The body widens, and people are welcomed
-Stephen Dunn, “The Snowmass Cycle”
into it, many at a time. This must be
what happens when we learn to be generous
when we’re not in love, or otherwise charmed.
I read that poem while sitting by the Bay. I had just watched a couple get married on the beach. The night before, I was wrestling with the question “where is my heart?” Leave it to the poets to add language, wisdom, and context to the things we know and experience. There is a type of generosity that, provided we’re attentive to the world, we can acquire through the practice of solitude. In being alone, there’s a turning inward that happens which, in turn, facilitates turning outward towards others. It softens you. It changes you. For much of my adult life, I was unpracticed and clumsy at this form of generosity. Now, I’m only slightly more practiced and sightly less clumsy.
When my subscription to the dating app ended, I took a week off from all apps (maybe it was two weeks). I had already deleted two of my three accounts and was waiting for the subscription to end before deleting the third and taking my mini hiatus. That was probably around the end of March.
I don’t really like using these apps, and honestly, for as much time as I spend on them “looking,” I do very little actual dating. I’ve written about this “challenge” lots of different times… I’ve described it as an erectile dysfunction of the soul, a type of ennui, a dance between having a lack of discernment (I find everyone interesting) and too much discernment (I can’t imagine being wowed by anyone), a holding on to the past, a perpetually failing attempt at letting go of expectations, and a fervent embracing of what I’ve learned to appreciate through solitude, etc. etc. etc. I suspect that I have a lot of reasons for feeling less than motivated to put myself out there – yet I feel compelled to put myself out there. You gotta be in it to win it
During the brief hiatus, I didn’t miss it. I went about my business as usual: looking for, applying to, and interviewing for jobs; taking long walks through the city; sitting by the water and reading and writing; going out to shows and bars; staying in; basking in as much sunshine a possible. Aside from having fewer distracting alerts on my phone, my day-to-day life off of the apps didn’t change very much from my day-to-day life on the apps.
When I got back online (maybe a week or two ago), I limited myself to one app. I redid the profile – but it was mostly the profile I had before. I added in a picture of me and the dog and said I miss having him around. Pictures of people with dogs get more likes, and I do miss having him around. I’ve tried to do a better job of being proactive. I’ve reached out to a few people. I’ve sent likes. I’ve sent messages. Some people have replied, some haven’t. The ennui (for lack of a better phrase) continued and continues. Once again, my day-to-day life on the app isn’t terribly different from my day-to-day life off the app.
Then I had a dream about an ex, after which, I played stupid mental games with myself (asking myself if I’d still enjoy having a beer with this person) and won stupid mental prizes (having to admit that until I’m enamored by someone else – this person will always have some pull on me). Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Then, because the cosmos seems to have a sense of humor, I woke up last Thursday (the “anniversary” of when this ex and I broke up) to a Facebook invite to connect with a woman I knew from when I lived in Memphis (we went on a date or two and we were friends for a few months). Also that morning, and far more ironically, the ex’s dating profile appeared in my “compatible” feed on the dating app. I accepted the Facebook invite from Memphis, I ignored the dating app.
On this particular app, when someone’s profile appears in your feed (your stack of potential matches) you basically have three options: you can x their profile and send them to the dustbin; you can send a like, a message, or a rose (Hey there! How you doin’?); or you can do nothing, and the next time you open the app they may or may not appear in your selections. This isn’t terribly different from what relationship experts, the Gottmans, say we do countless times in our most committed relationships (turn against, turn towards, or turn away/act indifferent).
As a general practice in life, I don’t turn against people. I can count on one hand the number of people who are “dead to me” – and even with one or two of them, there’s probably some wiggle room. As someone who is frequently trying to be more present in the world, I try not to turn away from people. I listen to their stories, I give them space and sometimes comfort. I practice paying attention. In the relationship with that ex and afterwards, I learned to be a turn towards type of guy. As a teacher, I learned to be a believer in and giver of second, third, and forth chances. As a nonprofit person, I learned the importance of meeting people where they are with compassion and understanding. As a spiritual person, I learned to believe in change and growth; non-linear trajectories and non-duality. Turning towards is in my blood. That morning, despite all of my natural inclinations towards turning towards, I neither turned towards nor against this person. I just let it sit there.
That’s nagged at me. Kinda in the way that seeing a job that I’ve applied to get re-posted and boosted nags at me. I’m a qualified candidate and I’m sitting right here doing nothing… available… eager to work… eager to build something… eager to learn.
I’d be lying if I said I haven’t wondered what a reunion with that ex would look like. Not necessarily a romantic reunion, but some sort of re-connection (obviously I’ve thought about it – it’s infiltrated my dreams). The easiest piece to imagine in such a reconnecting is to imagine what it would be like to see the dog again. She (the dog) and I got along really well. That experience influenced my decision to adopt my own pittie, Kimbrough. I’m pretty sure she (the dog) would woo woo woo if she saw me (the ex, maybe not so much). Dogs are unconditional like that. They don’t hold grudges for very long and they’re almost always happy to see you. In this respect, many of us could stand to be a little more like dogs.
The thing is, not having been the one to end things, I didn’t suffer whatever internal anguish or hard break that my ex suffered. I didn’t lose my appreciation for or attraction to the person I met and fell in love with those many years ago. I have, in the past, felt the need to escape other relationships – so I understand a little of what she might have been feeling and why she can’t see me in the same light as she used to see me. But in my world and head, there was never a feeling that I needed to get out of that particular relationship. There was never a need to make an enemy of this person or see them in a negative light. Aside from her leaving and saying some unkind things, I didn’t dislike the person they were or the time we spent together – that would have felt dishonest and revisionist. And while we seemed to argue over having our various needs met, I always had this deep sense that we had more going for us than most couples did (we joked that we were the best couple ever, but I kinda believed it). I always assumed the disagreements were natural things to be negotiated, things we’d learn to navigate and compromise – or as Stephen Dunn says elsewhere in the “Snowmass Cycle” poem, “To be without some of the things / you want, a wise man said, / is an indispensable part of happiness” and “Before a person dies he should experience / the double fire / of what he wants and shouldn’t have.”
Back then, after the break, despite my therapist’s advice to just sit with my feelings and learn to be open to this person without motive or hope, I desperately wanted her back. Despite trying to sit without hope, I couldn’t banish it or bury, kill it or leave it stranded in a ditch somewhere along the road out of town. Hope followed me around dogfaced and dreary, always three steps behind. I desperately hoped for our eventual triumph. It was the one certainty I felt while in the relationship: an arrogant sense that we were better than whatever the world might throw our way. I was, in hindsight, all too understandably pathetic in my inability to let go of hope (for her, for us, for something resembling what we started). For years, it became one of my great balancing acts: holding on with one hand the idea that we had all the potential in the world, while simultaneously letting go of, with the other hand, the very same notion that we can overcome time and distance. This foolish optimism in the triumphs of love, is part of who I am. This, too flows in my blood. A painting that I’ve had hanging in my various homes (from the days before I met this ex) is the Banksy painting of a girl letting go of a balloon and the graffiti words “there is always hope.” I understood, but fought, the reality that letting go would be necessary because realizing our potential required the consent and determination of both parties. Love doesn’t succeed when it’s one-sided or abandoned.
I don’t know when the switch happened, but eventually the desperation wore off and a level of acceptance set in. A big part of that acceptance was coming to grips with the possibility that we each had our own realities and versions of the story. My version didn’t make hers any less true, and more importantly (for me), her version didn’t make mine any less true. She could very easily have said, with all of the conviction in the world, that it wasn’t working and would never work between us, and I could just as easily have said that’s not how I saw things. I had been training myself from lessons learned in podcasts and books on what it means to love unconditionally – which, by definition, is not rooted in reciprocity. It, too, is a softer kind of love – more expansive with more shape and padding – a type of generosity borne out of absence and solitude.
There’s an irony to where she and I are today. While we’re both out in the dating world looking for companionship, much like we were when we first met, our roles are reversed. When we first met, she was between jobs (about to start a new one), she was relatively new to the state where we lived (a transplant from the other coast), she was living in the city, and she hadn’t been dating for several years. By contrast, I had been in the same job for several years, I was on my home turf (living in the house I had lived in for over a decade and on the coast I had live on my entire life), I was living a somewhat quiet life in the burbs, and I had done an exhausting amount of dating. Now, I’m the one who is new, a coastal transplant looking for work, living in the city, and “trying” to date for the first time in years.
Much of what I experienced in that relationship, including our attempts to work through our challenges, are the things I would want in every relationship. In some respects, it set the standard for what I’m looking for. It’s what I’d aspire to (with an admittedly slower burn) were I to get far enough along in the dating process to think about a long-term partnership. Which, awkwardly and ironically, makes it entirely too plausible and logical to consider picking up (in perhaps a different and wiser way) where we had left off. If I had to bet, I’d bet that she still likes doing a lot of the same things I like to do – it’s why we matched in the first place. If I had to bet, I’d bet that like me, she’s mellowed and made peace with some things over the years. Beyond what I saw on the dating profile, I don’t know much about how she’s living her life. For myself, I feel as though I’m very much living the life I thought she and I would have enjoyed (though I probably make more trips to the bar than I would normally make). This, in the end, was how I defined moving on: not in finding another partner, not in denying a past I adored, but in moving forward with the life I wanted (my life) with or without her – always open to the possibility of good and familiar company, always willing to revisit and do the work.
And this is the crux of my current dating dilemma. I dated/met close to fifty people before she and I met. In those fifty or so encounters, there might have been one or two others where the connection felt effortless and easy. There might have been one or two others where there was an abundance of laughter and excitement and silliness and care. There might have been one or two others where the things we appreciated in life seemed to mesh. If I’m currently meh on dating, it’s because I don’t feel like playing the numbers game, I don’t like the odds, and quite often I’d just as soon save my money and do my own thing. Solitude has taught me a different and more expansive type of generosity towards and appreciation of the world. But until I put myself out there more, until I experiment and experience more, she, and the ease of our connection, will always be an attractive option. Until I envision a new sense of home with a new person, my old vision of life (the one I’ve pursued in the absence of other options) will still be front of mind. Or, as Dunn suggests, “…Sometimes absence / makes the heart grow sluggish / and desire only one person, or one thing.” Where my heart has grown sluggish and singular in its desire (with whoever can provide it, match it, or add to it), is the familiarity, comfort, and sense of home I already had.