Cplow Esther,
I’m the one from the letter about finding yourself single in your forties. I would like to update you on the latest developments: after having that “Waiting is not something you do sitting down” stuck in my head, even if I am not yet Happily Engaged I must admit that there have actually been more opportunities than usual.
I met new guys who were interested in me, that’s it, but unfortunately I didn’t like a single one of them. I’m the first to tell myself that it would be much simpler to give up the pretense of getting together with a guy who actually attracts me and isn’t just ‘a nice guy’ but the fact is that I can’t do it. Not in the past, when the guy in question was perfection on paper (but all I thought while being with him was “good god, let go of me, stop clinging to me, give yourself peace”) and not now with guys who I find depressing from every point of view (I’m sorry but that’s the way it is, beyond their appearance, some are hateful and passive aggressive, others are thirty-eight year olds with a receding hairline but their life has stopped at 17).
More sociable to open up to a new relationship
All last year I made an effort to be more social than usual even though I already am one, even though the parish is “few friends but good” and as I was saying I have seen the results… but for some reason, I meet new friends who, like me, adore meetings based on chatting between girls (therefore nothing mixed groups to be included in), or people with obvious problems to just avoid, or simply types who make me ask “but why after the World Wars were there men like my grandparents around and instead I have to meet these people? ”
A new love thanks to a pp?
After your reply I also triedBumble app, the calmest (no Tinder, I can’t do it) and it wasn’t traumatic but it didn’t lead to any meetings either. Zero. Lots of pleasant chatter about hobbies and work but no one who offers a coffee, and I don’t even think about doing so for the reasons you can imagine, given how many strangers would pretend to confuse “let’s meet in person to see what it’s like” with something else. I don’t really feel like it.
I thought about new courses and the like, but a) I’ve already done them in the past (in the plural), all activities that actually interested me, but then I got bored and from a social point of view I have to say that they didn’t lead to anything, not even lasting friendships and b) going back and forth between the province and the big city for work, I know that I would end up wasting a lot of money by skipping a lot of lessons.
Even though things have improved, I don’t really know what to do. Or rather, there would also be fish but they are highly indigestible and have a bad taste that I can’t swallow.
The others have relationships
However, I am tired of seeing many girls I know, friends or girls who make videos (nerd-themed, not the various “hi guys”) perpetually engaged to the often not-too-cute-but-not-terrible male (I think you have also right about the story of If He’s Engaged Seems Better) who follows them good-naturedly and provides company for holidays, lunches and dinners out, Netflix evenings and so on, every now and then even their son escapes (although I can’t help but wonder how come to the children of people who in many ways still have an adolescent mentality, but oh well, rightly it’s none of my business) while I’m here snorting when the guys who try to hit it will be present at the group outings (a new one, in the province, now I have it, although the males aren’t exactly intriguing). with me but I don’t like them and to do anything in company I have to go crazy contacting all my friends, trying to understand if there will be one free at the moment I need it (and this applies to both girlfriends and singles, they are half and half).
Someone you can feel safe with
Then there would also be the whole story of loving each other and being close all your life with someone you respect and wouldn’t really disgust me, of course. Basically I would just like to stay calm and peaceful in my (possibly eternal) relationship with a man who likes me and makes me feel safe and warm, so to speak. I’ve lost count of the “when you give up and say ‘I’m just fine being single’ you find yourself engaged/married” that I’ve heard and read in recent months, Ester: maybe they’re right, the problem is that to the anxious part of my brain it seems like the perfect way to always find myself at the top ten years from now, with people who keep telling me, or rather, have never stopped.
Do you think I’m doing something wrong, aside from poor use of dating apps?
I would really like to understand it, even if I am disturbed by the idea that the answer of the world, of the universe is: “Yes, if you really care about this engagement story in a short time you have to do like many others, get together with one of those now disposition that in the best of cases you find little more than insignificant and hope to become attached to it, obviously also forcing you to go to bed with him even if he physically repels you. Congratulations”.
Thank you for your patience,
M.
Ester Viola’s response
Dear M.,
We know that you shouldn’t simplify, simplifying is very bad for your health, but sometimes you need to cut things with an ax also to start looking at them more nakedly, to be more prosaic, to better understand where the complexity lies.
So let’s divide ourselves in two, like in elementary school, with a straight line of chalk in the middle of the blackboard. There would be, we have already written, two categories of human beings.
Different types of relationships
The Contented (this is what the representatives of the opposing side call them). They are the ones who have experienced love that takes away sleep and hunger a couple of times before the age of thirty, losing a lot of time and a little health. A few tries and many broken bones later they said to themselves one day: well, we tasted it,
that’s enough now.
So, having closed the shed of stupendous and romantic love, they meticulously set out to search for love by reflection – as Tolstoy called it, love after one has gone mad.
What is it about. A more compatible and calmer feeling. First of all: we choose a person who already likes us. The most adaptable in terms of character. They reject the accusation of being dull people, losers who have let go of every opportunity for happiness. On the contrary – they don’t think of themselves as the losers of love, they feel like veterans.
The deluded (that’s what the representatives of the opposing side call them)
Either you give me love or I leave, that’s the logic. They are moved by romantic films, under happiness in their vocabulary it says: right. They are incorruptible disciples of purity of feeling and effort: we must believe in eternal love, there are happy families, there are the always faithful and couples blessed by a divine anti-rust. Even unicorns, if you believe in them enough, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
They are willing to do anything to fit into the ideal couple. They want sublime commonality. They too have already been bad but they want to try again, again and again, they magnify the nobility of the feeling with great conviction. He is also annoyed by the wastefulness of others, those who, just to call themselves a couple, make everything go well. Never them. It seems unworthy of man to him not to love as one can love. Passion, he likes passion. They swear: it’s worth it.
Now it’s your turn
Now, dear M., you can’t expect the work of persuasion from me. There is no persuasion that one does not make oneself. With a lot of courage (you need it for the two fronts) you choose your party and position yourself as you prefer. One is worth one and one is worth the other. They don’t give medals to the resistance if you engage in a poorly matched couple and not even pats on the back to the diehards in search of the golden fleece.
It depends on your inclinations. From what one feels capable of looking at while looking forward. How you want to spend your life.
What I know, as I chop the world with an ax in this Monday-stroking space of mine, is that we divide ourselves into three when it comes to love.
Those who: at all costs.
Those who: optional.
Those who: whim.
At twenty you have to know where to be, but if you’re still there at forty, how to say.
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