Emily

I need to write about Emily. Background first.

My first semester of high school I had to write a paper on my life in 2015. I didn’t know how public schooling worked yet so instead of writing a straight up “this is what I’ll be doing” sort of thing I wrote a will and testament, looking backwards on my life from a future perspective instead of from my current perspective. I predicted that I would be married, working on a PhD, and living in Heber with two kids. My wife’s name was Emily. The name didn’t come from anyone in particular, but ever since Emily has been a placeholder in my head for all the dreams of a woman I will end up with someday.

So when I think about the house I will live in, my house, it is context of Emily. When I tell a joke Emily always laughs. Good thing too because her’s is the only laughter I care about. Emily will appreciate who I am and understand my obsession with morality and heroes and nobility. She will love my God and together we will serve him. She will understand and support my interest in boy scouts although she may not come along. I will do strange quirky things for her and no one else will understand why she likes it but she will love them. She doesn’t have to climb mountains with me, but she will not begrudge the trips. She will even understand just why I climb mountains. She will love hole-in-the-wall taco stands and will understand Zion.

Now, there is a problem with lists such as these. They create a template of an ideal spouse. When you meet someone, a potential spouse, you take everything you know about them and stick it in a box. This happens in the first couple seconds. You label the box Sue, or Megan, or Carrie and you make that box of attributes and descriptions an entire person. As you learn more about them you add things to the box and define the dimensions a little better. Now say you meet another person who asks you if Joyce/Megan/Casey likes turtles. You have no idea but you look at the box, your perception of that person, and make a guess. The more time you spend with that person the more accurate your box is. Emily is a box. She is my box. I take that box and try to find someone who will fit in it. So I find the box I have labeled Cindy and see if my perception of her is roughly the same as Emily. This is called dating. If the box looks like a promising fit then I spend more time with her so my box for her can become more accurate. I may even adjust my Emily box a little to see if it improves the fit. This is courtship. When the real girl box and the Emily box become the same thing then you put a ring on it real quick and this is called marriage.

The problem is when you discover inconsistencies in box shapes. Emily isn’t a real person (yet), so her box has some vague dimensions to it. For example I have no idea how tall she is, what state she is from, what color she is or what languages she speaks. I don’t know her major or even if her name is Emily. So if the Debbie box has dimensions that fill out the vague spots in Emily then great, no problem. But what if Debbie doesn’t laugh at my jokes? Can I cut out that part of Emily?

This summer I spent a lot of time trying to fit a real box in my Emily box. There were a lot of things that didn’t fit snugly. But I really wanted the box to fit. Really bad. So I started testing which parts of Emily were flexible and which ones were not. I discovered that there were a lot of aspects of Emily that weren’t game enders. I was willing to work through a great deal of inconsistencies. But it turns out Emily isn’t the only box that has to be filled. Kayla/Brittany/Lindsey etc also has an ideal box labeled “spouse”. I have to fit in that box just as snugly as they have to fit in Emily’s. I discovered that I was willing to cut off all kinds of corners from my Emily box on the condition that she would also cut the corners off her Edward box (or whatever) so I could fit in it.

It didn’t work. Part of me is glad, I can stick my Emily box back together the way I like it, (until the next time I try to shove someone in there). But I also find myself with the blueprint for the modified Emily box. I could love that box too. I did love that box. But like all boxes it is just my perception of a girl, it isn’t necessarily the reality. So we will both move on to find some more cardboard and try again.

So why does this hurt? Well, we get very attached to our boxes. They are our dreams after all. I dream an awful lot. I spent a lot of time modifying my Emily box and created a new box that didn’t exist. I have to get rid of that dream now and go back to Emily, vague, indistinct Emily.

I don’t know how much I can or should modify Emily to fit someone real in there. But now I know a little bit more about what parts can fold out-of-the-way and which ones I should insist on. For example, if Nancy doesn’t laugh at my jokes I probably don’t fit in her box either. For us to both cut humor out of our dreams seems a bad idea.

Okay, I’ve probably said too much. May we all have clever engineering and thrift as we search out the right box.