When You Miss The Boat
On bad timing and missed opportunities
What would my life be like if I had never met my ex-husband?
It was a completely random, chance encounter.
I was depressed about the relationship I was in at the time, a long-distance one with a guy who clearly didn’t care about me anymore. I walked into a bookstore cafe to drink tea and brood and there he was — the man I would ultimately be with for 12 years.
It’s not like dating today. A lot of that involves matchmaking sites and apps. Of course, those do have a sense of timing, right? You start seeing someone and you think perhaps it’s going well, then they tell you that they’ve actually developed stronger feelings for someone else they met on the apps.
Timing plays a role in everything we do. I wasn’t able to take the class I needed this semester. I missed my exit and got stuck in traffic trying to find my way home. I applied for a job but the company had already found a candidate. The apartment I wanted was just leased.
We have to decide: is timing part of fate or destiny? Was I not meant to have that job? Was I destined to meet my ex-spouse? Is there a plan? Or is it totally random?
When I was first dating my ex, I met a guy and developed a crush on him. It was silly, I guess, and my ex thought the same. It didn’t threaten him at all. I knew I loved my partner and I was pretty certain that this guy didn’t even notice me.
But I’ve learned in the years since that the guy actually sort of felt similarly. What could have been if I had decided to take a chance on this other person? I’d only been seeing my ex for two years at most. I was 19. How would it have changed my future?
Staying in the realm of my love life, I think a lot about timing when it comes to another man: Michael.
We met at my writing group, another chance encounter. He just happened to show up one day and join us for a session.
When we finished, he asked for my number. It seemed sort of a casual, friendly vibe. I wasn’t sure if it was flirtatious or not, but I gave it readily. He was cute and a writer, and I was single at the time.
I found out pretty quickly that he was (is) married, not that he tried to hide it. We carried on a mostly emotional affair for two years. I still think of him as one of the great loves of my life.
We didn’t get together, though. The timing was wrong. Maybe if we had met before he got married, things would have been different.
Only, I was dating my ex at that time. So we may not have met, or if we did I may not have done anything about it because I was still with a different great love of my life.
I think about my sister, who is 19 now and dating the same guy she’s been with since she started high school. I worry about whether she is missing opportunities because she is tethered to this young man. I worry that she’ll end up like me, divorcing in her twenties and having to start from scratch in a new era of her life.
I think about my mother’s death. How closely it followed the death of her own mother, and what that meant for her near the end.
Was it Grandma’s death that put Mom on a downward spiral? It coincided with my stepfather leaving my mother for another woman.
What effect did these events have on my mother’s health? On her will to take care of herself and thrive? Would she be alive today, had those things not happened? And where would I be today, if she was still living? Would I be the same person?
The cascade of events set in motion by timing feels like a butterfly effect. Like a drop of water that causes ripples across a pond, disrupting the flow of the water.
Does timing determine our fate? Is fate real? Why do these events of poor timing seem so deterministic? Maybe it’s just clearer in hindsight.
Or maybe when I walked into that bookstore cafe instead of anywhere else, I missed the boat that would have delivered me to a totally different life.
