mirrors have no faces


Ponderings from Lois Lane

I have a problem. I think I'm in love with a younger guy. Not a lot younger, but... okay, he's so naive, he just seems a lot younger. And he's a farmer! Probably wants nothing more out of life than cornfields and Sunday dinner. Not at all the kind of guy I ever envisioned myself with, but maybe that's the real problem. I've met the exciting, dangerous guy... the thrills don't last that long, believe me. I've also met "the perfect guy," - you know the one - the guy who wants all the same things out of life, who knows you instantly because you're practically the female version of himself. At first, everything you say is a delightful surprise to him, because it's exactly what he thinks himself.

Which is exactly the problem. There's a point at which such symmetry kills any hope for true love. What's the point of loving somebody because they're exactly like you? Isn't that just one body away from total self-involvement? How do you grow from that? How do you challenge each other? How do you really know who you are beyond yourself, if your partner in life is like a reflection of you?

When two mirrors face each other, each shows what the other shows, because that's all there is. I've found mirrors. I once thought I'd found the man I was supposed to be with for the rest of my life, because he was my match in every detail. What I didn't yet understand is that relationships don't work because two people match. A key won't turn in a lock if the lock is cut identically to the key - it must be its complement. There must be peaks and valleys that fit together - that’s how lives are knit to last.

If we both have the same high points and the same low points, then we collide at the highs and remain empty at the lows, and can therefore never fuse together. Never really join. Similarity to such a degree breeds superficiality, not intimacy. It's easy to fall for somebody who likes and wants and believes all of the same things that you do. It's also easy to put the soft side of two strips of Velcro together. The problem is, that both the relationship and the Velcro strips are just as easy to pull apart.

If the person I fall in love with requires no effort to love, no personal assessments to make when I think of myself spending my life with him, then neither of us has earned eternity together. Love is a commitment. A commitment is something that takes up time or energy - an obligation, requiring devotion, dedication - both of which are actions, and both take work. Someday, I want to be able to look at my husband and know that neither of us is who we were when we met. Sound weird? Sure. People are always talking about retaining their individuality, maintaining a sense of self. Whatever.

That works if we're clones of one another in the first place, but if we never had to put any work into seeing eye-to-eye, I think we'd stay stagnant. We'd never really grow up. We might grow old together, but we would have spent our years trying to keep our teeth sharp while gnawing on bananas. We'd need a little abrasiveness to stay vital. We'd need to take turns being the whetstone. We'd need differences. I hope to look back over my life and the man I spent it with and be able to say that we both had rough spots and that we smoothed each other out. That we became better people for having been together.

Velcro has the right idea. Hooks and loops. Empty spaces that need filling, and tenacious hooks that need some place to fill. Roughness and softness. Opposites. But at the core, they're made from the same thing, both rooted in the same tape. They just balance each other out, and because of that, they stick together.

Similarity to a degree is necessary for a base of attraction, but a mirror image is not what keeps a union strong. The only relevant application of mirrors in the idea of relationships is in the way human biology mirrors the necessity of complements. Man and woman - the most basic illustration of how complements fit together, and a pure allegory of the importance of it. Reproduction - two cells, one made to fit inside the other, each carrying only half of the program required to create a new life. That's how the progression of life is designed. At every stage, a life needs its complement.

And I think mine is Clark Kent.


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