Every Life Comes With Problems You Didn’t Choose

You don’t get the good parts without the hard ones

Gina has been dating someone new almost every time I’ve seen her. In six months, she’s fallen for someone, found his flaws, and moved on at least four times.

Tom worked too much. He had a great job, was stable and kind, but was not spontaneous. He’d rather stay in on a Friday than try the new sushi restaurant she’d been talking about all week. “I just felt bored,” she told me. “I could already see what the next 40 years would look like.” She left after five weeks.

Jason pursued her too hard. He planned dates, texted first, sent her flowers, and told her early that he really liked her. “It gave me the ick,” she said. “He was too all-in.”

Ethan wasn’t romantic enough. Adam wasn’t good with money. Each reason sounded perfectly reasonable on its own, but at some point I had to ask her, “How do you think you may be contributing to this situation?”

I could tell it was a painful question to sit with. But after a while we discovered that she was waiting for a relationship that didn’t come with doubt. She was looking for someone without quirks, so she would never have to wonder if someone else would be a better fit. She wasn’t afraid of commitment so much as she was convinced that the right commitment wouldn’t feel like a question at all.

Years ago I read an essay by Alain de Botton called “Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person,” and it rearranged something in my brain. His argument was simple: anyone you end up with will frustrate and disappoint you in significant ways, because that’s what all humans do. So the question becomes, what kind of difficulties can you live with? But I’d go further: you will also choose the wrong career, the wrong friends, and the wrong city, because there is no version of your life that comes without problems. You just get to choose which ones.

I chose mine when I left a stable job to start my own therapy practice. People hear that and picture something aspirational — being your own boss, setting your own hours, building something meaningful. And it is all of those things. But it’s also assembling office furniture on weekends, unclogging toilets, and fighting with the property manager who claims there’s nothing wrong with the heater while everyone needs electric blankets in session to keep warm. I don’t have fewer problems since I quit my stable job; I actually have more. But I’ve decided the tradeoffs are worth it to me. What’s worth it to you?

Maybe the neighborhood you love comes with an awful commute. Maybe your friend is a terrible texter but spends hours on the phone with you when things fall apart. A lot of parenting is brutal in the moment — sleep deprivation, tantrums, cost — but most parents will tell you it’s worth it for the life they’re building, even on days when it doesn’t feel that way. Only you can answer what sacrifices are worth it.

There is so much we can’t control right now: the economy, the job market, the state of the world. (And there’s never been more information telling us how terrible things are.) But every day you are already making choices about what to tolerate and what to walk away from. Most of us just don’t realize it. So the next time you find yourself fantasizing about a different life, ask yourself, what would I choose again and again, regardless of what it costs me?

Because when you can name something as a choice instead of something that’s happening to you, things open up. The difficulty may stay the same, but the experience of it changes. The frustration stops being evidence that your life is broken and starts being the cost of something you actually want. And if you do the exercise and realize you wouldn’t choose it again — that’s worth knowing too. That’s a real reason to go.

Gina stopped dating for a while. When I asked her why, she said she realized she’d been looking for someone who didn’t exist — a person without anything she’d need to tolerate. She hadn’t failed to find the right person. She’d never figured out what “right” actually meant to her.

Every version of a life has something in it you wouldn’t have picked. But you don’t get the good parts without the hard ones.