What do you really Want?

Did it matter that I so often wondered whether these money things mattered? How could I be so shallow again, overlooking all the positives and wishing for a man who had more money? Had I come so far and become so happy only to be stalled by that old conundrum: love or money? I’d had money without enough love; now love with too little money, which had been so hard to find.  Now with my brain insistently whispering Love and Money I feared ending up with nothing but myself.

Dee wasn’t much help when I asked her for advice.

“You got your independence! Now you have a man who loves you.  What else do you want, woman? You wanted a relationship.  Now take the good with the bad.” But wasn’t that over-simplifying it a bit?

“Why am I not happy?”

“Why don’t you write down the ten most important values in your life, Cherie?”

I did and there it was in the top five: financial stability right next to emotional stability and love.  Once I had it in front of me in writing, I knew I had to deal with finances sooner rather than later.

In one of our longer phone conversations, my friend Annie asked me, “What do you really want?”

An overpowering question in its simplicity.  Most people think they know what they want, but did I? And how would I know when I had it? Was what I wanted realistic? Or was I a person who once she had a good or even great man, would then pick him apart because he was not perfect?

Alec’s love and commitment to me dispersed my doubts for another few weeks.  His affirmations like, I am hurting when you are not well and I want to comfort you reflected his feelings for me.  He never spoke of fucking, for him it was forever making love.  How could I cheapen this love that we both felt with these other mercenary thoughts that kept creeping in?

“The sex is so wonderful because it feels right,” Alec said.  “It’s all in the head, and it feels so right.”

There you go − I realized that’s where it went wrong with Oliver.  It didn’t feel right.