Recently, I’ve found myself thinking about the past. Not my
own past, although I do that, too, but a time when things were simpler-in some
ways. Thousands of years ago, humans lived in a world of brutal ice and
excessive body hair, but on the flip side, they didn’t have to hear things like
“It never happens when you’re looking for it.” In the days when a ripe old age
meant 40, people made decisions. You didn’t have the luxury of saying, “I like
you, but I need to focus on my career as a wizard.” And if a man were to say,
“I can’t have a relationship now,” it was followed by a reasonable excuse, such
as ” … because Attila needs me.”
Things have changed.
Mine is a generation inundated with choices. Women are choosing to wait to have
children, while many men are on the Tony Randall plan of conceiving in their
70’s. For some, getting married has all the urgency of buying your Christmas
presents in April.
Others are choosing not to choose. “Men have taken the verb
‘to choose’ and replaced it with the verb ‘to react,'” a friend said recently.
“If you say, ‘I’m leaving,’ they might say, ‘Don’t go’-but that’s it. Men
refuse to choose.”
When I’m asked why I’m single, I say, “By choice”-meaning
I’ve made the choice to be asked constantly why I’m single. The truth is,
because I’m long past the age I thought I’d be married at, I’ve decided to wait
for the real thing. While I’ve always been a proponent of the lightning-bolt
kind of love, which is how it’s happened for me in the past, I’ve come to
wonder if, in this city of many choices, something I considered the ultimate
force-love-has become a choice as well.
“Everything is about timing,” said a man who markets energy
bars. “I’ve met women I could have married and fallen in love with, but I
wasn’t ready to go there. It is a choice.”
A former diehard bachelor who’s now in love agreed. “At some
point a guy might have a family member die, and that might make him think about
his place on the planet and what it means to connect with another person,” he
said. “Or a feeling of loneliness or confusion or boredom that combines with meeting
someone that doesn’t threaten or repel you.”
A film producer, who said she put her career first for
years, agreed. “I was ready to find a person I could make the choice to love,”
she said. “I thought when I found love, things would work themselves out, but
the truth is the exact opposite.
Everything is a decision about how much it’s worth to you. Love is a
choice at every turn.”
Several women said that “timing” was another way of saying
“when the man is ready.” A novelist who’s become used to “low-grade
disappointment” said: “I think it breaks down along gender lines. If they’re
compelled by getting their career going or being externally validated by the
world, love becomes a choice.”
“Men’s ideas of themselves are more important than any
woman,” said a woman who spoke in energetic bursts. “They say, ‘I’m a lawyer
now, and I must pick a wife. I’m at the proper place, so it’s time to get
married.'”
A man who just happens to be a lawyer said, “I want to be
done and find the one. I don’t want to
go to the Hamptons and live with single people. I’m bored; I’m ready to go to
couple parties and have couple friends and kids.”
Some people said that while they wished they could succumb
to the power of love, their minds got in the way. Take, for example, “the
checklist.” “Does she work out? Does she sing, challenge me intellectually,
have a nice family; is she good in bed; would she be a good mother?” the lawyer said, reeling off his list. “I
think the checklist is a defense mechanism. It’s a good way to find things
wrong with people so you don’t have to marry them.”
An impassioned chef called the checklist “a way to Agent
Orange you and de-leaf your tree. As things they don’t like become apparent,
they freak out.” She continued: “Men
want a woman who’s ready-made, like slice-and-bake cookies.”
The novelist was ambivalent about her checklist. “I need
someone deep, sexy, edgy-but at this point, I’m so disillusioned with my past
choices I hope I fall in love with a nerdy businessman,” she said.
One man said his checklist got him into a relationship. “She
was smart, Jewish, attractive, and I thought, ‘Wow, I should want this.’ But
she wasn’t the one.”
“I’m totally ready to fall in love, but I won’t accept
anyone who doesn’t have everything I want,” said the energy-bar salesman. He
took a moment to reflect on his words. “But I also know that if I had the ability to worry less about making
concessions and more about working on me, I’d be more successful in love.”
Many who believe love is a force think there will be certain
ways to recognize it. For example, my
father always said that the second he saw my mother, he knew she was “the one,”
so I’ve always believed the same thing would happen for me. The transformed
bachelor questioned the wisdom of parental mythology. “It’s not about what’s
true; it’s about the life a story has taken on in your life and your heart,” he
said. “Your idea of a successful life is infused with this myth.”
“People rewrite their
own histories so much,” said the energetic talker. “Many people say they knew
their spouse was the one, but they didn’t really.”
Several women said that while they once thought they’d know
immediately, they’ve been disillusioned. “As you get older, knowing what you
want gets harder because you’ve learned that terrible lesson that love isn’t
enough,” said the weary novelist.
“I think you do know if it’s the one, but that doesn’t mean
it’s going to work,” said the chef.
Many people who were pro-choice questioned the force. “When
someone says it’s ‘an irresistible force,’ they’re saying they want something
else to do the work for them,” said a chipper banker.
A woman in a long relationship agreed. “A man will realize
at 41 he has no straight, unmarried friends, and he’ll see some woman and
decide he’s in love and rationalize that it’s ‘a force.'”
The good news is we do have choices. For example, last year I was dating a man
and had to choose whether I thought he was active-slash-passive or
passive-slash-active. He did the Charleston of wooing: kicking forward and then
stepping back. He would charm me with phone calls and dinners and then
disappear for a week. I made the choice to proceed with caution. Other times, I’ve had the choice to wait by the
phone for a guy I like to call or eat an entire jar of peanut butter. But the
real choice, for those of us who struggle with cynicism and sentences like “All
the good ones are taken,” is whether to believe that love will happen. As a
romantic at heart, I have no choice but to believe.
“I think when you talk about the simplicity of the past,
you’re really talking about a time when people weren’t so jaded,” my friend
said. “Love should be the ultimate act of faith. People should have wars over
it.”
