You just have to be open.
You just have to love yourself.
You just have to stop looking.
You just have to live your life.
You just have to believe that you’re beautiful.
You just have to be the person you want to be with.
You just have to be totally happy on your own.
You just have to know what you want.
You just have to let go of your expectations.
You just have to be confident in yourself.
You just have to smile more.
You just have to talk less.
You just have to be assertive.
You just have to wait.
You just have to put yourself out there, you know?
I have heard all these sentences, several times each, from very well-meaning and lovable people. They have to do with being alone, with being single…specifically, with my being alone and being single, as I have been for, what, three years now?
I try not to talk about it very much, because I am a little ashamed about the whole thing, but I slip up sometimes. If you are a close friend of mine you may have been around for one of these slip-ups, you may have received an email that is four or five screens of a slip-up. I have this idea that it’s wrong to talk about being single, that it’s demeaning to myself and that it makes me come off as desperate. I have this idea that a) no one cares and b) people think I’m weird and c) no one cares. I have this idea that I should be so immersed in my fabulous life—hello, I moved to New Zealand, thanks very much—that I don’t even notice whether I have a partner or not, like: boyfriend? Um, let me check my calendar, okay?
When I let my guard down and talk about it, most people will listen carefully and sweetly and then say, with great earnestness and compassion, one or more of the abovementioned sentences. Sometimes I will nod my head. Sometimes I will go “Mmm hmm.” But mostly what I will say is, “Okay, sure. But HOW?”
See, I’ve been thinking, for the last couple of days, about a post on this topic by the lusciously well-spoken Kate Harding (a crush on whom has recently sprung fully-formed from my head). She writes about dumb luck in meeting her partner: she was at a dinner party and her friend introduced her to a guy and they liked each other and that was that. She wasn’t perfect, and neither was he. She hadn’t passed some sort of test or won some sort of magical prize to find her partner: it just happened, and there was nothing she could do to make it happen sooner, and that was that. Dumb luck.
I left a comment on that entry, saying I had a hard time believing that every single person in the world who is partnered somehow hit upon the right formula of Loving Themselves and Just Letting Go Of Expectations and Putting Themselves Out There, and then boom! Bang! There the person was, because that’s what happens when you do everything right and follow the advice and check the boxes. Because clearly, miserable awful people with bad hair and bad attitudes never hook up, right? They never get into relationships and they never get married. I mean, even I have hooked up when I was in a weird scary broken place, as out of love with myself as is possible to be. Some of y’all may remember that I had a partner for a pretty long time, and trust me I kind of sucked during most of that time. Anyway, in the comment, I said that it was really nice to read something that affirmed that some things, no matter how much we want them, are beyond our control. Some things are just random sometimes.
That, of course, is the frightening part for me, because I want nothing so much as I want control and agency and to accurately predict the future and to believe that I am perfectly, permanently in charge. “Oh, yeah, mmm hmm, okay, I’m supposed to love myself unconditionally, but HOW?” I will bellow, knitting my eyebrows threateningly at my lunch date. It’s not a philosophical, rhetorical question, you understand; I’m asking for the instruction manual (where are you hiding it?) so I can read it and highlight the good parts and then maybe bang out an outline before bed and then create a spreadsheet the next morning and a cost/benefit analysis and also perhaps a soundtrack to go along with the whole project. I want bullet points and Key Performance Indicators. I want an A. I want an A plus.
Or sometimes I want to just forget about the whole thing, to turn away from desire altogether, to shut myself up so completely that the very idea of a partner seems ludicrous, like something I would never do. Wait, I think to myself. So, like, when you have a boyfriend? You have to, like, listen to him talk or whatever? That’s kind of the space I’m in at the moment, actually, as I write this. I have been having some very difficult and painful thoughts and feelings about men lately, and I have been shaking my head and backing away from the thought of wanting anyone. I can’t think about it too much without getting anxious (I am chewing my lip as I type) about everything that would, could go wrong, about getting hurt again, about fucking it up again. I am not completely convinced it’s worth it, and honestly I have a really difficult time imagining myself as a girlfriend, let alone someone actually liking me.
The end result is supposed to be the same though: whether I devote all my energies to Finding Someone ™ or throw my hands prettily in the air and decide to just Be The Best Me I Can Possibly Be ™, the partner is supposed to be the reward, the end result. A Plus! I win! “How did you two get together?” coos the interviewer, as the camera rolls and the mood lighting brings out the walnut tints in my hair. “Oh,” I laugh, rolling my eyes. “It was the most random thing. We were on this scuba trip and I was swimming along and all of a sudden this octopus…right, honey?…all of a sudden snaked out a tentacle and grabbed my arm and it turned out that it had snaked out another tentacle…they have eight, you know, covered with chromatophore cells that allow them to change color, and each sucker on each tentacle moves independently of all the others…anyway, it had snaked out another tentacle and, if you can believe it, grabbed Bjorn here’s arm too! And also I was completely unconcerned with relationships at the time, just enjoying myself and doing my own thing. I was really confident in my own beauty and general fabulousness, you know? So I’d say it was that that brought us together, my true love for myself, right sweetie? Well, that and the cephalopod.”
In my real life, since this hot mess went down and I had to spend a little time being sad and lonely for a while, I have behaved pretty much as I always do. I have flirted a lot and spent a lot of time at home reading books by myself a lot. I have had crushes on all sorts of delightful individuals. I have pursued people I liked, and I have been roundly rejected. I have received a fairly hilarious sexual proposition from a friend, via text, thank you very much, which, though I didn’t accept it, did end up providing me with an excellent cell phone plan. I have been complimented and I have been ignored. I have been to a dinner party at which all the women present discussed their love lives in detail and asked for constructive criticism. I have written in my paper journal about what I would like and not like in a potential partner. I have basically just been me and done exactly what I wanted and usually enjoyed myself, and nothing has changed.
And maybe—probably—nothing will. Maybe not for a while, and maybe not ever. And you know what people never want to hear, the thing that makes them shake their heads and admonish me for thinking negatively? When I say that maybe it just won’t shake out. Maybe my luck—which is so evident in so many areas of my life, starting with all the social and political privilege I have and extending to my housing karma and my ability to rock a bicycle shimmy—will not fetch up at the door of a life partner. Maybe I will just remain alone.
One thing has changed though, now that I think about it: remaining alone for the rest of my life is, at this point in my silly octopus-loving patched-together not-completely-in-control B-plus-A-minus bicycle-shimmying life, far from a worse case scenario. One more thing I feel open to, one more good good thing my luck has brought me.
Comments
16 responses to “You Just Have To Be Open”
Reading your words is like hearing my thoughts.
There’s a relevant episode of Sex and the City you need to see. Season 5, Episode 2, “Unoriginal Sin”
It sounds like you’re in the right head space, my friend. A big part of finding the right someone is random chance. It means you have to be ready for the opportunity, while at the same time accepting that it may never come your way. You’re doing the right thing.
Thanks for sharing this – I am there too in some ways, and glad to see your perspective.
This resonates to me. We are goal-oriented ppl, we know how to achieve and set timelines and make things happen. And this desire for a partner, what we maybe want more than anything, does not fit in that paradigm even though everyone pretends it does by giving the advice you listed – advice that doesn’t work yet gives us hope. So what is the answer? Enjoy all the moments of your life and keep the hope. That’s all I got.
It is total dumb luck. Just keep doing your thing, keep in mind what you want, and what you need finds you…
my boyfriend just broke up with me. we became very fast friends and I thought he felt the same way about me as I did about him. He doesn’t. I’m still trying to be friends with him because we are pretty close, but it hurts a lot. I come back to your site time and time again and I see your words that come at just the right time for me. Thanks for putting it all out there.
I think that the whole spiel of “be your best self,” etc. is good advice; not because it will get you a boyfriend, but because you can have a good time while you’re waiting. ;) And, like you said, that way, not finding someone doesn’t end up the worst thing ever. I’d much rather be happy with myself, than unhappy with someone else.
The things people say that are meant to be comforting or constructive or whatever really are not, and I won’t say them because sometimes people say them to me too and I find it obnoxious.
I feel this same way. The moments of fabulosity intermingled with grief, for the children I am not likely to have at this point, for the partner who can’t seem to find my door. I am 40 this year, and I am tired of feeling this blind panic that there is something I should be DOING to MAKE IT be my turn already. When I know, there is nothing to do. There is no such thing as a “turn.”
I don’t know what to say. You’re totally awesome and you will find someone. Maybe it will take some pro-active steps like computer dating (don’t sneer–I know successful marriages that have come from that) but it will happen.
Scott and I were basically set up. It took a while to take, of course…
You will end up alone forever and ever. Ok, probably not, but I didn’t want to be like everyone else and blow wind up your skirt. The beginning is dead on, people with their darn platitudes. Can’t we all just admit that things suck sometimes and listen instead of the knee jerk “there there, you find love sweetie”. ps. I love your blog and tell all my friends that they should read it. You are a great writer. Thank you for sharing yo!
I just want to say this was some damn fine writing, and the bit regarding the octopus was possibly the best thing I’ve read EVER.
I concur about the octopus part. AWESOME PARAGRAPH.
Well, it is random. Even if you end up with someone, even that girl who wrote that entry, whos to say they’ll be together forever, no matter what? No one can ever say that, even if its 99% sure. And then they’re back where you are. Its circular, but not even. You could be in your situation for a year until you meet someone, or you could stay single your entire life. You’ve lived nowhere near close to half an average lifetime and only half of that is time that actually could have been spent in relationships. You have a lot of time for things to change and do whatever sort of things time does, so that in 20
years you look back and think “Hey, things were different back then.”
You peeked into my brain, didn’t you??? This was perfect. Thank you.
A friend pointed me to this, and I really really love it. Sometimes what I really hate is how life is all about this “prize” of the relationship… and that if you’re single, you’ve somehow failed at winning that “prize.” (and the platitude people will say “oh, you shouldn’t think that way!” gag. I wish they’d all learn to just agree with me and say “It sucks, doesn’t it?”)
Have been thinking about this lately, as three of my closest oldest friends are fabulous early-30’s women who would like to be married now but for various reasons (travel, work, asshole ex-boyfriends) are not. Thinking about it because there but for the grace of the Octopus goes I, as my own marriage was a random right-place-right time thing. I know each of them secretly feels like an old maid, like she is losing the prize. It makes me sad, and wishing I could fix it.
I have another friend who loudly and often laments being single, and to her I say “just be your best self!!!” — because I am too chicken to say, “Listen, you’re kind of clingy and really needy and you obsess about having a boyfriend and you give off that smell of desperation, you did even when we were all 22 and trying to be single, so if you don’t work on that you’ll not only be romantically alone but your friends are going to drift away too. p.s. the smoker’s breath might also be working against you.”
But we aren’t close enough friends for me to say that in a vacuum, plus there is a big responsibility that comes with that kind of tough love, and I’m not home enough to invest time with that person right now, and it’s shitty of me to say something cruelly honest and then flit back out of town. So I offer platitudes.
In her case, I will probably continue to offer platitudes. But in the case of all my other fabulous friends who would like to be With Someone but aren’t, I think I’ll buck up and start to say instead, “It does suck, and I do think it’s mostly the Lottery of Life, and I hope you know that you are amazing and fantastic regardless, and that I would totally marry you and buy a house on a hillside and a dog with you.” And I will continue to try and avoid that most egregious of attitudes: Smug Married.