It will always catch up with you

My last case yesterday was an anal sphincter repair, hemorrhoidectomy, and other assorted buttock repairs for an extremely ancient old lady. After I wheeled her into the recovery unit, UberMan's Best Friend came up to me. "This is why you should never have anal sex," he whispered in my ear in front of my patient. "It will always catch up with you." He immediately placed his papers in front of my face to hide my uncontrollable giggling from the hapless patient, who was smiling at us, at ease and happy from the effects of happy anesthetic drugs well done.

Afterwards, Uberman's Best Friend took me aside. "I thought about you this past week," he said. "And about UberMan."

Essentially, he thought I had unresolved issues. That I wasn't sure if I had made the right decision. Perhaps he thought I had let the opportunity for True Love slip away. "Here is my advice to you, which you might disregard since I don't know your poor Fiance at all and what kind of a person he is," he said. "But I think you should never, ever, ever settle for someone and stay with them just because it seems the right thing to do."

UberMan had told me the same thing: that I was settling. But whereas a part of me thought he was right at one time, I don't think that way anymore. Something changed when Chris and I moved in together this past June at last, after five years of long distance. Something also changed when he learned about UberMan's interest. There was a lot of fixing to do in our relationship but we finally did it. And Chris has fixed a lot of other things in his life.

What piqued my interest in UberMan long ago was his complexity as a person. Chris is not complex at that level, but I have come to understand that this is something to be valued. He's a simple, solid, good guy... and in the end, I believe these traits are more important. No matter how intelligent, interesting, and complex UberMan was, in the end he still was a womanizer who had no qualms hitting on and trying to bed any number of married, engaged, or otherwise unavailable women.