It’s too much pressure.

The One must be all things: everything I’ve ever dreamed of in one perfect package. The One must be handsome and kind and deep and interesting and just funny enough at the right moments.

I’m okay with you being imperfect. I don’t mind if you say awkward things at the wrong time. I love your beautiful flaws, and am learning to love the ones that drive me crazy. And I’m okay with you not being everything I’ve ever dreamed of, because that means you might end up being much, much more.

The One must meet all of my needs at once. We must connect on every level and be each others’ everything. The One represents my other half. The One’s job is to complete me.

I don’t need you to complete me. I’ve finally learned how to complete myself, how to meet my own needs. It’s taken me years to figure it out—to even recognize that it’s my job to take care of me. I am whole just as I am, and I don’t need you to fill in the gaps. I want to share life with you, not as two halves making a whole, but as two wholes creating more together.

The One is fated, was chosen for me by the universe. The One is destined, selected by forces far bigger than me.

I don’t want you to be an inevitability, chosen for me without my say. I want to choose you, every day. I want to wake up in the morning and decide all over again that you are the person I want to be with. Because after I decide, I appreciate you more. You didn’t arrive in my life fully formed and just right for me. You are my conscious choice, and because I want you here, I love you in my life even more.

The One is easy. Being with the One is effortless and makes sense.

I don’t want it to be easy. I want to work and stumble and talk and figure things out with you. I want to face the hard parts and roll around in the messy stuff. And come out the other side with you, both of us mussed and bruised and laughing and grateful to still be together.

The One understands me completely, to the very depths of my soul. The One can see all the way into and knows me, because we are one in the same.

I don’t need you to understand me completely. I don’t fully understand myself yet. And I want you to be different than me, so that we can learn from one another. I’m okay with confusing you, because when you’re confused, I have the opportunity to learn something, too. In teaching you about me, I learn about myself. And I want to learn you, too.

The One is happily ever after. It’s a ride off into the sunset. Nothing to worry about. The work is done. The One is the end.

I don’t want a happily ever after ending with you. I want to ride the roller coaster of life, experience the rise and fall, the good times and the bad. I don’t want the story to end just as it’s beginning. I want to write chapter after chapter with you, to turn each new page and let the twists and turns surprise us.

I don’t need you to be the One. I just want you to be the one I’m with. Because together, we can be so much more.

Author: Melissa Scott

Editor: Catherine Monkman

Image: simpleinsomnia/Flickr