I felt bad that I wasn’t that interested in his stories. He’d say, “Hey, hon, how was your day?” and he’d make comments and jokes as they related to my stories and my life. He seemed genuinely interested—or at least if he wasn’t truly interested, he was a good listener. But it used to bother me when I would ask him about the car stuff and he’d go off on the technical stuff about a particular engine and I’d completely lose interest! I didn’t think I could live with that forever.
I almost broke up with him two years into our relationship. I was getting my physical therapy degree and it was time to apply for internships. Rob wanted to go across the country to San Francisco because that’s where his family is. I wasn’t sure I wanted to make that move—it seemed like such a huge commitment. I thought if I was that unsure, we shouldn’t be together. But then we were having breakfast on a Sunday morning and it felt so good to be with him, and he started cracking me up, and I tried to imagine breaking up, and I realized I couldn’t imagine being without him.
RECALIBRATING THE BUTTERFLIES
I was 34 when we got married. At first I didn’t feel like the words “soul mate,” at least in the way I imagined them my whole life, applied to us. But now I feel like fundamentally we’re soul mates because we intuitively get each other. I used to think, he’s not an artist and I like artistic guys, but then I realized that he’s actually creative, just in a different way. I thought I would have to be with someone classically artsy, but he has an artistic mind.
Now we talk a lot about work issues and family issues and the day-to-day stuff. Having different hobbies doesn’t matter that much anymore. We’re both focused on the future and things like the house and the kids.
I was worried about whether I was settling before I got engaged to Rob. I was sure I wanted him as my life partner, but I had to recalibrate what the butterflies are. I’d just started figuring out how incredibly great he is and I had a sense that this was the beginning of something really extraordinary and deep. He’s very solid, and I knew that he would help me through everything I went through in life, and that I could trust him and count on him. And that’s different from, “Oh my God, is he going to call me?”
Now that we’re married, I feel so lucky to be with Rob. He’s not everything I wanted on my checklist, but he’s everything I need. Actually, maybe the more accurate way of describing it is that my marriage is not at all what I expected, but it’s so what I want. I just needed to start wanting healthier things!
27
My Story—A Dating Public Service Announcement
Okay, so you already know the ending of my story—sort of. When I said in the first chapter that this book wasn’t my love story, that doesn’t completely explain what happened. Actually, I ended up dating Sheldon2—for two months. I know, it doesn’t sound like much, but considering that I started out nixing any guy who didn’t instantly excite me, I was surprised by how connected I felt to Sheldon 2 in such a short period of time. What I experienced wasn’t, obviously, the deep love between people who’ve been together for years, but it was so much better than the crazy infatuation new couples often mistake for love.
What I felt instead was a contented calm that came from simply being in the same room together, even if he was working on his laptop and I was opening my mail. I looked forward to seeing him at the end of the day the way I look forward to vegging out on a comfortable old sofa. And I mean that in the most romantic way. There was something wonderfully tranquil about being with Sheldon2.
With Sheldon2, there was no waiting by the phone. No wondering if he “liked” me. No pressure to be something I wasn’t. One time I showed up in a sexy black dress to join him at a dinner with his important clients, and I hadn’t realized that before I left home, my son had put soap handprints all over my backside. Sheldon2 thought it was hilarious, and he told me later that he loved it when I showed up like that, because it reminded him of the joy I get from my mischievous toddler.
The more time we spent together, the more there was the excitement, as the marriage researcher Gian Gonzaga had put it, of truly “getting each other.” We didn’t share some of each other’s interests, but we shared the same sense of humor and could easily crack each other up. We had the same values. We had an eerily on-target mental shorthand. We had amazing physical chemistry, even if we probably weren’t each other’s ideal physical type. When I spoke to friends about my burgeoning relationship, I always used the word “mellow,” or I’d mention the couch metaphor, and while my younger single friends had trouble understanding why this made me so happy (“He’s like an old couch?!” they’d ask), my older married friends were delighted. They knew this had the potential to be real.
But reality also ended the relationship—the reality of dating when you’re both old enough to have a lot more commitments and logistical issues to deal with. Since we each had kids but no exes to give us the night off, it got to the point that we felt uncomfortable leaving our sons with their respective babysitters as often as we wanted to see each other. Besides, we wanted to hang out with our kids and be together. We both reveled in domestic life.
To move forward, we would have had to meet each other’s kid, but the more we talked about how to do that, the more Sheldon2 realized that his son wasn’t ready. He had an 8-year-old who’d lost his mother a year before. When Sheldon2’s friends told him he needed to “get out there” again, he wasn’t expecting something serious to come around so quickly. To complicate things more, his parents had been urging him to move home to Chicago, where they lived, so that they could see their grandson and help him adjust to this new life. With no family in Los Angeles, and with siblings and nephews and nieces in Chicago, Sheldon2 knew it was the right thing to do for his son’s sake.
So he moved two thousand miles away.
I won’t say it wasn’t a bummer. It was a huge one. I wanted my dating story to be over. But I’m glad I had that experience with Sheldon 2 because I saw firsthand that I can be attracted to and happy with people I haven’t looked at in the past. Sheldon2 wasn’t the checklist guy, but he met my three “needs” and many of my wants. So many “wants,” in fact, that the missing ones didn’t matter. In the end, I had one important but simple “want”: I wanted to be with him.
I even miss his bow ties.
But here’s the kicker: I may have learned all this too late.
WENDY’S NEW SUITORS
After six months of scouring the city for a guy for me, Wendy, the local matchmaker, thought she’d finally found a couple of leads. She sent me an encouraging e-mail saying that she’d briefly met two potential fix-ups, and she’d be having more in-depth conversations with them later that week. One, she said, was 43 years old and never married, but he’d had serious relationships, was looking to get married, and was willing to date a 41-year-old. He was also handsome and intellectually engaging. The other, a 47-year-old divorced dad, was an involved parent and successful, but might not have the “mental grit” of the first guy.
I said, “Go for it. Either one. I’m open.” And this time I meant it. I didn’t ask for more information to microanalyze. I figured a first date with either couldn’t hurt. Then a few days later, Wendy got back to me. It turned out that the 43-year-old was ambivalent about kids (which was why he was willing to date a 41-year-old; as Evan had said, if a guy is dying to be a dad, he generally makes it happen before age 40); and the “nice-looking, decent” divorced dad didn’t seem to have, as Wendy put it, “that ‘life of the mind’ vitality I think is important here.”
This wasn’t me being picky. Or even Wendy being picky. It was her being realistic. A guy who’s not highly educated but is intellectually curious can be a good match for me. Sheldon2 certainly was. But just as this divorced dad probably wasn’t what I was looking for, it turns out that I wasn’t what he was looking for, either. As Wendy got to know him better, she learned that he didn’t go for intense intellectuals. So o
nce again, it was back to the drawing board, and who knew how many months it would take before Wendy found another guy.
This, my friends, is what my dating life is like these days.
DRUNK DATING
I know, that’s kind of a depressing thing to report. Everyone wants a happy ending, right? Everyone wants to be reassured that they can find someone great no matter how old they are. But here’s the truth: A happy ending is always possible, but a happy ending for me is a lot less likely than—and will look a lot different from—a happy ending for someone ten years younger than me. The older you get, the more complicated dating becomes, and no amount of attitude adjustment can turn back the clock and change those realities.
I’m not trying to bum people out. I’m trying to help. It’s kind of like those graphic anti-drunk driving public service announcements that show people crashing into poles and getting killed. If they just told you, “Don’t drink and drive,” you might think, “Yeah, I know, but I can have a couple of martinis, right?” It’s not until you see people ending up brain-dead, lying in a coma in the hospital and surrounded by beeping monitors, that the message has an impact.
In the same way, if you don’t see how easily people can end up alone by making the dating mistakes I did, you won’t be dissuaded from making those same mistakes yourself. I had to show the reality of being single at my age because I used to be like the teenager who thinks she’s invulnerable to drunk driving accidents—it’s all in the abstract, something that happens to other people, but would never happen to me. It never occurred to me that I would become another dating casualty. I had to show, in grim detail, the accident that my dating life became so that you could make choices you won’t look back on later and regret.
So consider this a dating public service announcement: If you recognized yourself in this book, I’m the ghost of what could happen to you if you don’t broaden your idea of Mr. Right. I mean that nicely, because it’s actually an optimistic message: If you’re older like me, it’ll be harder, but at least you’ll have a better chance of finding a great guy if you change your approach. And if you’re single in your twenties or thirties and wondering why, now you know not just why, but what to do to increase your chances of having a happy long-term marriage.
A DIFFERENT KIND OF EMPOWERMENT
My single friend Erica, who is 31, was skeptical when I asked her to read this book. She’d just gone through a breakup, and thought I was going to try to persuade her to “settle.” I swore that it wasn’t about settling for less than what’s going to make her happy. I told her it was about learning how to value what’s truly valuable.
She wasn’t so sure, but after reading it, she said she was encouraged. “I felt like I could find the right person because he doesn’t have to fit absolutely every one of my criteria, an idea which tends to induce panic,” she said. “He doesn’t have to fit the exact profile that I have envisioned for myself. I liked that sense of empowerment—that I could be happy and find love if I just adjusted my attitude, and not if I was just supremely lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, which, again, induces panic.”
Like Erica, I’m finding this more realistic way of dating kind of liberating. How reassuring it is to know that, in many ways, finding a good mate isn’t just some random external event—it’s based largely on our own choices and actions. The funny thing is, most of us aren’t single because of how we look or what we weigh, our level of education or job description, or whether we asked the guy out first or waited three days to return his call. We’re single because we have this underlying belief that we need to be completely in synch with our mates, and if we’re not, we should find someone else.
And that makes it really hard to find anyone.
As my married friend Lynn put it, “Adjusting one’s perspective actually makes the ‘hunt’ more interesting, manageable, entertaining, and less disappointing. When you adjust your standards—which doesn’t mean you have to ‘give a chance’ to a guy who completely repulses you—you, well, give more guys a chance. You meet more people, and allow yourself to be entertained and surprised.”
The silver lining for me is that while I wouldn’t have chosen to be single and 41, my circumstance is forcing me to focus on what’s important, so if I do meet someone, I’ll likely end up in a better relationship. But how great would it have been to realize this a long time ago? I can’t do much about that now—but maybe you can.
HEY, YOU—IN THE PINK SHIRT
Yes, you. The other day I sat in the audience of the movie He’s Just Not That into You and watched in amazement as the twenty-somethings in the sold-out theater gasped, clapped, cheered, cried, and were literally propelled out of their seats when the guy who said he wasn’t interested in marriage for the past seven years proposed to Jennifer Aniston’s character, or when the slick guy played by Justin Long who said he wasn’t into the sweet Ginnifer Goodwin character finally admitted that he’d fallen in love with her.
In a romantic speech, he told her that she was the exception to the rule—that when a guy seems uninterested, he almost always is, but in this case, the rule didn’t apply. I’m guessing the women in the audience got so excited by these happy but wildly improbable endings because they also feel that the rules don’t apply, that they’re the exceptions. I used to be one of those women, even though I knew that, statistically speaking, it was unlikely. I wasn’t the exception. You probably aren’t, either.
So what I’m saying is, hey, you—yes, you. In the pink shirt. I’m talking to you. This isn’t supposed to make you feel crummy. It’s supposed to be eye-opening. Not thinking you’re above it all makes you more self-aware, and self-awareness leads to better decisions. It puts you in a better position to get what you want. Denying it leaves you dating the way you always have, which so far hasn’t worked out. If you’re single, and not wanting to be, and you’re reading this and thinking it’s not about you—maybe it isn’t. I’ll give you that. But are you sure? Are you making smart, conscious decisions about the men you let into your life?
The good news is, if you want something different, it’s available to you. It might take some time to change, but that’s okay because how many years did it take you to develop these sabotaging attitudes in the first place? Ten years ago, nobody told me the things I learned in the course of writing this book—or, if they did, I didn’t listen. You can’t fault anyone for not telling you, but you can blame yourself for not listening.
You want to think that your ideal guy will magically land on your doorstep tomorrow? That’s fine. You want to look at how you might get more reasonable about the way you date so that happiness comes by easier? That’s fine, too.
Remember, the choice is yours. You have the information.
The rest is up to you.
Epilogue
Where They Are Now
Julia, who broke up with Greg because he wasn’t “inspiring enough,” later broke up with Adam, the charming surgeon, because he wasn’t “supportive enough.” It took dating Adam, she said, to realize that Greg was actually more inspiring in ways that mattered. They’re now engaged.
“Please don’t use our real names in the book,” Julia said. “I don’t want people to know what an idiot I was!”
Jessica, who regretted turning down Dave’s proposal because she felt she was too young to get married, has tried to stop comparing every guy she dates to Dave. She also spends less time Googling him late at night.
“Dave is married, Dave has moved on, and if Dave could find the strong connection we had with someone else, I probably can, too,” she said. “I just wish he wouldn’t post pictures of his baby on Facebook. That’s the one thing I still look at.”
She recently joined Match.
Brooke, the graduate student in Boston, moved out of her boyfriend’s apartment and has just started dating a guy who’s the son of a family friend.
“When it comes to dating, I’m done using the word ‘feminism,’ ” she told me. “With my new boyfriend, the important word is going to be ‘marriage.’ ”
Kathy Moore, the matchmaker from Make Me A Match who told me to “save my pennies” for my love life, called me up eight months after our initial phone call and said that due to the economic recession, they were offering “all kinds of specials.”
Coincidentally, I’d just gone on a blind date with a guy who’d hired Make Me A Match months earlier. He said they charged him $450 for six dates around the same time that Kathy had told me it wasn’t worth her time to find me three dates for $1,000. Apparently, a 54-year-old divorced father of teenagers is an easier setup than a 41-year-old single mom with a 2-year-old.
Now Kathy was offering to reduce her price from $3,500 to $2,500. “It’s a great deal!” she said.
I told her I still had more pennies to save.
Lisa recently got back together with Ryan, the boyfriend she’d dumped two years earlier because she didn’t think he adored her enough. Last month, they ran into each other at a mutual friend’s party, and despite having had other relationships in their time apart, both were still single.
“It turned out that he didn’t find someone he loved as much as me,” Lisa said. “Which was his point all along.”
The woman who got insulted after I set her up on a blind date with a guy I described as being “just like her” is still single.
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