I started talking to a woman at a party this weekend who confessed that she was taking a break from dating. I was immediately excited. I wanted her to hurry up and finish her explanation of how she had come to a point of general exhaustion in her dating life so that I could add my own thoughts. "I'm taking a break too!" I wanted to tell her. It was a thrill to have found such immediate common ground with someone I had only met a few minutes before. Everyone I knew at the party had gone home early. I had turned to the closest person I could find to strike up a conversation hoping to stave off going home early on a Saturday night. I didn't want to seem like I was hitting on her, so when the opportunity arose to disavow any immediate participation in the mating rituals of urban city dweller I felt giddy.
The idea that one can take a break from dating seems languorous and self-indulgent. It's like saying you're going to take a break from ice cream. Dating isn't easy, and it can feel like work, but it's always interesting. Even when it's patently boring, you can always learn something new about people or how you relate to certain kinds of people. And the possibility of romance sparking underneath the surface, like some exposed electrical wire, is always an exciting secret to carry with you throughout the day. I always feel an extra sense of adventure and purpose on days when I have a date.
In a lot of ways it's a privilege to be able to apply so much time and energy to the idea of finding a partner who'll fulfill some romantic ideal. I always wonder about the comparative success of arranged marriages, at least compared to the staggering divorce rates in the unarranged world. I wonder if it isn't entirely reckless to believe that you can select your own mate using a divining rod whose most important criterion is love. Looking at marriage as an effective partnership between two people who agree to set aside personal agendas for the sake of a family is painfully anti-climactic. But it's statistically more likely to hold fast than the woozy promises made under a lovespell on a hot summer night.
One of the most rewarding things about being in Peace Corps was seeing how quickly and totally all the socially constructed barriers between people can be broken down. I remember the first day showing up for staging and looking around the hotel conference room at the rabble of oat-fed college graduates looking attentively at the bullet points on a government-issue whiteboard. I couldn't believe I had traded my real friends and family for this group of sandal-wearing do-gooders. It was repulsive to imagine I was leaving behind a life I had so carefully built for this random group of people who were so earnest and idealistic that they almost should have been wearing helmets.
A few weeks later we might as well have all been menstruating on the same lunar cycle. Stripped of country, companionship, language, and possessions, the need for trust and intimacy become irrepressible; like the unavoidable urgency of oxygen when you've been underwater for too long. Bonds form and love grows like a flower sprouted in cow shit, no less strong or real for its crass beginnings.
Sometimes dating feels like hurling yourself against another person's outer barriers over and over again. Both sides want the closeness, acceptance, and intimacy, and neither side trusts the other will be able to provide them. So we fixate on politics and fashion, deconstruct taste in music or movies, and use them as barriers to keep from having to offer someone empathy. We circle each other in bars and coffee shops, evaluating, approaching, and dismissing; as if love were something you simply find and not something you give.
I was just about to start telling all of this to the woman at the party, the pudgy one with horn-rimmed glasses who I was worried would think I was hitting on her. Twenty seconds after I told her I was taking a break from dating, she excused herself to go outside for a cigarette. I looked around the room and didn't see anyone I recognized. Then I left.
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