He’s History, You’re Not

The shrink asked me today if I’d ever had a serious relationship before my husband.  I thought about it and had to say I hadn’t, depending on how you defined serious relationship.   I certainly never had a strong connection with anyone, and I met my husband at age 41 so that’s saying a lot.  I didn’t have a lot of talent at connecting with men.   Why did I marry my ex?  Desperation, plain and simple, I even wrote an essay about it for Cosmopolitan many years ago.   I have lived to eat these words:

IN DEFENSE OF DESPERATION

(Should be called;  MARRY OUT OF DESPERATION; LIVE IN QUIET DESPERATION)

Anyone who’s ever been single and longs to be coupled has been warned that desperation is the kiss of romantic death.  Advice  articles, talk shows, and your mother keep telling you that the scent of desperation has the same effect on men that DEET has on mosquitos.  Instead of actually looking for love you’re supposed to go out and sign up for classes in marine biology, or  birdwatching or jogging or become active in politics. Do something, anything, they tell you and eventually you’ll encounter Mr. Right…. Wrong!

Every woman who’s ever pined away night after night wishing there was a man in her life knows what the problem is with this type of advice:  How can you not look desperate when you are desperate?   You’re going to look just as man-hungry birdwatching (pretending you’re interested in tufted nuthatchers while casting lustful glances at the cute guy behind the next pair of binoculars can bring on vertigo); jogging (you can break a leg trying to make conversation instead of watching for dangerous outcroppings); or working for a local politico (why do you think married politicians find it so easy to fall into bed with cute young things?  Those young things are desperate.)

What’s the solution? Give up the pretense. Just go out and admit that you’re looking for love. Desperation is not a social disease.   It’s normal and healthy to crave connection, intimacy, serious attachment, marriage.  The human race might have died out a long time ago if it weren’t for desperation.  If you complain loudly enough about much you want a man you might run across one of the hordes of desperate matchmakers out there just waiting for someone to fix up.  We all know that personal introductions are the best way to meet suitable mates.
It worked for me.  After years spent pretending not to be desperate, finally I realized that casual encounters weren’t my style.  My excess weight made me too self-conscious to start conversations with strange men and, probably for the same reason, they didn’t try to meet me.  I wound up lurking in corners at continuing ed classes hoping I didn’t look as desperate as I felt.

So I put an ad in the personals and met my husband-to-be.  Both of us were underwhelmed with each other at first.  He was much younger than me, out-of-work and so painfully shy that he barely spoke. I, like I said, was more than a scootch larger than average and wasn’t at all what he had in mind.  Our first date was a total bust.  What did we have in common?  We were desperate. It was the only thing that made us attempt a second date, and then kept us together during an extremely rocky courtship–both of us figured no one else would have us.  Eventually he got a job and over time I discovered there was a sensitive, funny, wonderful guy underneath that self-effacing demeanor.  And he discovered that outspoken, plump older women could be very sexy.

Since then I’ve noticed that all my friends who used to talk about how desperate they were to find a man, found one.  Most are pretty happy, though one or two did settle for men who were, shall-we-say, beneath them.

Alternatively, the friends who proudly declared how self-sufficient they were are still single.  On the one hand they still insist they’d like to meet a man, but on the other they say they’re perfectly happy living alone and aren’t the least bit desperate.  These women seem to have their lives organized so efficiently without a man that I can’t imagine them making room for a man in their closets, much less in their lives.   When a man does come along there’s always some fatal flaw that makes him unsuitable.  Clearly, these women aren’t desperate enough.

You’ve got to be at least a little desperate to make the kind of often-painful compromises that relationships are all about.

And you’ve got to be plenty desperate to put up with all those frogs you’re guaranteed to meet before that prince comes along, and to recognize the prince under those green warts once he does turn up.