My Rom Com Miseducation
In most of the romance movies I’ve watched over the course of my lifetime, obstacles to love never seem to be an issue for long. Sure, the woman may be a little nerdy or off-kilter in some way, but once she’s given the appropriate makeover, or at least takes off her glasses, all of the obstacles to love are removed. Or sometimes the lead is the hot girl who’s never been seen for who she is, and when the male love interest comes stumbling into her life, the skies open up. The movies I find myself most drawn to are the aspirational ones. Like 1997’s Love Jones. I was still in high school when it debuted, but by the time my college years rolled around, the moody Chicago scenes were exactly what I thought I wanted and deserved.
I’d already crafted my life into the Ohio version of this movie—open mics, headwraps, jazz albums, local dive bars, and private house parties. Even now I look back at those times as some of the best I’ve ever had. It seemed only natural I’d find a relationship just like the one in the movie—staring out from the stage, or shoulder to shoulder during some philosophical debate. It never happened. Instead, I’ve tripped and fallen into relationships out of desperation, fleeting sparks, or by cause of years not affection.
I take my therapist’s advice and download a couple of apps, and in one afternoon on Plenty of Fish I get 25 messages. I refuse to open any of them out of fear. On Tinder I rarely match with anyone because I find myself far too critical to swipe right. I overanalyze the profiles and pictures and usernames. Then I make snap decisions about why the men may not like me. The same is true for Hinge, OkCupid, Match, BlackPeopleMeet, and Bumble. This analysis is an extension of that fear. Of being known or having to show my flaws and hope they are still acceptable. Or of opening myself to the possibility of yet another mismatch. Or even worse, of being invisible altogether.
I promised my therapist to keep the apps on my phone for at least a few weeks, but by our next session they are deleted. My therapist laughs deeply. She says I have no real concept of dating. I’ve been in a series of long-term relationships that have gone from zero to 100. Most of the time, I am mentally in a relationship before the very first date, and sometimes the men go along for the ride.
I met my high school sweetheart and declared him the love of my life. I met the boyfriend of my 20s and settled into a very serious live-in relationship within two years. I got married to a different man a little over three years after the previous relationship ended. We divorced not too long after. Then came the situationships, lasting from a few months to damn near 10 years. There has never, in the history of my adult life, been a season of getting to know someone and deciding a relationship with them isn’t for me. It is always I like you. You are mine. We are done. And if I am being honest, it has also been I like you. You play me. I cry. Or: You like me. I get skittish. I run.
I need to learn to settle, not into some half-assed coupling, but into the idea that everything in my life doesn’t have to be all or nothing. This is more difficult for me than I can explain. Somehow I manage to love the idea of love without knowing if I’ve ever truly felt it. What it feels like is chasing after those first moments over and over again, and hoping they will manifest into something more substantial. This is a sickness, really. Or perhaps it is simply a natural reaction to so many years of believing some sort of fairy tale could come true: If I was in the right place at the wrong time, or the wrong place at the right time, life would unfold as it should. What I’m coming to understand, which is a product of resisting this rosy view, is that a love that is outside of these fantasies is not less than. It could be exactly what I need.
Still, there are moments when my mind disappears into the daydreams of the love life I wish I had. The loneliness and longing hit me when I least expect it. These daydreams play out like movie montages. They come at unremarkable times. When I am taking the clothes from the dryer—their warmth softening my fingertips until they feel numb and buzzing like static. They come because I remember that the clothes are only mine. There is no man’s hoodie to slip over my head, or his lingering cologne on a collar, or some ratty T-shirt I want him to get rid of, like in the build-up toward the midpoint breakup in a love story.
Most recently this longing manifested as I was standing at the sink washing peaches for a cocktail-and-charcuterie day. I spent weeks buying all the trimmings for this gathering, scrubbing down my apartment, arranging flowers in a bright spray on the coffee table. In a rom-com I would be hosting this gathering with my significant other. I’d set the table and eventually find myself next to him with my fingers dancing across the back of his head.
While I was washing the peaches, I became absent from myself, and for a time I was anywhere besides at the sink staring out between the blinds. In those moments I was nowhere else, just daydreaming about a lover in another room. In that absence, I imagined what my renewed domestic life would be. For the sake of my heart, I imagined it was peaceful and consistent. I imagined it circled upon the shared understanding that consistent is not boring. Consistent is what you make it. When the peaches were rinsed, I was back into my body. Back into my quiet life. A single woman wrestling with solitude.
There’s a scene in He’s Just Not That Into You that shows a little girl being told that a boy is sometimes mean to you if he likes you. I think we are supposed to follow the logic that there is always bitter before the sweet and if you can just swallow the first mouthfuls of it, then all will be well. This is bullshit. It is bullshit because swallowing and swallowing and swallowing the bitter makes you immune to the harm, and before you know it, you are happy to think this is how you are to be fed. With every rom-com, romance novel, and love song I’ve ingested, I’ve learned to ignore the poison for the sake of the “cure.”
This is what this manufactured romance has made me forget. What happens when it all fades? At the end of the dinner party in my daydream, where do I and this imaginary lover stand? Does he help with the dishes and clear the table? Does he settle beside me and massage the spot just at the base of my neck where all the tension builds? Or am I even more alone than when I started?
I mentioned to my therapist in a prior session that I have a type, and she tasked me with making a list of what I want. The first week, the list concentrated almost exclusively on the physical traits I find attractive in a man, with only a casual mention of his hobbies. My therapist challenged me to go deeper. What do I want to experience in a relationship? What do I need to feel safe with a man? What are the dealbreakers? What don’t I want because I’ve had it before and it hasn’t worked out? What’s been missing? I’ve been happy with the bare minimum for so long, I was afraid I didn’t know anything other than “Just be nice to me.” It took me a few days to come up with 12 items. What I came up with was a list that would be basic for some, but is workable for me.
But what I truly think I fear, and why that first list was so scarce, was that I was not quite convinced I had the right to expect more. That in this aging body, this childless body, this imperfect body, sometimes scraps are better than starving. I think I have convinced myself I do not want, or can live without, the soft romance I grew up reading about in novels or watching in movies because I’ve somehow been tricked into thinking, and have also allowed myself to believe, I am not worthy.
I have convinced myself that none of this desire can be real because it has never seemed an actual possibility. But I’ve felt the edges of it. A quiet proposal in front of a Christmas tree in the glow of golden lights. Waking to a birthday cake full of candles shining in the face of a man who may have possibly tipped over into loving me. A few late evenings with an arm slung across my waist, and me being pulled closer when I dared to move. But these moment, in context, were like islands in a vast ocean—simply places to rest before being battered again in the waves.
What do I say about a sense of longing that seeps all the way into my bones some days? It seems no matter how uncomfortable the apps make me, they at least create a bridge to a land of possibility. I keep bobbing around in the waves—up and down through each false start, hoping against hope I will find a shore. It is only in the briefest of moments that I can process this as a recipe for disaster. Instead of waiting for someone to rescue me, I should remember I do not need to be saved. I just need a solid place to rest.
The urge to cry washes over me, but I refuse. I cry entirely too much about things I am not sure I am actively trying to change. Or can be changed. I toy with the idea of downloading the apps again, just to give them a real try. It’s the smallest step I can make. But what will I say? Hi! I’m Athena. A divorced, childless woman who probably won’t trust you, and if you show too much interest I’ll probably run. I need space, but not too much. I may get way too attached to you, but I won’t put too much pressure on you, because I’m afraid you’ll leave. And can you please be bearded, tall, and nearly completely emotionally unavailable, because I like a challenge and because I want to figure out how you tick? If that’s okay, you can text me, but please don’t call.
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