"The" One.

My Facebook marital status has been "single" for over two years now. It seems almost impossible that it has been that long. But the months go by whether we will it or no and in that time I have given A LOT of thought to what I am looking for in "the one". Wakefulness was keeping me tossing and turning last night and I started to put all these little thoughts together and I wrote them down in my journal which is filled with much more juicy detail than I would ever dare put here but I wrote the following summation at last:

I will wait for someone who has armored himself with the strength and presence of a man. Who, underneath, is filled with tenderness, good humor, and love. And when the hard day is done I can look to and trust because his core is composed of the sort of honor that separates men from boys.

Those are really big shoes (preferably covering the feet of someone tall and handsome but I am really not as picky on that front). There are certain conversations I just am not willing to have with my future spouse. They are things I won't need to tell him because they are as intrinsic as the quiet comfort of a darkening horizon.

I don't expect that things will be perfect or even close but in the infinite wisdom of my best friend, "you don't have to compromise on being married to a grown up."

And I don't intend to...anymore. We accept the love we think we deserve. When I opened my heart to this one line, social media repost my choices became limited, sure, but the sort of love I am destined for became the kind capable of gripping the soul and spanning a lifetime. And my heart can't settle for anything less.