I can’t find the balance between expecting too much and too little

By David McElroy · April 18, 2022

Demand too much and you may end up empty-handed,
Demand too little and regret is your reward
— Pat Terry, “Truth is Like a Sword,” 1984

I regret that I’ve wasted the last seven years waiting for a phone call that was never going to come.

I told myself that I wasn’t waiting for her. I tried to make myself believe that. I dated a little, here and there, but my heart wasn’t in it. I thought I wanted her. I believed she would be back. She couldn’t have meant all that she said to me otherwise. She wouldn’t have urged, “Don’t give up on me,” if she wasn’t going to finally make things right. So I waited.

The weeks turned into months. The months turned into years. Somehow, I wasted seven years.

Everything changed about a month ago. The details don’t matter. She wrote one day to tell me what I had been waiting to hear. I was ecstatic. Three days later, she wrote back to say she had changed her mind. And, suddenly, everything was clear.

This woman was never going to be what I had needed her to be. Nothing about her could possibly be worth what I had lived with. A switch suddenly flipped inside my heart. Everything was over.

I was finally free. I could see her for what she really is.

I met a woman last week who shared her story with me. She’s a remarkable woman. Smart, beautiful, charming. She wanted to be married and have children, but she’s in her late 40s now and she’s never married. Why? Because she had been waiting for one man ever since she was in college.

She fell in love with him when she was in college and they planned to get married. But family complications drove them apart. I’m not going to be more specific or even talk about the things that happened in the years to come, simply because I wouldn’t want to accidentally identify her.

The woman dated other men, but she always believed that he was the right one for her. He eventually married. Even then, she believed that he was the right one for her — that they were meant to be together. I know from experience that it’s impossible to really give anyone else a chance when you still believe that.

Then the man finally decided to divorce the woman he had married. He was interested in renewing his old love — the one that this woman had really been waiting for, believing for, all those years.

And then the man died unexpectedly.

The woman still believes they were “meant to be together.” In her narrative, there are excuses for the things he did to hurt her over time. It was other’s people’s influence. It wasn’t who he really was. As she told me these things, I didn’t argue or object — because I had twisted myself for too long to excuse someone’s actions, too.

I understand how this woman must feel. I wasted only seven years. She wasted decades of her life. She has to believe that “it was meant to be, but other people ruined it,” because the only alternatives are either being angry with him or angry with herself.

As I said, the woman who told me this story is amazing. I’m sure there were many men along the way who would have loved to make a life and family with her. But she invested the bulk of her life into a man who’s now dead — and she can’t have those years back.

It’s never clear to me how I ought to decide when to hold onto someone I want and when to move on. It’s never clear to me whether I should expect all that I truly want — and hold out for everything — or if I should accept the best I can get and be satisfied with it.

Even after wasting seven years, I’m still not sure. Should I have given up seven years ago? Five years ago? What’s reasonable?

Should I have accepted one of the women who have wanted me in the last few years but who weren’t what I really wanted? I still don’t know. I’m not sure there’s an objectively correct answer. I know that what I did was painful and left me with nothing. But I wonder if I would have had a different kind of “nothing” today if I’d accepted a partner who wasn’t what I wanted.

I’m not angry with the woman on whom I waited for the last seven years. I’m not bitter toward her. I’m the one who made the decision to wait and to trust her. I’m responsible for my own decisions, not her. I’ve always made it a practice not to disparage the women I’ve loved in the past — and I’m not going to start now.

It’s a story that will never have closure. It simply ended. I didn’t have anything to say to her when it was over. And even if I did say anything, I would just wish her the best in the life she’s chosen for herself. I would tell her that I hope someone can help her cut through the psychological toxicity in which she’s chosen to live. And that I hope someone will finally make her happy.

But that “someone” won’t be me.

Note: After I posted this, I realized which song was the source for a line I borrowed at the end of this piece. Although it’s not a direct quote, I’m clearly using a line (and a sentiment) from John Paul White’s haunting song, “The Once and Future Queen.” The link is for a live version that White recorded for Canada’s CBC. I don’t mind when I unintentionally “channel” songs I’ve loved, but it’s unusual for me not to realize what I’m doing when I’m writing a piece.

Share on Social Networks

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.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

Related Posts