What do you want?

Somebody asked me in the middle of the night last night, while I was sleeping: "What do you want?"

It's a real blessing to have another person interested enough in you to ask that, isn't it?

I thought about the answer while I watched the sunrise this morning. What do I want? WHAT DO I WANT?

And I listened to my usual "manifest what you want" video 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQqdr2BCSyg

and I thought more about what I want, and watched a video Naheed Nenshi shared about the questions to ask to be a good leader. 

https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/16/05/good-questions?fbclid=IwAR12cCZocmAUQmfBDaJT9pyFQht2ZS9S5sTM4gCFfdSDeFEU9_UaM8xRAQc

And I read an article from Pema Chodron about holding your seat in a storm.

https://www.lionsroar.com/holding-your-seat-when-the-going-gets-rough/

And I realize that the main thing I want right now, and have quite a lot of it but I always want more, is thoughtful people. People who ask questions and think of others. People who struggle to be better people, partly for those around them, but also because being impeccable and positive with your word is something you want to know you did your best with if you get time to think about at the end.

"The most straightforward advice on how to discover your true nature is this, says Pema Chödrön: practice not causing harm to anyone—neither yourself nor others—and every day, do what you can to help."

I am so grateful to know to be one of those people and to keep trying to do better. And I really cherish the people in my life who take the time to be interested in what I want too. It's amazing.

And to take that to the dating realm, when this man asked me this question late last night: What do you want?

At the beginning of our relationship, the answer was easy: time with you.

Then: more time with you.

After he had kissed me: more kisses, please.

But as even the little complications of two working adults getting time together unfolds, as it surely does in dating these days, a fresh answer became more clear, and more important: 

MUTUAL RESPECT.

Mutual respect and curiosity. 

Curiosity meaning, you're also interested in listening to me, not just in having me listen to you.

A curious and very old-fashioned thing has happened in this province where I am now: many people say that male-female relationships got accidentally stuck in 1950. Of course there are people who do not live this way, who have moved into the 2000s and beyond and innovate and have the internet and send their kids to do maximum cool new things they the parents have never tried. And the parents are doing interesting cool adventures too. Life isn't static. It isn't stuck.

But the men I am now meeting in my 40s on the dating market are naturally often the product of failed relationships, which often started like this: Men earn the money, women stay home. They marry young and they have kids and they live the best they can and sometimes there isn't a lot of time for stopping and thinking or questioning assumptions.

My son and I were very upset when he was in grade 10(in 2019) to encounter parents of his intelligent female classmates who actively discouraged those females from succeeding (e.g. "you shouldn't be spending so much time studying I wish you would get out with your friends more"). There was a percentage of parents who discouraged their kids from seizing the ample and incredible advantages Nova Scotia offers to students who are willing to try. Of course, there was also the forward thinking program my kid was in and his amazing group of peers, who are all doing interesting curious quirky things with their summers and are mostly either heading on adventures or off to university next year. 

Heh, in irony... my son seems to have hooked up with a partner young. It's lovely and enhancing though and I think they do think about their gender roles... I hope they do.

Anyway... I am not sure this is turning into a valuable article. I feel like the ramble has gone too politically incorrect. What I was trying to get to is that I think the man who asked me this question had

 the following kind of marriage, the kind where the man and the woman had to get their laughter and respect and sharing from their buddies. And when the $ or the obedience goes absent, there's nothing to hang it together.

Sometimes people try to stick this one together better by adding kids, and then both people might get their needs for laughter and respect met by the kids a bit.

I was raised understanding that this idea existed. It was probably even held up to me as an ideal. I wanted it, but I didn't get it, probably because I don't have a passively obedient bone in my body. I am always questioning, why are we doing it this way? Can we do it better? I'm obedient to intelligent rules, but I missed the lineup when they were handing out passive acceptance of unecessarily nonideal stuff (accepting what I can't change, I have learned).

This one looks messier and more complicated but it has a lot more glue and interest. People can still get laughter and respect and adventure outside, but with stronger roots, they have better wings for their careers, their learning, their risk-taking, their other relationships... of course, it's a lot scarier because you can't just assume your woman is staying home waiting for you to give her money and listen to whatever you want to say and treat her thoughtlessly. 

But I think it's way more fun in the end, this kind. This is the kind I want.