when i was at university, i had a friend named julie. julie had this dilemma because she was dating two guys at the same time. they didn't explicitly know about each other, but they both knew she wasn't dating exclusively. her first boyfriend, who i'll call "steve" was athletic, outgoing, tall, dark and handsome but he wasn't the sharpest tack in box, and he was often late for their dates. her other boyfriend, "dan" was an ultra-sensitive, blonde, introverted, chemistry honors major who sent her flowers every other week. she loved them both but for different reasons.
at first, she thought it was a dream come true. when she told me about it, very early on, i thought she was crazy and told her so. "you'll want the best of both worlds," i warned her. "how will you pick between them when they're so different? there won't ever be a man who combines all of their strengths."
sure enough, after a few months, the fun started going out of it. julie had to coordinate her social calendar because she didn't want the two men to run into each other. and worse, she started wanting superman. she wanted dan to be more athletic. she wanted steve to buy her flowers. she wanted the cards and letters that she got from dan to come from steve, and she wanted dan to grow six inches. eventually, she dumped them both.
i was thinking about julie today, because i realized that this same tendency to want the best of two possibilities applies to lots of other things--shopping for a dress when you want the style of one combined with the colour of another, buying a house when you want the first one's neighbourhood combined with a second one's layout, and job hunting, when you want the content of one role with the manager or location of another.
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