"Is it asking too much for you to be the person of my dreams?"

When I asked her if she had posed this question to her boyfriend of four years with a straight face, she appeared to be a bit put off.

Sigh.

First of all, I had to tell her, you assume he knows who or what you've cooked up in your dreams. Mind you, when we fling around this moniker, we're not talking about one person or one dream. It's usually a stitching together of all the perfect mates we've loved in all the dreams we've manufactured since grade school.

No pressure.

Second, having to ask this impossible question already indicts the ask-ee for falling below the mark, whether he's aware of the mark or not. Maybe it's not asking too much, but asking … is well … saying too much.

So I asked her to pinpoint the most gnawing discrepancy between Real Man and Man of her Dreams. Right in the middle of rattling down his list of selfish habits, inconvenient needs, and sly criticisms wrapped in hand-me-down compliments, I stopped her. This laundry list of imperfections was not her issue, I told her. I reminded her that such mechanical glitches mere not uncommon with standard relationship machinery. Standard, with every brand of lover. Every style of soul mate. Every relationship model.

"Tell me instead," I pushed, "about the one defect that seems to make these flaws –the ones you knew he had when you decided to love him—more glaring?"

She was quiet, thinking.

I sipped on my Jack and cranberry and tried to remember where I'd heard this jukebox song before.

"I guess … I wish he adored me," she finally said. Her features were softer now, especially her eyes.

"Adore?" I repeated. "That sounds like a deliberate word choice."

She gave me a shy, half smile and explained that she was too modest for "worship," had no social need to be a "showboat" and, no desire to be anchored to a man who literally "couldn't live without her." Adoration was the perfect balance between love, acceptance, admiration and respect.

"How would you tell that he's made the transformation?" I asked, curious.

Because the other things wouldn't seem to loom so large, she admit quietly

Now, see, was that honest self-dialogue asking too much?

I suppose a fair compromise would be to go ahead with the celebration but hold back on the sparklers and pink frosted cake.