The price of love?

This week I read in the paper that a third of single people would rather have money than love. Maybe to an extent people can have more control over how much they earn than whether they can find someone to fall in love with and them with us, but to decide that money is preferable seems a bit sad.

I guess getting badly burnt in a relationship could make you decide that it isn’t worth the risk. But although my last relationship did not end as I might have hoped, it doesn’t make me want to never take the risk again. I was in the relationship because there were some really fantastic things about it and I don’t want to let the bad stuff outweigh the potential to find someone who is as significant to me again.

The actual finding someone else isn’t quite so straightforward though. Aspiration is fine but the reality is not always quite so obtainable! Maybe people are also perhaps deciding that it is just too hard to find someone. I went on a few dates last year but nothing of any real significance came out of them and two of the people that there might have been a possibility with met someone else. Whilst not ideal, I have no particular issue with staying friends with people in such circumstances, I am not one to hold a grudge, but it is never great to have the whole “you’re a great friend but actually I prefer someone else to you” type conversation. I sometimes feel that I am doomed to always be the friend and never anything more.

I really rather miss all those things that are part of a relationship. Some of those are the more obvious bits, but I don’t just mean the good things. I am not looking for the perfect person. In fact if I was going out with someone who had never had to deal with some difficult stuff I think I would just be plain scared. I do actually have a friend who, by her own admission, has had little of any difficulty to deal with in her life. When her then boyfriend told her that he’d had a few indiscretions in his past, she was speechless and split up with him the next day. When she told me about it I said to her that I couldn’t quite understand why they had split up over it as it was in the past and he had been honest enough to tell her. But some people can’t necessarily cope with other people’s ‘failure’ (not the right word, but a more appropriate one evades me).

It’s not that I have a particular criteria that I am looking for but at times I have felt that maybe “breathing” should be about as picky as I should get. But then if I still don’t have any success I am possibly beyond hope. You’ll be pleased to hear that crossing that one criteria off the list would be a step too far, however desperate times get.

But would I ever reach the point where I just decided to chuck in the towel and decide that money was the answer? Money is not a great motivator in my life. Whilst money can buy a lot of things, I can’t imagine it ever being a substitute for a relationship and all that goes with it. Perhaps I am just old fashioned about such things.