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Love in Midlife---How to Fail at Finding It.
bonus sonnet for the day: 57
“I came to you because you’re the expert in relationships,” said my friend. “You know--in finding them. You’ve been so lucky that way. How do you do it? Seriously, I need to know.”
Wait. I'm an expert in relationships? I was taken aback so I didn’t answer right away. Then I realized that what she says is true in a way---though only in a way. I have been married three times and I’m still in my forties. The first ended in divorce; the second in my spouse’s death due to an aneurysm. But I’ve been very happily remarried now for going on for four years. And I was never alone for long during the interim periods. How do I do it? There’s nothing about me which on the surface would explain it. As I considered the point, I became slightly intrigued myself. Perhaps I really am an expert! There must be some explanation, surely, why I’d been repeatedly successful in finding companionship while others, more endowed with the assets which the media would have you believe are essential for success, spent their evenings having dinner on a tray in front of the television?
My friend was sad because after being alone for several years following her divorce, she’d decided that an extreme makeover was the only solution to her continuing failure to find a companion. She’s a charming person, but charming persons often do end up alone. We live in a small community where there are many single women, many young and beautiful single women. My friend had occasional dates, but they weren't going anywhere. The men she'd really liked weren't following through.
We were having our talk over lunch in a quite good local restaurant, but my friend was having a green salad instead of the curried chicken salad sandwich they do so well and that she really wanted because, well, I don’t need to say it do I? She was thinner than I’d ever seen her, but in that peaked, scraggy way that happens when it’s a woman of a certain age whose only concern is thinness as opposed to good health, energy, fitness, etc. She’d also had breast implants---which were hurting her---and had her face peeled. She looked like a really badly lighted photograph of herself as she’d been 10 years before. But she’s still a pretty woman. She always was.
She had recently invested a substantial sum in having the work done. She was upset that she wasn’t seeing the dividends. According to her, she now was attracting more men in places like singles bars, a sort of man who hadn’t been much interested before, and in whom she wasn’t interested now. Those men were not the men she wanted to attract. The men she considers to be of her own rank in life didn’t pay any more attention to her than before and do I have to explain it? The next bit of our conversation is such a tedious cliché that I almost hate to relate it. But I sort of have to make my point.
“You know what men are like,” she said morosely. “All of the ones our age seem to want younger women. You’d think that by the time they reach a certain age the demands of seeing to a 28 year old would start to seem daunting to them. But they’re all scared that life is passing them by and they all want a second chance. I can’t compete. I was an idiot to think I could. I might as well have that sandwich; there’s no use starving myself. Excuse me, miss, I’d like to order something else.”
And she told me about the men she’d gone out with. There was a partner in a local law firm (my friend is also an attorney) that she’d been mooning over for about 10 years. He was a sort of iconic successful trial lawyer, silver-haired, chiseled, and with an unending flow of conversation. My friend didn’t care that all of it was about himself. She was very willing to listen to someone go on at length about his brilliant closing argument or the utter imbecility of the judge respecting the correct interpretation of a close point under the Rules of Civil Procedure. The problem with Fred---for that is his name---from her standpoint wasn’t that he was arrogant or a bore, but that he distinctly preferred the company of younger women during the intervals between giving her a whirl for a few days. He wasn’t even particularly reticent about the fact that he was looking for the right woman to marry, which for him meant someone young who didn’t already have children of her own. My friend didn’t qualify.
Richard was a surgeon. He liked talking to her and took her out often enough to keep her hoping but he couldn’t resist temptation and he was surrounded by it. Malcolm, a college professor, was still obsessed with his ex-wife. Chuck was an alcoholic. Danny---well, Danny was sweet, and he really seemed to like her for herself, “but you know, Danny isn’t the kind of person I could actually be with. He’s really kind of clingy and he graduated from [small nonprestigious college]. He’s younger than me and shorter. I really enjoy his company, but that’s clearly not happening. I mean he isn’t someone I’d actually marry. He’s not---‘ Here, I’m glad to say, she paused reluctantly and did some air quotes, “’husband material.’”
No? I thought of Danny, his kind face and translucent blue eyes. He was one of the sweetest men I’d ever known. But it’s true that he’s younger, shorter, less educated, and doesn’t make as much money as my friend. Maybe he is clingy; I don’t know. He calls her up a lot during the times when they’re ‘on’ (the dry spells between the lawyers and doctors she considers to be her due). He lets her cry to him when she is depressed over the latest failure. He tried to talk her out of her cosmetic surgeries, but he was there for her when they happened. I think he was the only person she allowed to see her during the period when her peeled face was healing.
With Danny, she had fun. They did crazy things she wouldn’t have done on her own---hired a boat and toured the islands off Cedar Key for some butt-nekkid swimming in the Gulf, spent Christmas touring the nature reserves off southwestern Florida, went to a water park (I forget what it’s called) way down south for the scuba diving, went tubing with a rowdy party down the Itchetucknee, and did some sort of ‘photography safari’ down in the ‘Glades. They even went to Daytona for a couple of days of Bike Week. She returned wearing a sheepish but reminiscent grin. “It was… crazy,” was all she said.
And though he makes much less money than she does, he’s financially responsible. He pays his share and he’s never asked for the use of any of hers.
In short, Danny is what I---speaking as an expert!--- would call ideal husband material.
America is not of course a classless society (“Oh, yes, it is,” said my mate Rumcove, chortling as if he’d been very original indeed) but some of the worst victims of our unacknowledged social pecking orders are educated middle aged women. In a world where their male peers have a range of sexual choices, theirs are severely restricted. Or rather, the women themselves restrict them.
Perhaps men do the same. A middle-aged man who is not especially rich or especially successful or good-looking does not have his pick of 25 year olds. He’s going to be in the same position of my friend---limited in the number of woman within his community who are realistically (as opposed to theoretically available to him).
Danny is just such a man. Nice-looking, intelligent, well-spoken, but not—speaking strictly from a socioeconomic standpoint---in my friend’s league. Meaning that being with him is not going to enhance her social status. If she marries him, she won’t be able to afford the sort of ‘life-style’ to which her so-called peers occasionally treat her.
And this one reason why this charming, funny, pretty woman was lonely: the man she really liked best and who cared about her most wasn’t good enough for her.
It’s interesting that so many people want to be in relationships where the other partner is certain to have all the power. If you get your status or your sense of self-worth from the prestige of the person you’re with, if you’ve got to be with an alpha male or woman, then you’re always going to be in the position of the vulnerable person in the relationship.
I’ve been in a couple of relationships like that, actually, when I was much younger. There was a certain sort of exquisite misery in being with someone I had to constantly work to please, but however exquisite, the misery was misery.
But that’s not a very good prospect for a marriage. Marriage ought to free both partners to be themselves. It shouldn’t be constant work---there’s enough stress in the world without your having to spend all the hours there are meeting standards your spouse imposes out of fear of being left, being criticized or ridiculed, or being ignored.
“You were lucky,” said my friend, when I conveyed some of this to her. You never had to settle.”
She doesn’t know me well enough to know it, but by her standards I did. My second husband did not have my level of education, wasn’t wealthy, and was in an industry that some of my friends viewed with disdain---tolerant disdain, but disdain nevertheless. I married him because he was extremely engaging and fun to be with. He was another one of those people who could generate fun. He wasn’t precisely good-looking---he looked like the younger version of the actor David Jason, in fact---and he wasn’t a sterling character, but he could turn the charisma on and off like a water faucet (and there were drawbacks to this but---again---she knows only what she saw).
But in any case, when I married Don, I was in a different ‘place’ from my friend. At the time we married, I was sick to death of men ‘in my own league.’ I wanted fun. I guess she doesn’t.
One of the great loves of my life was chronically morose and chronically also short of money due to his absolutely rigorous allocation of almost all of his income to his daughter’s education. He was well-educated, but not in an occupation my friend would have viewed as a ‘profession.’ In his own estimation, he was certainly not a success. He was still one of the most interesting and funniest men I’ve ever known, and one of the most attentive.
Ah yes, attentiveness. Attentive to who you are---actually interested in what sort of person. That’s another thing you only get from someone who is more interested in you than he is in himself.
“You were so lucky to find Nick,” she said. “I still don’t understand how you did it.”
Okay (1) Ouch; and (2) again, she doesn’t know me well enough to know more than what she can see. Nick is very tall and good-looking. He is quite posh by English standards and I suppose he manages to convey this to Americans. This is what she sees.
But he’s not wealthy---quite the reverse. He went to public school and did his A-levels, but instead of going on to University in England he went to a Canadian University and then ran out of funds before he finished. And he had to give up the job he had in England to come be here with me so now he’s in school here. Nope, no financial enhancements for me there. We aren’t going to be summering on the French Riviera in the foreseeable future unless he sells his novel and it becomes a runaway bestseller.
She got quite angry with me, actually. I’m not sure what I said---I suppose I implied, if I didn’t say straight out, that perhaps she ought to try to appreciate Danny. I still remember her tear-filled eyes shining like green tropical fish in the (very, very fine and delicate) netting of lines around her eyes. “I deserve more,” she said. “I deserve a husband who is someone in my league.”
Ah, the lonely league of middle-aged single professional women. It’s a big league. If she were of lower rank socially, she’d be working out her angst in a karaoke bar with regular rounds of , ‘I Will Survive” the stock anthem of desperately brave lonely and feisty women. So cue the karaoke! (What? I used to have a great time at the karaoke bars that my Don took me too. Like I said, he was all about fun.)
Anyway, as to my friend’s dilemma and the dilemma of women like her: sad. Also? Kind of stupid, at least if the woman is in fact successful in finding someone and lets him go because he’s just not good enough. In her place, I’d totally have been dating Danny---‘settling’ as she calls it. I enjoy being with people who love me and value me and I guess I have a high enough opinion of myself that finding someone who appreciates me automatically makes me disposed to value him. And if you develop a reciprocal fondness for someone who thinks very highly of you, it very definitely can quite easily evolve into more.
But never mind: it has sort of a happy ending. My friend is currently dating a man from another city she met at friends wedding. Apparently, she considers him a worthy candidate. She’s told me what he does several times but I keep forgetting; I believe he is Vice President of a bank or an insurance company. He is good looking in that banker sort of way, I guess. He’s stodgy and controlling, but she confided in me that she thinks he might be ‘marriage material.’ I suppose he is. I don’t like him much, but I’m not the one who has to be with him.
As for Danny, he’s moved on. I think he is engaged. My friend devoted a day or two two sitting on my sofa sobbing over his disloyalty when he told her, and for the space of 24 hours, I really thought she was going to throw her new man over and beg Danny to come back. She didn’t, though she is surprisingly bitter about losing him.
She’s waiting now for her to make up his mind to give her a ring. She thinks it’s going to happen, though they have a lot of fights. He gets pissed off because she’s not in the mood to go out for a drink or because she forgot to record the football game he wanted to see and storms out the door. But he always comes back. And at least my friend is never bored----because, you know, ‘relationships take work.’ When I asked her if she was in love and, you know, happy, she smiled and shrugged...but nodded. Yay?
So anyway, the sonnet for today is Sonnet 57:
Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the houres and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spende,
Nor services to do, till you require.
Nor dare I chide the world-without-ende houre
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence soure
When you have bid your servant once adieu.
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affaires suppose,
But like a sad slave stay and think of nought
Save, where you are, how happy you make those.
So true a fool in love that in your will,
Though you do anything, [s]he thinkes no ill.
--The bard.
RELATED POSTINGS
It’s Just Not that Simple (review of He’s Just Not that Into You).
Toxic Love 101 and Sonnet 36: The Love that Dares You to Speak its Name.
More Help for Singles Who Don’t Want to Be: Why You’re Still Single and Some Reflections Prior to Reading It.
Look, Look! A good relationship book! Why You’re Still Single by Evan Katz and Linda Holmes [book review; relationships]
Images © 2006 Jupiterimages Corporation. Used pursuant to license from Animation Factory.com.
10:22:07 PM 
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