GROWING UP JASON ~ Moving On (Patreon)

In the previous chapter of this retrospective, I talked about why I never dated other women. I’ll start this chapter with a—hopefully—succinct recap of that.

My thoughts about dating are that it should be meaningful and part of the process of finding someone to spend the rest of your life with. Whenever I met someone, she never turned out to live up to the memory of what I had with Ailana.

My thought was that if you know you’re not going to marry someone, dating just for the sake of dating is an empty waste of time. In the years I lived in Memphis—2020 to 2025—I met a few women whom I considered asking out on a date.

If you really wanted to push the issue, I did go to a play with a girl named Taylor who I knew from church. It was an “I have two free tickets…” thing. Neither of us would have thought it was romantic at all. I don’t even recall what the play was.

So, always hovering in my thoughts was a picture of how things had been with Ailana. Granted, it was high school and college—hardly representative of adult life—but I had pulled certain qualities from it that I clung to as minimum expectations for a wife.

And if that sounds like I was being critical and picky, it’s because I was. Marriage is serious to me.

Ailana had been perfect. Up to a point…

One day in the summer of 2022, my job placed me in the office of a psychologist, Dr. Matthews, whose next client had canceled. He was really friendly and chatty.

“So, are you married?” he asked.

“I’m not.”

“Special someone?”

“No, I’m solidly single.”

“Well, don’t be in a hurry,” he said. “Looking back, you’ll realize twenty-five is still pretty young. My wife and I didn’t meet until I was out of grad school.”

Over the next few months, other chats followed until one day he asked again about any changes to my relationship status.

I decided to be more open with my answer.

The rest of this chapter is exclusive to Patreon.

I told him that Ailana and I had dated throughout high school and college, but things had gone off the rails when she modeled nude. I explained that I just couldn’t reconcile how I felt about that.

“Is she still doing it?” he asked.

“It was just those three times.”

“So, it was just something she did for a short season?”

“Yeah, but… I don’t know…”

He picked up the drug information sheet I’d left on his desk and pretended to look at it, then he said, “You know, Jason. I think maybe you’re missing something.”

I was surprised—I felt a little spark of hope. “What’s that?”

“That modeling… That’s what she did. Not who she is…”

I thought about that, somewhat stunned, but I couldn’t think of any reply.

He expanded his thoughts. “That was just something she did in that season. It isn’t who she was before, and it isn’t necessarily who she is now. And none of us are, right now, the people we’ll be in years to come. Maybe you need to stop focusing on a few months and look at the years instead.”

I don’t remember anything else we talked about that day.

I thought about his words for a long time later, and will reflect on them more fully in the next chapter.

Be your best you!

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