You Can't Have It All?

A few weeks ago I visited my cousin Holly in Toronto, and came across the diagram above that she had hanging on her fridge. I took a picture to save the image, but I don't even think that was necessary, because I haven't been able to get this out of my head since I saw it.
The theory is that you just can't find a man who has all 3 of these qualities going for him: handsome, awesome and single, you can only find a man with 2 of these qualities.
I laughed, thinking how cute, how true, in an offhand manner.
But then I kept thinking about it. And thinking about how true it actually is.
And about how, in the last month, I have met 3 different guys who fall into each of the category combinations.
I met someone who is single and handsome, someone who is single and awesome, and someone who is handsome and awesome.
Crap.
The single and handsome guy I met just isn't awesome. He's younger than me, lives at home, and all of our conversations are painfully awkward. It just isn't going to happen.
The single and awesome guy I met is a lot of fun, but I can't say that I am particularly attracted to him. It doesn't help that his personal life is a bit of a mess right now, and I am definitely avoiding all of the external drama that I can these days!
The handsome and awesome man I met was that type of encounter where you think to yourself "Is every good man taken?" Meeting him was the first time since the Ex that I felt physically and mentally attracted to someone. Sometimes life just isn't fair!
It's times like these where you start to think about settling. At least, the thought crosses your mind. Who wants to be alone or lonely, right? No one does, and I think that is how a lot of us end up in relationships where we are complacent beings, who stay comforted inside our fears and insecurities.
I've had my faith shaken in the world of relationships over time. As I've gotten older, I've started to see the different cracks that can appear in relationships, and I've realized just how much work relationships can be throughout the years. It's becoming clearer to me why people end up divorcing so "easily"*. I think when you try to make a relationship work you have to sacrifice a bit of yourself to do so, and you have to put your own needs aside. When you already do that as a parent, I think that having to do that as a partner is just too demanding of a task. On the other hand, I think we are also very susceptible to the adage "the grass is always greener on the other side". Of course a new relationship isn't going to have the same struggles and hardships and frustrations that an old one does. But it will eventually. Sometimes we decide to live in the moment for all the wrong reasons!
Back to the idea of settling, I want to reiterate that I am just not there yet. I don't want to settle and I don't think that I should feel like I have to. Of course I get scared that I will end up alone, but I am more scared that I will end up where I was: with someone, feeling alone.
It's probably silly to think, after all of the above observations and realizations, that I can actually believe that
"someday my prince will come", but I really and truly do. Maybe I'm a little naive and slightly crazy to feel that way, but, when it comes down to it, you have to have faith, right?
This post comes at the end of a night where, while I had a great time with friends, I felt a little sadness hanging over me. I feel better having written this out, and I hope that my blog readers are OK with the fact that I have been heading into off-topic territory throughout the course of this blog. More 101 Things updates are coming soon, I promise!
~
Until next time...

*Make no mistake, I definitely do not believe that divorce is ever easy. I think it is one of the hardest things you can go through. I read recently that when a child experiences the divorce of their parents, they actually feel the pain as if it were a death in their family (the death of their family, really). I can completely relate to this, as I think this is why my own parents' divorce was so difficult. I hate that I remember that we found out about the divorce on Canada Day. It's hard to believe that this year will be 18 years. :(