The Hard-Won Lessons of the Solitary Years

When my then-boyfriend Mark lost the lease on his Brooklyn apartment, moving in together made good sense. We were in our 40s, both battle-scarred from decades of romantic unhappiness, and had finally found the relationship we had longed for our entire lives. So even though the timing was bad (we had been dating for only six months), we knew where this was headed. Why wait?

“I’m ready to take it to the next level,” said Mark, while cooking chicken paprikash in his soon-to-expire apartment.

I watched this sweet, handsome man sauté onions, and my heart turned upside down. After two decades of dating guys who could barely commit to next week, here was a wonderful man who wanted to be with me, plain and simple.

I was thrilled — and terrified. Sure, Mark and I were having a glorious time: weekends picking apples in the Pennsylvania countryside, brunches at his favorite Mexican diner. But living together was different. Or at least I thought it would be. I couldn’t know for sure. Because, to my deep embarrassment, I was nearly 40 and had never shared a home with a boyfriend.

For most of my adult life, I was unattached. I spent my 30s with a slowly escalating fear that I would never find a partner. My anxiety wasn’t merely about getting older and supposedly less desirable in our youth-obsessed culture. I also worried that my single years were shaping me, hardening me into a woman too finicky and insular for a lifetime partnership.

I had noticed that friends going through breakups often took solace in the fact that they had learned from those failed romances. They had acquired important skills such as how to be vulnerable, how to set boundaries, how to listen and how to speak up. They had learned the art of compromise and forgiveness and how to love someone even when you don’t always like them. Through practice and repetition, they were mastering this exquisite, complicated dance, cultivating wisdom and muscle memory that could be successfully applied to future relationships.

I was glad my friends had found an upside to their heartache, but statements like those also made me nervous. If one learned how to have a happy partnership by trial and error, then I was missing crucial on-the-job training.

Even so, when it came to the particular question of whether Mark and I should move in together, I knew my concerns were valid. “It’s too soon, and for the wrong reason,” I told my friend Paul at a bar one night.

He shook his head, looked at the ceiling and said, “No wonder you’re single.”

by Sara Eckel, NY Times |  Read more:

Image: Brian Rea

h/t YMFY