Knowing Her.... (30 Posts Before the I Dos)

         


          There is this question that girls and women often ask when they start getting serious in a relationship: ‘Is he the one?’ They probably ask this more than ten times in their lives (I’d say around twenty times on average, hehe).

            Men ask it too. Except maybe on a lesser frequency, like maybe an average of two or three times. Which does not imply that women have a frivolous nature… far from it. It’s one of those ‘women are from venus’ kind of things.

            In the average lifetime of an average Joe, he meets lots of women. He fantasizes about 30% of them (a fact of life), flirts with a few, and gets serious with probably two or three of them. For the rest, it’s probably infatuation or a phase (sorry to say but for men who enter into lots of relationships in life, he is probably only seriously considering a lifelong commitment in just two or three at the max).

            That’s why men will only say the words ‘I love you’ sparingly.

            Because they know instinctively that serious relationships are rare and is a gem that is hard to come by…. Or rather that women who would evoke long term commitments from a man are a dime a dozen.

            So how do you know if the woman in front of you is the one?

            I guess that is the question that everyone is dying to ask. For women asking, there are a lot of magazine articles in Cosmopolitan or other similar publications that will tell you biased and more often frivolous answers to the question. We men laugh when we read them, by the way. Hehe

            But what about for men? How do we know?

            Well… it’s no secret really.

            We just know.

            It’s as simple and as complicated as that. In the beginning of a relationship, we are definitely attracted by a woman’s physical charm (men who deny it are hypocrites). Let me clarify, however, that when I say physical charm, it’s not the idealized beauty that women’s magazines and women’s minds conjure. Yeah, we fantasize about beautiful women but we men know that those kinds of ‘beauty’ are unrealistic and naïve aspirations at best. Physical charm is different and it varies from woman to woman. Each woman has a unique set of it. Some men get attracted, some are repulsed and others merely pass it by.

           Because the beauty of a woman is unique to her. She has a charm that is distinctively hers. It is not a universal measured statistic that can be reduced to numbers. Which women don’t get really…

            So let’s just leave it at that.

            At first you have an attraction. 90% of the time, physical (the number could be higher). It is the door opener of sorts. Then you get to meet (dates) and you have those conversations that build up on the initial attraction. It’s the conversations that make or break it. The more you get to know each other verbally and go through the motions of the dating game, men get that moment in which a light bulb goes off in their mind. Actually, it either goes on or shuts down.

            Knowing she’s the one is one of the ‘wow’ moments in life. Indescribable and utterly mind boggling. It’s one of the few moments of life that cannot be explained by logical explanations.

            It just happens. And men know when it happens.

            And for me?

            It happened in a couch as we just sat together waiting for the model she was applying make-up on and who I was to photograph, finish her thing in front of the mirror. In between awkward silences, sheepish smiles and small talk, the ‘light bulb’ opened up.

           And I just knew right then and there that there is no other woman I want to spend the rest of my life with… other than the one right beside me.

          Women will probably ask me to elaborate more (as she often does) how I really came to know that she is the one.

         Short and truthful answer?

          I can’t.

         That’s the truth. I can enumerate the things I like about her but are those the reasons why I know?

          No, they just come with her. It’s the whole of her, what I like and what I don’t like. Her mannerisms and her ticks and tocks. That and much, much more…

          Because this is the truth that all men know: we don’t fall for a woman because of what she brings to the table. We don’t fall in love because the woman is beautiful, humble, nice, naughty or lovable. We fall in love because of her – the whole package of who she is and if it is real, it doesn’t matter if she is deficient in some other aspect.

          Because when we find the one as I did, we know… we just know that she is the one…

          And out of all the odds, we found each other.