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I had just started college when the movie Jerry Maguire came out. I loved everything about it. It was about a sports agent representing a football player. It was about a compassionate, empathetic guy trying to fight a system that can be cold and heartless and focused entirely on money. And last but not least, it had a beautiful love story.

But there is one quote that has stuck with me to this day, and I’ve been thinking about it lately because it is an enormous problem for me. I’m not talking about “Show me the money!” either.

I’m talking about “You complete me.” It’s mentioned earlier in the movie off-handedly as something that two deaf people sign to one another in an elevator. But it becomes the entire center of the movie toward the end, when Jerry realizes that Renee Zellweger’s character, Dorothy, is actually the love of his life. He ultimately says, “You complete me,” to her, and she ends the conversation by saying, “You had me at hello.”

For some people, that is probably just a lovely quote and a good way to summarize a perfectly fine romantic comedy. But for me, I realized that the message of that movie really hit me wrong, at the wrong time of my life, because it set an expectation about what a romantic partner could do for me.

Again, let me emphasize that this is only related to me—I have no opinion on the way other people choose to love each other. I just know that that quote lands with me in a way that suggests if I feel like something is missing, maybe a girlfriend will take care of it.

I don’t want to blame all of my romantic struggles early in life on a movie. But I was impressionable, and this movie came along at a time when I really was heartbroken at my inability to have the kind of relationship I wanted. I, of course, was the issue. I was a heavy, obnoxious partier who didn’t have much trouble speaking with women or getting first dates. I just didn’t get a lot of second dates because I was pretty awful at the whole dating scene. I definitely had an issue with falling in love in 20 minutes, which I attribute a little bit to my addictive personality. Guess what? People don’t like you practically proposing to them before they know your last name.

Looking back, I think I walked around a lot looking for something to complete me. Alcohol obviously stepped forward as something I tried. Same with drugs. Romance is on that list, too. I remember wondering why I felt like an incomplete puzzle all the time—maybe a girlfriend would be that last piece to complete the puzzle, like in Jerry Maguire!

I guess there is a context in which “You complete me” could be a positive phrase in my life. It’d have to be that I have tremendous spiritual fitness, and that I am indeed missing one small piece from the puzzle. But I do think it is a dangerous concept for me, as someone who has often felt like something is missing, to think that YOU will be the answer. Those expectations are wacky and too heavy to put on a human being, in my opinion, and it’s inevitable that a person fails to complete another person. I just don’t work that way. There’s no new neighbor, or girlfriend, or boss, that is going to fix me. That’s an inside job, and I have to do the work to feel self-worth so that there is reasonable space for that last piece of the puzzle. When I do that, my ability to be a solid romantic partner, with realistic expectations for what another person can do for me.

When I watch Jerry Maguire now, I get this sinking feeling toward the end, because I don’t know that many relationships can survive when someone is a total mess trying to figure out their life, and then they just go back to an ex-girlfriend and say, “You complete me.” It makes for a lovely Hollywood script, but I can’t imagine that doesn’t end up in divorce court three years later, where both people, ironically, will end up saying, “Show me the money.”

This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:

HEARD AT MEETINGS: “Alcoholics are the only people I know who need a pole vault to get over an anthill.”

(Credit: AA Grapevine, October 2001, Chuck I.)

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