I was thinking about a girl I met my senior year of college. I decided to look her up in my college alumni page. She had a unique first name which I recalled. I plugged it in the search box, and her name came up. There was only one former student with her first name. I know it was her because she was pursing a master's degree in the field listed in the directory. I was surprised, because it sounded Hispanic, though she wasn't Hispanic. After doing research on her, I now know why she had an Hispanic first name.
I remembered our last conversation and thought it would give me some clues about her origins. According to my memory, her mother was a professor in a college in Virginia. My memory was incorrect.
She is listed in the alumni director with a last name. It said she is married. Presuming that was the name of her husband, I researched for her under what I thought was her husband's last name. I came up with nothing.
Then, I just searched for her first and last name. I soon found that she used both her and her husband's last name. I learned other things about her.
I learned that both of her parents were physicians and that she was orphaned at the age of seven. Each of her parents died before the age of 50. She was born when her mother was 40. Apparently, she was raised by her uncle, because she is listed as one of his survivors, even though she was his niece. I assume then that he raised her.
I discovered that she married a prominent man from her home town who was a couple of years her senior. He was a lawyer who no longer practices law. The family owns ranches with a lot of mineral interests. Those mineral interests have made the family quite wealthy.
I discovered that she is the managing partner of a company that manages a limited partnership consisting of the family assets. It is my impression that the wealth placed in that limited partnership came from a combination of her inheritances and her husband's inheritances.
I discovered that both she and her husband were from very prominent ranching families in South Texas. They were so prominent that geographic landmarks are named for them. I discovered that she and her husband own a home worth almost $2 million.
I discovered why the name of that college came up in our conversation. I found a wedding announcement that said she was the maid of honor at her best friends wedding in Virginia. They both graduated from the same college. It was that college that she mentioned in our conversation.
I also saw that she had sold a very prominent home in her home town a year before we met. She was not struggling financially, even though she was orphaned at age 7. I don't know why I recalled that she told me her mother was a professor at the prominent college.
I am happy for her. She was out of my league when I encountered her. I'm glad, in retrospect, that we never got to know each other deeply. She was off limits, anyway, because she is a Roman Catholic.
The missed opportunity occurred when we had a chance meeting a few days before I left my college town. I went upstairs to check the job postings. When I came back down she was waiting for me. I made a casual remark and bade her good bye. We never talked again. I just never forgot her.
When I think back about my life, I think of relationships with women who were above me. They were smarter or they came from more prominent families. They were more cultured. They elevated me. I never understood why they gave me the time of day. They outclassed and they deserved to be married to men of their class.
I know I would have disappointed them. They would soon have come to realize that I was beneath them. I did not have what it took to rise to their level. They are happier without me and I am free of the knowledge that I would have ruined their lives if they had married me.
The Bible says men and women shouldn't be unequally yoked. I think it means more than just being a Christian. Realistically, there is stratification among Christians. People should date within their own class. A man should never marry up and women shouldn't marry down. I don't think it is wrong for a woman to marry up, but if there is too much of a difference, she will be miserable. Men and women need to find mates within their own class. The best way to do that is to talk to parents and find out if they have friends with daughters who would be good dating partners. Dating the children of people in parents' social group is likely to result in a marriage that is not like to be strained by a spouse's inability to keep up socially. I have seen other advantages, too. When children are involved, there might be a perception that a spouse married up. After the death of the first spouse, she might want to marry up, thereby depriving the children of an inheritance. Second marriages always present these problems.
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