Listening to She's Already Made Up Her Mind by Lyle Lovett

As your adult life takes shape and moves through the summer of your lifetime reflection becomes less of a painful habit and more of a comforting friend. It assumes the role of the neighbor who stops by for a cup of tea, sits down, listens, and offers nothing but the solace of a listening face. My friend Dan is a lot like that. I can talk a lot and Dan can listen a lot. It is one of the hallmarks of our relationship. That and bourbon.
I promised myself last summer that I would no longer become involved in relationships that I felt would not go anywhere. I think that I have managed to keep that promise. But when I look back at my life and see a long path of damaged and wrecked relationships I wonder if I am even made up to sustain something beyond a couple of months. There are women that I have cared for, women I have loved, women I have despised, but rarely do I stay attached for more than a few months. Sometimes I think that I have an inherent flaw. I have never been a philanderer. I have never been unfaithful. These are traits I despise - things that other people see as having little or no consequence but I have always felt were symptomatic of a weak resolve.
I won't pretend to believe that all of the women that I have hurt in the past still think about me. I won't fool myself into believing that I dwell on their minds now. I may be a lot of things, but I am rarely immodest about my place in a woman's heart. But still... just the fact that as I look over my shoulder I see a consistent inability to create long lasting relationships romantically is enough to dissuade me from the possible pursuit in the future. It is almost as if I recognize that the behavior is detrimental to me as well as to the woman I may be seeing. And it is for this reason that I very often feel like I should simply withdraw myself from the whole forum of romance. There are people who are suited for this sort of thing and those who are not. These days I am almost positive that I belong to the latter camp. I don't like hurting people. I never have. It just seems like I ma continually doing so. Unendingly. I have no great fear of commitment. Just a great fear of being alone my entire life. Compound that by a desire to have everything be perfect and you have a near fatal mixture. Nothing will ever be perfect. I recognize that.
I am young yet. I see that too. I am not in any rush to have kids, settle down, have a home. They are all things that I would like to have in the future. Unfortunately they may not be realistic at this point in my life. And perhaps when they are realistic I will be ready to find that person that I can settle down with. Maybe we shouldn't be so hard on ourselves as we continually try to understand this clumsy dance of courtship. Maybe there is a solution to figuring it all out. And that solution is the same to almost every question we can ask on this mortal coil; time. Time is always going to reveal our mistakes and correct choices. And if they are not revealed then time will at least do us the favor of eroding the painful memory.