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I've been unavailable as of late. On every front. Hell, I've even avoided the blog for what feels like forever.

I've been hiding out in my room.

Not going out, and the dating thing...dropped like a bad pickup line. Why? No clue. I just don't have the motivation to do much of anything. Okay, I take that back. I do have the motivation to do a few things, but not much. However, one of the problems with avoiding just about everyone is that I can't avoid myself.

And let me tell you this, being with myself is not all fun and games. Because the problem with spending time with myself, is that I'm also spending time with my mind, and as we all know, an idle mind is like idle hands, only worse. Which is how I came to jump onto the subject of marriage and me.

I've begun to realize that issues or not, I'm not exactly pleased with myself as a person, and I'm one of those, can't love anyone until I love me first people. Thus, dating and all variations thereof, had been moved to the back burner. Tonight, however, offered what I think was a step in the right direction.

I had dinner with one of my favorite couples, NotDippy and NotANinja where I kept reiterating this one statement:

"I'm only doing this marriage thing once."

Which is cause for even more intense introspection. What I mean is that in this day and age of instant gratification, is it possible to find that one person, so that you can only do the 'marriage thing' once?

I'm picky. And I've never hidden that fact, I have a list and standards that is a mile long, but outside of all that I think that in a relationship, you need to be able to work things out, no matter what the list says. The marriage statistics of today prove that either people aren't working it out, or an entire generation of Generation Xers have looked at the Baby Boomers and turned collective noses up at the very idea of staying married or rather staying married to one person for longer than 5 years. And don't give me that whole "times were different" spiel. I'm not denying that, but I am arguing that treating marriage like a game of Truth or Dare isn't necessarily ideal either. And then I look deeper within and try to figure out why I'm so keyed into marriage right now. I don't have a biological clock (and if I do, I've probably thrown it out of whack after my post on children), I'm not actively looking for a partner and I've got facts staring me in the face, that tell me that marriage isn't a sure thing after all.

And yet, I want to do it anyway.

So, talking with NotDippy and NotaNinja was helpful in discovering that yes things go screwy, yes, you sometimes want to walk away, and yes things (issues, facial ticks, pet peeves) can overwhelm, but they're not absolutes and can be worked out for the better of both people in the relationship. Key word here being 'work.' So while I work on me in the hopes of finding my special someone I wish everyone else well in their own search.

So maybe introspection is a good thing. Soul searching for a soul mate...withdrawal into the self to draw them to you...?