On being single

As I finished grad school, wave after wave of engagement announcements headed my way. And in my experience, it’s exceedingly common that two “intellectuals” end up together. It’s a different set of priorities that lands you in this environment – a willingness to get paid very little to work almost constantly, to continually strive for improvement on a project that has already consumed all your talent and time. Anyway, driven people who are too busy to find social connections outside their departmental circle tend to drift together. And the matches tend to be good. I’m usually much more pleased by the choices of friends I made in grad school than I am with undergrad acquaintances when it comes to selecting a romantic partner.

I decided early on that this particular kind of relationship wasn’t for me though. I grow tired of talking about very specific research, and would rather discuss more interesting topics. Architecture, football, books, television, and families make much more interesting conversation than the gossip that swirls throughout the department. I’ll confess to some interest in who failed the qualifier, people who can’t handle the coursework, the girl who walked out of lab because she was just too overwhelmed… But for me to retain an identity outside the academic world, I knew it would be more appropriate to date men who weren’t involved with large-scale research. I need the escape from these concerns and to remember that some problems I saw as critical were sometimes incredibly trivial – I need a way to touch base with other problems, and ways of life.

Having made that decision, I relied on my network of acquaintances to set me up with men outside the university. And they did – sometimes 2-3 at a time. So I dated a whole lot more in grad school than I did in undergrad, but it was all for naught. Did I learn about myself? I guess I now know that I hate it when someone says they’re going to call when they aren’t. I love men who are chivalrous, though they were few and far between in my dating experiences. Levels of education don’t equate to how smart or interesting a person is. (Unfortunately, that last statement applies to me too.) Dates last forever when all you want is for them to end. I can have a miserable experience, then come home and giggle about it.

I did date someone relatively seriously during my last year of my graduate program though. While he wasn’t perfect, he was really pretty great. And we got along quite well, which isn’t always easy. But something about it felt wrong to me, and I think he felt it too. There was no question of not pursuing opportunities elsewhere when graduation began to approach. Our relationship, over the course of almost a year, had simply not evolved into anything that would require me to stay around. And so I left, without much of an end to what we shared, and I feel badly about that.

What I take from that experience frightens me though. I had been working late one evening, on what I can’t remember, and we were exchanging email. He was funny and smart and interested in what I was saying. We liked each other and things were clicking. I finished up my project, said goodnight, and got ready for bed feeling warm and hopeful. But as I curled up against a mound of pillows, I began to panic. My heart started to beat too fast, and I couldn’t breathe – this sudden terror swept over me and I got up and began to pace.

Normally, before I go to bed, I think about the man I might marry. How he speaks, his priorities, education, experience, political opinions, appearance, sense of humor, whether he likes dogs or cats, if he wants to live in the city or somewhere more rural, his occupation and hobbies, his friends, how much he’ll like my family, how long we’ll date before he finds me irresistible and proposes, how he’ll kiss, how long he’ll want to wait before we make love, the books he wants to read, how it'll feel when we meet, whether he prefers college or professional football…

So I’ve daydreamed myself many suitors, and they’ve evolved over time from physically perfect boys to men who are more sexy than handsome, more thoughtful and deep than educated, quiet and successful, reserved and well-read, and of course, he should watch football of Saturdays – college football is clearly more dramatic and interesting. But regardless of how I see him in my mind, this imaginary man has given me tremendous comfort over the years. I tell myself, over and over, that he’s out there waiting. There will come a day when we’re both ready, then we’ll meet and somehow things will work out so that I can plan a small wedding and we can begin a life together. Getting serious about someone - even someone lovely who cares about me and my work, gives me space when I need it, leaves an important meeting so we can celebrate my birthday – means giving up the fantasy of someone better. And I found that prospect to be incredibly unsettling. Too unsettling, in fact, to make a relationship work.

So as I started to find increasing number of flaws in our budding relationship, I became more distant and was able to turn more to the men in my head than the one in my life. I retained control over my feelings. I know these imaginary men don’t exist, and they’re not out there patiently waiting for me to come along. But I can retain hope and selfishly chase my own dreams while telling myself that it’s just not time to be with someone yet. And that’s comfortable for me.

I want to recall some of my dating experiences in grad school here. Some of them are funny, and some are quite sad. But maybe going over how that felt and how I reacted will shine some light on why I try so desperately to protect myself. I think I do want to be married – to share myself with someone completely – but I’m not positive of that. The choices I've made, my current priorities and how I deal with life indicates that finding someone special isn't very important to me. So if the goal here is self-exploration, this is a major area in need of debugging. Because there’s some glitch in my romantic code, and I seem to be living in this endless loop while the internal program that should be making me want to meet men who are real and flawed and wonderful instead creates variations of the right man only inside my imagination.