How do you like your eggs?

I just got this from Christine Schaap, and wanted to share with those of us who are working on our co-dependency (and maybe learning from Pat Honiotes).

Have you ever seen the movie The Runaway Bride starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere?

Roberts plays Maggie Carpenter, a small-town woman who drops out of college to help run the family hardware store when her mother dies and her dad is drowning his grief in a bottle. She catches the attention of USA Today columnist Ike Graham (played by Gere) who writes a scathing expose of her penchant for leaving men at the altar.

First there was Gill, the hippy auto mechanic and Grateful Dead fan who took Maggie to rock concerts; they supposedly got matching rose tattoos, but he later discovers that hers was a fake. Next was Brian, who pursued priesthood after he was left at the altar. After Brian came George, an entomologist studying the reproductive and migrating patterns of locusts. And when Ike discovers Maggie, she’s engaged to the local high school football coach, Bob, who plans on taking Maggie trekking Anapurna in Nepal for their honeymoon.

But Ike is the only one who really sees Maggie for who she is – a woman that doesn’t have a mind of her own. In fact, he asks each of her former fiances how Maggie likes her eggs. With the “Deadhead,” it is “fried – just like me.” With the priest, it is “scrambled with salt, pepper and dill – just like me.” With the entomologist, it is “poached – just like me.” And with Bob, it is “garden omelet, egg whites only – just like me.”

Like so many women, Maggie is anxious to please the man in her life and quickly adapts her interests and likes/dislikes to his own. In fact, with each man she did everything to convince him that she was exactly who he wanted her to be. She “ran away” at the altar because she instinctively knew that she was going to lose her own identity in the relationship. Even when she ends up falling in love with Ike, she leaves him at the
altar too because she still hadn’t found herself yet.

Maggie has the advantage of figuring this out before being pronounced man and wife. Too many of us at midlife realize that we checked our identities at the altar and have no idea who we are. We’ve spent a lifetime pleasing our husbands and children and never took the time to figure out how we like our eggs (figuratively of course). The instinct that Maggie had to bolt is the same instinct that causes many midlife wives to want to bolt as well. The only problem is that we’ve already said, “I do,” and leave confused husbands and crushed children in our wake.

What Maggie finally did is take some time for some real soul searching. She tapped into that part of her that she’d been ignoring and figured out that she liked creating artwork out of functional items like electrical sockets. It’s not as important what she created as it is that she finally found a way to express herself. She also experimented with all different egg recipes and discovered that she likes her eggs prepared Eggs Benedict. Most importantly, she realized that Ike was truly Mr. Right, but as her best friend put it, “you just need to get the rest of your ducks in a row.”

When Maggie finally took the time to find her own identity, her own personal preferences, and her own God-given gifts and talents and how to best express them, she was finally ready to commit to a relationship with a man that she mutually trusted, respected, and loved deeply.

What about you? Are you running away (or wistfully thinking about running away) because you truly aren’t in love – or is it because you’ve never taken time to find out how you like your eggs? I encourage you to do some soul searching of your own and then you will be ready to commit (or re- commit) to your relationship.

Christine Schaap -Midlife Coach
www.PathPartners.com

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