Dating is like shopping for jeans

I have a friend that is entering the dating scene after having been with her high school sweetheart for 18 years, marrying him and then deciding that it might not be her "highest good" to spend her life with him. They are still friends and probably will be forever, but she has finally gotten to the place where she is ready to fulfill her dreams and find a man to spend her life with! She is nervous and apprehensive and has a lot of questions.... I wrote her a note and compared dating to shopping for jeans. This might sound silly, but I thought that it was pretty good, so I copied it and have put it here for you to read.

Dating is like trying on jeans...
You get really nervous and apprehensive thinking about buying new jeans because, well, jeans are tricky! They are all so different and you never really know which ones will work for you and it takes forever to figure it out. You prepare, you decide where to shop and you make sure you go when you are not bloated and you definitely do not eat that Mrs. Fields cookie BEFORE you try on. You save that for after....

So, you get to the mall and you walk around the store and find ones that you think look good and might look good on you, then you take a stack of like 20 into the dressing room. While you are in there you hold them up, look at them and some you immediately throw into the discard pile. Other pairs look promising and so you start to try them on. Some won't go over your thighs, discard. Some make your butt look big, discard. Some are a little too tight and maybe if you lost 5 pounds... you set these on the bench as maybees. You keep going through the pile and by the end you walk out with 2 or 3 pair that are good. You take these home. You wear them, you spend time with them and eventually you realize that one fits you really well and that they make you look AND feel REALLY great. Those are the FAVORITE jeans, they are the best and the ones that you will turn to when you need to feel comfortable, or feel sexy, or have to go somewhere that might make you nervous. You realize that you don't really wear the other pairs much, unless maybe your favorites are dirty or you feel like trying out the others again, just to be sure. But, no.. .your favorite jeans are the ones you go to all the time. Those are "It". You will wear them in the summer, cuffed... you will wear them in the winter with a sweater, you will wear them with an old, faded, comfy sweatshirt and you will wear them with a button down blouse and high heels. They go with everything, they go with you. After a while, they are you and if you can't find them or they need a wash, you might panic until you find them and can wear them again.

So it is with men. Go out, spend some time with them, take a few "home", try them in different situations and seasons, let them see you dressed up... and dressed down...and eventually ... you will realize which one is your favorite. I thought that I might have to stop the analogy there, but I have been married almost 10 years and think that I can go on. You know those favorite jeans, well sometimes you wear them so much, they get holes, they get a thin spot in the butt, the styles change... and this too, is the same with men. They change, they wear, their hair thins, they get older...BUT, the best jeans are the ones that you will patch and re-dye and even make into cut offs if necessary...anything to keep them around and keep having the opportunity to wear them. So it is, with husbands...

The favorite jeans, are the ones that even when you can't squeeze your butt into them, stay folded safely on your closet shelf, because you can't imagine life without them and even if they don't fit just right today... they might tomorrow.