Love is like a compost pile

Love is like a compost pile!

In honor of Valentine's Day, I am posting the following essay that I had originally written as a response to a general question about whether it is better to "Wait and see" or "Move fast" in a relationship in the forums on CatholicMatch.com around 2007. 

I think it holds up. Here goes:

Love is like a compost pile for your garden. You have your single guy looking for a single gal. They both arrive on the scene bringing their respective life experiences, successes and failures. All this stuff, this flotsam and jetsam, the detritus of their lives, gets added to the compost pile of their developing relationship. The compost pile represents the “ground” they are tilling to “build their future.”

Now, if the contributions are added patiently, in the correct amount and mixed together in the proper manner, then the compost pile grows and builds and heats up slowly, gradually turning the mutual contributions of the guy and gal into a wonderful blend of matter that happy little kidlets can grow in.

But, if the contributions to the compost pile are not added properly, but unevenly (too much of the guy and not enough of the gal, or vice versa) then the compost pile still grows and blends the material, but due to the ill-matched composition, the pile becomes a burning mass of refuse that no one wants to go near. If this compost pile is used for a garden, then happy little kidlets will not grow, just a mess of icky stuff that reflects the imbalance of the compost pile makers.

So, "Wait and see" is better. It is most likely better find someone not too impatient, but is willing to slowly and gradually mix her stuff in with his stuff and nurture the slowly heating compost.

I heartily endorse CatholicMatch. I met my wife on there and we’ve been married for 16 years at the end of March 2024. We did not apply the above advice, however. We began corresponding around July 2007, I quickly went to visit her for a face-to-face meeting in August, and was hooked. By September I was looking for a job near where she lived, got hired in October 2007. In Deember 2007 I proposed and we married in March 2008. But, we were too old (late 40s) to have kidlets so the whole composting for a kidlet garden wasn’t computed. With some signal graces to help out, we just “knew”  and have never regretted it!

(This is not an affiliate- or paid- endorsement. Just a former happy customer recommending their service.)