“I stopped looking for a Dream Girl, I just wanted one that wasn’t a nightmare.”
― Charles Bukowski
This sorta reminds me of many of my choices in life, and also I am wondering about the choice of my current love.
So, you know, I believe fairy tales are the most dangerous ideas circulating in society. But, alas, people communicate and understand in stories.
That being said, I believe that in love, we can experience immense beauty and connection. We are, in nature, to be sure when we are in the presence of our loves.
In any case, it has come to my attention a few times that my current love has said to me things similar to Mr. Charles, such as ” I just want someone who doesn’t abuse me.” Wellllll, that is not such a tall order. How do I find these people? I find them because of their past. Someone said that all our lives we walk through ourselves. we find what is familiar. So I have always found mates that have a history of being with unhealthy women. they seem happy when they find me because I am an upgrade in that I am only kinda crazy. Actually, I kid. I was unhealthy, terribly so, but I have health now.
So, I want to say, I don’t want to be the one that I settled for. I have settled for others in the past, thinking, “this person is so great, he doesn’t threaten to kill me”, or “this person is so great, he has only been to jail twice in his life!”, or “this person is sooo great, he has a job!”
So, I ask you, do you feel as if you have settled or been settled for in life? How do you respond to being in this situation?
© 2026 – SoulSequel
14 responses to “Have you ever settled or been settled for?”
Just because you “settle” doesn’t mean you can’t make the most of what you have settled for, as long as you understand you will take out, what you put in.
I’ll relate an analogy that I have personally experienced. We wanted to have a recreational property on a lake. When we started looking and anything that was desirable was out of our range to comfortably afford. We started looking for potential, instead of immediate gratification. We settled for a shithole on a nice piece of property.
The place we settled for is 21 years older and not one day goes by when we are there, that we are not doing something to improve the situation. We are getting very close to having the place we wanted all those years ago.
I think the same can be said of personal relationships. I’m not saying it is our responsibility to change someone to fit our expectations, but look at the bones of a person that will determine who they really are and what they have the potential to become…and further what the thing can become that is the combination of two halves becoming one.
When I was in my twenties, I wanted a Barbie doll wife like any young man with a constant boner. My wife was not a Barbie doll, but it was easy to see she cared. I saw the bones of a partner.
You may not believe what was such an influential element in me deciding she was the one. It was before we really started seriously dating. Maybe a week after we first met. It was my birthday. Not even sure how she knew. But I was over at a friend’s, who had introduced us. She brought out a birthday cake that she had made herself. It surprised me that someone who was close to a stranger would care that much. My own family rarely did anything beyond superficial words to provide anything real that meant anything and here was a person that did. The bones were there and now, literally 400,000 hours later I exist with my “Barbie” (not to be confused with Stinky Henry).
It’s the bones that matter.
@spitfire3dc My first chuckle of the morning. This was great reading. Nicely said.
@spitfire3dc that is a good story. I like that one. nice play on words with the bones. I would also suggest that in addition to your wife being a wonderful woman, your love language is either gifts or acts of service which triggered something in you which led to another thing, and another, and here you are all these years later happy. its a good story. I also agree that we create the world around us with the choices we make.
Is Charles freakin’ Bukowski your baseline? He’s yucky!
@luftballooneyegouge you don’t like him? I like him. I like all of his beautiful words. I am a pushover for men with pretty words. they make me feel.
@Scarlett
How do you get past the abusive nature from bukowski?
I started out my adult life by settling. I had to escape from an abusive parent. Stupidly, I was pregnant by a lead guitarist in a surf band — but, I got married to my high school boyfriend and he knew he was not my baby’s father. He wanted to take care of me. His mother broke that marriage up, just 20 minutes after we said our vows. That was a good thing, because 15 years after that, he decided to become a serial killer. After his mother kicked me out, yelling about going to that chapel and stopping the paperwork, I ran home crying. I did not know what to do. My marriage was over after only 20 minutes. My next door neighbor asked why I was crying. When I told him, he said that I need to get married before telling my Mom that I was pregnant. He offered to marry me and get me out of that house. He said that after my baby is born, he would help me until I could get a job and support my baby — then we would divorce. We married with a plan to divorce. I settled for that deal just to get out on my own. After the divorce, I was out on my own with two kids to support.
I settled for a womanizing executive of a large corporation. He was always skirt chasing. We divorced.
I decided to find the real father of my first son. He was an alcoholic, but he was the father of my first baby. He had two sons that were the splitting image of my sons —- so, I settled. I married an alcoholic and had a nightmare of a marriage. I found the mother of my two stepsons and helped her to get custody. Then, because my own sons were out on their own, I got a divorce.
I decided to marry the first love of my life who I had loved since I was a child. He had stayed close to my family. My brother was married to this guy’s sister. I knew what I was getting into because his first two wives would cry over coffee with me and complain about him. They celebrated with me when each of them divorced him. I always said that if he was my husband I wouldn’t complain. Sure, he was literally a clown, he smoked and drank beer, but he was a good man. I settled and made the most of it. It was a happy marriage and he always had me laughing and picking him up off the lawn and floor. He drank and I stayed sober to drive him home. Then he had a long illness and I took care of him until he died.
After that, I dated a long line of assholes and some never got to first base, or even through the first date. I walked out on all of them. The city was running out of assholes that I had not dated, yet. I finally gave up, ate pizza and shaved all the dyed blond hair off of my head. I was going to be single forever and never settle again.
Shaved bald and eating — gained weight. Got on some hokey chat forum — SoulPancake. My hair was growing back choppy and uneven. Just when I looked like Fat Fat The Bastard Wharf Rat, I met @EmeryPark. My Immortal Pirate was in my life, at last. Now, I think he is the one who settled.
I noticed that one of the reasons we get along so well is that we never start sentences with the words, “Why arn’t you _______?” , “Why don’t you ______?” , “Why can’t you ______?” Instead, we respect one another. It is not that we don’t have disagreements, we just don’t create a fight out of issues. We don’t need to raise our voices because we both know that the other one can hear and we can talk with normal tones. We are settling down in our old age. I couldn’t have found a better guy to settle down with. He is not a drinker, but can have an occasional beer. He doesn’t hit me. He is retired and enjoying life. He smokes, but I did not expect him to be perfect.
@ladybarbara immortal pirate is a good man, but he did not settle, and be careful telling him such. we tell people things enough times, they may start to believe us. it is not true tho, he didn’t settle. he got an extremely intelligent and creative woman. I think he doesn’t know what he has. In any case, I don’t believe some of the things you say sometimes, not the stories, more some of the other stuff. I think you are putting us on. I feel like you are smart, crazy smart, and I just dot believe some of the things you want people to believe.
@Scarlett I have spent so many years trying my best to have the kind of temperament and skills at getting along with some of life’s assholes that I can do it without thinking. I guess the biggest skill was the art of knowing that your partner knows how to do the day-to-day things that get us through life. Maybe they don’t do it the same way we would do it, but they get it done. I learned to let go of the command and fall in beside him as a partner. Move as a team and work as a team.
Much of what I do to get along is to follow someone elses lead. I learned that from being a professional maid and housekeeper. Every house is owned by your boss and they like their home to be in a specific order and for it to be cleaned the way they want it cleaned. No one liked to have to guess where you put their shoes away, so it is best to find out where to put their shoes and learn how they want their house to be. If I had 22 different houses on my client list, that is 22 different bosses that want their house cleaned a certain way —– and I had to learn 22 different ways to clean. So, it was with husbands. Each man wanted life and household ran in a certain manor. The trick was to find his way of living and march to that drummer. Then, I tweak it and teak it until my way of doing things has blended with his. He learns some of my ways and we have a mutual “way” that is ours.
Most all of what I tell is the truth. The stories don’t change because — with the truth, I don’t have to remember how I told it before. I just tell it the way it was. Well, I don’t elbow through the lines of people at McDonalds when it is the season of the McRib, but I have gotten McRib crazy in the past. Truth is, Immortal Pirate does not like McDonalds, and it is now something I have to live without. I miss McDonalds, KFC, Taco Bell, and my favorite pizza. It is one of the hardest things I have had to give up, just to make my life blend with his. The other thing I have to tolerate is what I can and cannot touch of his late wife’s belongings. Who knows? She has only been dead for 6 years and she may come back and want her purse and underwear, and her jewelry boxes better be where she left them. I sleep in a bedroom surrounded by the late wife’s stuffed animals. My own stuffed animals are tucked away in dark spots out of his sight. I love my own stuffed animals and pull them out of the dark hiding places just to enjoy them for a moment. Then hide them again ——- because the most important thing in life is to get along without arguments. Be a partner.
In 258000+ years, I have settled for a few times and been the partner settled for a few times.
The first one was the female Yeti I shared an ice cave with during the last major ice age. It was an interesting arrangement to say the least.
Jump ahead more than a few thousand years, and I had to settle for a young nomadic woman, the daughter of a Mongol chieftain. She wasn’t the prettiest flower in the garden, but she could cook Yak stew like nobodies business.
Much later, following the great plague that wiped out most of the eligible bachelorettes, I hooked up with a widow who had a whole passel of kids by more than one father…yeah, that relationship wasn’t long lived. I left her to seek my fortune at sea.
As a sea faring man and often times pirate I sewed my wild oats in more ports than memory may recall. So, if you are from anywhere in the Asian Pacific region, you just might have some of my genetics in your blood…
Now, skip ahead to what we can only call the modern era, I took a wife, fathered two wonderful children, and buried my late wife when she passed in 2011.
I met Lady Barbara Henry on Soul Pancake and we have been together ever since. Neither of us “settled for” the other, we just get along so well we’re like a comfortable pair of slippers…
@immortal_pirate it is good to get along. dysfunctional families are those that are emotionally reactive to each other. Sounds Like you are past that.
@Scarlett There is plenty of strife in the world already, I certainly don’t need any under my roof.
@immortal_pirate
Maybe it’s the mindset of “settling for” . . . that ultimately sabotages the relationship?
Fairy tales and fantasies have tremendous sway over us. We quite naturally tend to set forth these dreams, aspirations, expectations . . . that very seldom “come true” in exactly the way we envisioned.
So are we “settling” for “what is” . . . or just accepting that “what is”, isn’t going to re-order itself just because WE arrived on the scene.
When it comes to personal, and especially intimate relationships, we only have say over ourselves. The other is coming to us as “their own person”, with a past and quirks that can surface and surprise us years and even decades later. And even if we don’t think we are concealing anything, we can likewise surprise them with some aspect of us that we may have lived in blindness to.
A good dose of preventative comes in the form of “old-fashioned” long courtships and engagements. Most people these days are far too impatient to “go through the steps” and want to jump right to the most intimate (and vulnerable) aspect of relationship post-haste. Add to this the “old-fashioned” concept of a formal commitment based in love “’till death we do part”, and there’s even more security as two people explore what it is like to “become as one”. (the very heart of fellowship).
I once heard you speak of a very important concept of “anti-fragile” in a post. Right now society is vogue-trending being VERY fragile. Being a victim.
People not living up to our expectations, victimize and traumatize us. (Hell, our own feelings and bodies have been given the power to do this to us!)
Yes, there are certain things that mature and realized humans should not be doing to each other.
But none of us have “arrived” at this point. So we embrace a kind of “fragility” in being so easily victimized and traumatized by others just doing what our immature and unrealized race does to one another . . . and to self. (To be victimized, requires your “permission & participation”.)
Caution is wise while we are learning to be anti-fragile. But fear and paranoia work against this. Isolationism and defeatism work against this. Have we “settled” for someone and they for us?
Or are there just two journeyers, undertaking a journey together just as it has been ordained?
Anyone can be your “soul-mate”.
Provided the two are dedicated to the journey together and not harboring the delusion that they are “just settling or being settled for”.