"The First" and "The One"...

For me there have been a couple things in life that I obsess over and that honestly have probably held me back from truly opening up myself to someone and letting myself relax and enjoy a relationship.
1st (appropriately) is "The First..."
2nd is "The One..."

The first...
the first time you kiss,
the first time you fall in love,
the first time you have sex,
the first... you get the idea.
I found that I put so much emphasis on making the first of any experience perfect that I often prevented the first experience from ever happening. I had to learn to just embrace the moment and not run away from a less than perfect first experience. Which is hard because I'm a romantic and a perfectionist... and I want everything to have a storybook ending.

As I get older I put less weight in the importance of 'the first' and am trying to live in the moment so that when I'm older I have more 'first' experiences to look back on and feel sentimental about.

Second is "the One"
Recently Dan Savage came to Dallas, and while I didn't get to go, i did find this clip from his question and answer session that night. Someone asked him how to get over their recent breakup from 'The One' and I thought his response was really insightful.

"There is no One," he said. "The One is a curse. ... What there is is a world is full of .64s and .69s and .73s that you round up to one. ... But you have to remember, you're not his One either. He's rounding your ass up too."

Fast forward to 4:15 in the video to hear him elaborate on it in person.
I would love to find a .87, and I don't think I'll settle for a .54, but I'm becoming more comfortable with not finding the One. There is a real beauty to loving someone and filling in the gap between where they are and One. I like that together you become greater than the sum of your parts.