I am the type of person who has a tendency to enter into committed relationships and make long-term plans for the future. So, I was rather frustrated when I was strung along on a succession of first dates, leading to nothing in particular other than a mutual longing to end it there. Then, in a fit of self-scrutiny, I resolved what the issue was.
I was rather shocked that it took relatively little self-analysis to find that I had fallen in love, unabashedly, unequivocally and undeniably, with the idea of falling in love. Not with any man in particular, merely the idea of loving one. A love that isn't a tying down, but a setting free.
I have fallen prey to falling in love, the type with a certain adoration on a whim. I have fallen for the man who glanced at me on the subway and smiled, the man who made eye contact with me while eating a sandwich at the deli or the man who held the door open for me on campus (what a gentleman!). These are the kinds of fleeting loves that last but a few seconds at a time, in which the realm of possibilities seems endless in front of me. Whole tracks of life are laid down in an idealized and imagined future. Yet, he exits the subway car, I pass that deli and the door closes behind me. And, with that, the tracks of the future are torn back up and unlaid, a touching and beautiful thing, like seeing war in reverse.
"I was rather shocked that it took relatively little self-analysis to find that I had fallen in love, unabashedly, unequivocally and undeniably, with the idea of falling in love."
I have fallen prey to a multitude of fantastical loves, adorations and infatuations. Having been drawn to long-term relationships in the past, I feel a bit like a forty-year-old divorcée trying to navigate, rather unsuccessfully, a dating world she is unable to understand. I am at the fortunate point in my life in which I can be picky; there are more viable significant other candidates for me than for my forty-year-old divorcée counterpart. I can say that I don’t want to go on a second date again because it bugged me just how chapped one fellow's lips were (the whole damn time I just wanted to buy him some chapstick), because one wore socks while he slept, or because another's nose made his visage look as if he perpetually smelt a fart in the room. Yet, while I can be picky about the man of my dreams, if he does actually exist out there somewhere, I've also come to realize what's important to me. I don't need a chiseled man who was his high school's valedictorian; rather, I am looking for someone to love me, to make me feel loved and whom I can love in return.
I am receptive and open to the possibility of finding love. My first dates often end at that--a simple first--but who knows, the man of my dreams may be just around the corner. That being said, I am choosing myself first and foremost. For some men, my love may last little longer than a handful of seconds, a sort of love-in-passing; for others, it may be months or years or even decades. But, the love I hold for myself will last my whole life.
So, as I stare back at him over coffee or pizza or brunch, unsure whether this is the start of a lifelong journey or whether the end of this path lies just ahead, I am hopeful that I'll feel happiness another day more, whether he supplies it or I do. Likewise, I am reminded of the age-old adage and my own retranslation of it: “‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have tried at all.”
