously uncomfortable thing. When I look at times in my past when I should have been happy, it rarely lasted. I believe now that I found reasons to be unhappy — and caused real problems for myself — because being comfortable and happy felt so foreign to my programming. If I’m right, this means that some of us have to do more than just change our circumstances. It means we have to learn how to accept the happiness that we unconsciously fear we don’t deserve.

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