are you headed my direction?

I'm housesitting this weekend. Taking care of the golden retriever formerly known as "crazy dog". He's not so crazy anymore. This is a good thing.
Unfortunately, it took the nullification of wedding vows for him to get all calm and collected. Perhaps he knew something his human companions didn't?
Meh.
They are both good people, just headed in different directions.

That seems to happen a lot these days. We fall in love only to figure out much later on that our significant other hopes to someday become the most popular hooker between here and Conroe. Which is about the time you realize that you've never had any desire whatsoever to be a pimp, much less one so famous, and the two of you should probably sit down and discuss the fact that you are headed in completely opposite directions.

Look, I'm very open minded. I'm progressive and different and willing to accept a ton of different lifestyles and sexual preferences...

Still, the more I think about it, the more it hits me that maybe those old fashioned folks have a few things right.

Take courting for instance:
Back in the day it was expected that a young man would get himself started in an actual career, get a house, and then...only then would he go looking for a young woman.
If he was in the country he'd get his own property...or get promise of it from his father...before looking for a wife.
In either case, the man is already headed solidly down a path and direction. Not that he can't or won't change his mind, just that he wasn't as likely to do so.

Now? None of this is expected before a major relationship or marriage. Which means that many couples get together and then figure out later on that they want entirely different things from life. So, what do you do? How do you fix that?

Don't get me wrong, my best friends got married and that certainly wasn't his situation when he proposed to her. Yet I'd swear to you that they have a fantastic relationship and a great marriage
It's just that...eh...maybe there'd be fewer divorces if we told young men that they needed to be more established before they seriously started to consider marriage.
Don't worry my AARP membership is on it's way and my walker is on backorder.

As a woman, wouldn't it be a plus to find a man who enjoyed his career and had a roof over his head that was in his name? Someone who's goals were already defined? Because then, at least you'd know what direction he was headed from the start. Maybe you meet a guy living in a condo downtown pimping hot college girls to all the biggest names in town...maybe he's exactly what you're looking for.

I've had fun dating, and I don't think that should go away. But then...how do you flip that switch from dating to seriously looking for a permanent long term relationship? Because that's really the issue here. So many of us happen to run into someone who is super fantastic, who hits all of the right buttons, so we flip from dating to serious before we have anything else figured out. And we shouldn't have to miss out on the perfect fit just because we don't have the house or the career...but maybe we should slow down and make sure we have those before we ask that special someone to spend their lives with us?
Not because they are necessary...but because where you want to live and what you want to do has such a huge impact on who and what we are that I can't imagine sharing my life with someone who doesn't have some of the same dreams and desires as I do.

Meh...I don't think this post has an ending, I'm just throwing thoughts out there. This all hit me today on the way into the office (overtime today) and continued during a smoke break outside. Perhaps tossing it on here will help purge it from my system.
Please...discuss...


-call me old fashioned