WANTING A SOMEONE

I have spoken to three women in the past few weeks who say "I would just love to find a man to be with me."
The truth is that they only want this person to be there whenTHEY want him.
My dear friend Alan is in the same plight. He wants a woman to love. But he wants her on HIS terms; quiet when he is reading, hungry when he wants dinner, there when he wants to go to a concert or a play.
I sometimes think that people who say they want a relationship have their heads in a cloud of unreality. You cannot want a partner until you have found someone who means so much to you that your needs are his (or hers).
My friend Nancy said, "I would love one person to be with all the time, but when I think of what it would involve, I am not sure I want to pay the price."
And the longer you are alone, the higher that price. Independent people make their own decisions. They decide automatically what time to get up, retire, eat dinner, when to entertain themselves, when to entertain others. When they want companionship, they pick up the telephone.
How would it feel to suddenly not have the power to make the smallest decision...when to take a shower...when to take a walk...when to have it quiet...when to dance...depend on another's whim?
I have often written that I missed out on a huge segment of the human experience because I am single and childless but when I see these people fooling themselves into imagining a partner who would be no more than a puppet they could have when they were lonesome or their feet were cold but that this same partner would fade into the woodowork, be out of the house, busy in the office ONLY when he/she was in the way...
This is not a real desire. This is the fantasy movies and books tell us can be real.
My darling friend Bob says love is when you want to be in the same room with the other just because she is there.
I have felt that way often but (and this is the key) not with the same person for any length of time.
Perhaps I have missed what it is to be human in many ways but on the other hand perhaps I have had more of an opportunity to BECOME the fullest kind of human I can be because no one else's needs have blocked mine.
It's all in how you look at it.
Or is it?