Squishy Personal Stuff

Now it's not like I have particularly good sense of what's going to happen next in my life. When I met the last person I wanted to marry, I told my friends that I would be utterly shocked if I did not end up married to this man, and I was right. I was shocked. Completely stunned, to the point of insanity. Never saw it coming. Spent months denying it after the fact, and still wrestle with occasional bouts of doubting it (though now they're more like bouts of denying that Bush is president - I know it's true, I just want to pretend.)

The two objects of my exasperated rage this week were, on paper, very good matches. In person, they were even satisfying to spend time with. But they both failed on critical characteristics. I'm glad I picked up on it quickly this time, but even within my drastically narrow pool of vegetarian, college-educated, non-Christian/Jewish/Muslim men, the sort must be much finer to get the results I want.

This week I really believe that it is much more than theoretically possible that I could draw paper slips for the next 50 years and not get a 4.

This pessimism has been exacerbated by my interactions in recent days with a fellow we'll call Darryl. Darryl thinks I'm nifty. He thinks I'm bright, funny, entertaining, and quite a hottie. He also thinks I'm "interesting." Interesting, in this case, means that I don't like chocolate, alcohol, coffee, or cider (and a bunch of foods, but that's another post.) I got my driver's license this January at age 29 and have not driven since that day and don't look forward to it. I don't like camping, and I have yet to discover a sport I can stand. That's just the stuff he knows about.

Darryl mentions the fact that I'm "interesting" quite often. I doubt he means anything by it, and he has in fact gone to some effort to point out that he is eccentric himself.

"Ah yes," I said, "but your eccentricity is not about limits."

That's part of the 4. I am about limits more than most people are about limits. I have gotten positively reckless in the trying of new things in the past year, from living by myself for the first time ever to shooting zombies in an arcade to voluntarily consuming about 2 Tbl of vodka last night. But it has not increased my flexibility on my parameters for dating, and it has not rearranged my personality such that I am less "interesting."

Since I spend most of my time around people who already know me and are familiar with my universe, I had forgotten how strange it must seem to new people that I don't participate in many of the accessories of the adult world - either yet or at all. And it had not occurred to me that anyone would be put off by that, but Darryl has flagged a couple of times that in his mind, some of these are things which would interfere with long-term relationship possibilities.

It is as yet premature for me to even know that I want short-term possibilities, let along long-term ones, with this particular gentleman, but it was a bit of a shock to get these flags. When I broke up with K., and with the Catholic Boy before him, my take on it was frustration because I had spent all that time in relationships with unsuitable bachelors...and the underlying assumption was that I could have spent that time with more suitable ones.

Now I am confronting the assumption. The narrowing down of the pool to vegetarians is only the first cut - within the remaining candidates, there are most likely thousands of combinations that will not work, for reasons on one or both sides of the interaction, even when both sides are thoroughly good people. There is no guarantee that because I'm better at tailoring my search pattern, that my results will improve, because there are still a seemingly infinite number of slips that aren't a match. My characteristics and desires are a large part of that.

I don't believe in the idea that there is One Right Person out there, but I think I'm feeling something akin to what a woman who has that belief goes through when she looks out of her window and thinks "I know he's out there somewhere, but how in the world do I find him? I could go my whole life and never actually meet him, the odds are incredible that I would. Hell, he could be in Bangladesh or Kansas or something."

Obviously, there are parts of this equation I could change. I could dedicate energy to becoming more flexible and finding ways to compromise on some of the characteristics I screen for that eliminate the most people. One obvious alternate strategy for dealing with this "problem" is to increase volume, either by relaxing criteria or by simply meeting many more people, but I am thoroughly worn out right now from talking to strangers and don't welcome the prospect of an endless interview line that disappoints me every 6-8 weeks because I really liked that one and it was such a near miss.

I think the real question is actually this: how do I live with the consequences? How do make peace with my new feeling that it is unreasonable to expect success?

I'm probably glorifying myself. I'm sure single people who drink beer and eat meat and drive cars and watch sports and like camping feel just as hopeless as I do.

Oh bother, that means I should probably throw away this entire post.

Nah, I spent too long writing it. And I'm sure it will make my kids roll their eyes and wonder how I was ever allowed to parent anyone, and how I ever found the time given the amount of hyper-over-analysis I feel bound to produce on a weekly basis.