At Last
Love pops up in funny ways.
It was a Friday summer evening, the air hot, light and dry. We sat with our old friends Kate and Jake and our new friends Sam and June on a patio full of other diners, shaded beneath a deep green canopy of grape and wisteria vines. The mood was light, warmed by the coming of summer after a long, snowy winter and a cool lingering spring. Voices rose and fell around us; laughter came often. In the background, on stereo, Etta James exulted in finding her love. At last.
“So, how did you two meet?” asked Sam.
Erik cocked a bushy eyebrow at me from across the table. I nodded. “We met in 2009 on Match.com,” he said. He likes to tell our story, and Kate and Jake, who were there at the beginning, don’t mind hearing it again, so I settled back as he leaned forward, into the attention of all around the table.
It happened like this.
“I think I’m ready to get back in the game,” I told Kate on one of our day-long weekend walks where we wandered from our side-by-side homes in Palo Alto over to the university, then to downtown, where we treated ourselves to a circumspect salad finished with indulgent chocolate froyo before heading home through the tree-lined neighborhoods. “But this time, I’m going to do it right.”
“Great. So you’ve set your intention,” said Kate.
“Um, yes,” I paused. “Okay, maybe. Oh alright. Say more.”
“Well, have you created your list? What are you looking for in a partner? You know, it’s like looking for a sofa. You know you need a sofa, you’ve got plans and the budget to buy it, but you haven’t found it yet. If you have a clear idea of what you want — dimensions, color (no plaids!) texture, shape — then when you see it, well, you’ll know what to do.”
“Jump on it!”
“Exactly.”
Kate was right, and I decided to get some help with this clarifying process. But from who and how?
The idea of hiring a relationship coach popped to mind in the shower one morning. So I did an online search and starting calling down a short list of twenty. Carol was seventeenth.
“I’ll cut to the chase,” I said. “I’m ready to find my life partner. Can you help?”
“I can,” said Carol, unlike the sixteen before her who couldn’t give me a simple yes or no. Her quiet confidence had me in her office the following weekend.
Carol suggested we start with some simple questions. Like: “Why do you want a life partner?” And “What are you bringing to a partnership — both positive and negative?” And “What needs cleaning up before you welcome a significant other?”
“Ummm, are you sure these are the easy ones?” I asked.
So maybe I’d been hoping for shortcut rituals, affirmations, or magic wands. Instead, there was a lot of talking. A lot of homework. And a lot of writing. Lots and lots of writing.
Writing assignments included writing about my strengths. Writing about my shortcomings. Writing about the qualities I wanted in a partner — and why. Writing about the qualities I didn’t want in a partner — and why. Writing about which qualities in a partner were negotiable and which were non-negotiable — and why. Writing about my values — what’s important to me and what’s not important to me. And of course, why.
And then finally, “What qualities do you want in your relationship?”
“Wait.” I said with considerable exasperation that particular Saturday morning. “Didn’t I answer this in notebooks 2 and 3?”
“No, actually,” said Carol. “That’s been about you and about your potential partner—individually. The question is: What do you want the relationship between you two to look like?”
“Ummm. I’m guessing this goes beyond listing desired shared interests.” I sighed.
“It does,” Carol nodded in happy agreement. “Yes! For example, you might have differing needs for talk as individuals — but if you both value good communication in a relationship, then it doesn’t really matter how talkative or not one or the other of you are. You may have some shared interests — and that can be fun and enjoyable — but a deeper, more lasting foundation will be what you two build on shared values.”
AHA!
“You’ve got it,” said Carol, when my eyebrows shot up. “Now for your homework: Describe a perfect day with your partner, from sunup to sundown—in writing. Include details and dialogue. Go!”
I’ve always loved Kate and Jake’s meet story. Kate tells it like this: After encouraging her to make a list (hers included no suitors under 6′ 1″ because Kate’s 5′ 10) some good friends decided to set her up. They called and asked her to meet them at a local watering hole one Saturday evening. Kate refused. But the night wore on and the friends kept calling, so Kate finally capitulated, arriving quite late to meet six very tall—and by then very tipsy—gentlemen. Jake was one of them.
Kate didn’t notice Jake right away, seated as he was further down the table and tucked to the right of his more outgoing housemate, Ron. But at one point, he leaned forward, and Kate and Jake got into a conversation. A good one.
Later that evening, when Jake asked for her phone number, Kate wrote it down on a deposit slip from her checkbook and placed it on the table between them. “I’d like to visit that house you’re building,” she said, intending to offer a little encouragement.
“Visit?” said Jake. “I want you to move in!” Which led Kate to wonder if he might be a nut job. But before she could surreptitiously retrieve the slip of paper, Jake had it in hand. “I will call you,” he vowed, with startling intensity. “Ummm. Okay,” said Kate, figuring the less said at that point the better.
Back at their home that night, Ron said he planned to ask Kate out. Jake grabbed him by the tee shirt and shoved him against a wall.
“Kate’s off limits,” said Jake. “I’m marrying her.”
“So, what’s next?” I asked Carol in our last session.
“Well, now you get out there!” she said.
I scowled. After all the work, I felt the least Carol could do was set me up with a guy or two, if not six.
“Liz, you still have to do all the usual things: Figure out how to meet people. Go on dates. Try and fail and try again,” she said. “But you have great chance of success, because now you have a much deeper appreciation of yourself and a better sense of how to identify your true potential partner.”
“More homework,” I sighed. But I thanked and hugged Carol, and told her I’d keep her posted on my progress.
“So, what’s next?” asked Kate when I reported back that evening during our walk around the neighborhood.
“I guess I start all over again.”
“It’ll be an adventure!” said Kate.
“Rah rah,” I grumbled.
So I re-upped on Match.com. Kate supplied the photos (she got three good shots out of a hundred — no lie), and this time, I kept my profile short and to the point:
I think the glass is at least half full and often overflowing. As a result, my kitchen is not always tidy, but at any given time, it’s the place where friends and family would rather hang out. Kindness and gratitude matter to me, as do stray animals and young people. I’m quick to laugh and improvise, and I always want to be learning. I believe I’ll find my match in a man who is positive and curious; intelligent and playful; sure of himself and his path, and ready to share that goodness with someone else.
And then I posted it and settled down to wait.
I waited. And waited. And waited.
“So, do you two have any tips for me?” I asked Lisa and her physicist husband Stuart over brunch at my house a few weeks later. Both science-y techy geeks, they were a Match.com success, with Lisa having won Stuart over when he discovered she shared his secret passion for celebrity gossip.
“What’s your prospecting strategy?” asked Lisa.
“Ummm. I’m waiting to see who I attract,” I said.
“May I suggest a slightly different approach? Don’t wait. Actively pursue! Set a weekly target. Review profiles and send notes to the 10-20 guys you think look promising. See who responds and winnow from there.”
“Geez,” I sighed. “That sounds like a lot of work and not very romantic.”
“The greater the velocity and number of bodies, the likelier two bodies will collide,” said Stuart.
“The Geek’s First Law of Attraction,” said Lisa.
So I made Match prospecting part of my Sunday routine. Exercised, read, caught up on work, did laundry, and reviewed profiles in the search for my soul mate.
I struck out repeatedly. Some wrote back, but rarely the ones I thought promising. I was disappointed in particular not to hear from GeekyGuy, whose profile I found warm, friendly and smart—although his goofy photo, overuse of ellipses and misuse of the contraction (it’s rather than its for the possessive) gave me pause (because, as I discovered in my work with Carol, I am a bit of a grammar snob). As the weeks went by, my optimism waned. And that’s why, on my drive into work one morning, I decided it was time to quit.
Resolute, I strode into the office ready to remove my profile. And go figure, for the first time in weeks, the guy in the cube across from me was already in and in a chatty mood. I sighed. Later, then. Fine. Whatever.
And at 9:30 that morning, a message from GeekyGuy popped up in my personal email, almost a month after I’d messaged him.
Back in the present, Erik had reached his favorite part of our meet story.
“After that first email exchange, we spent 40 hours on the phone over two weeks. And then we figured we’d better meet and make sure the pheromones checked out. We did, they did, and we’ve been together ever since,” Erik said.
Kate winked slyly at me at “pheromones.”
“But there WAS this, which I didn’t mention until we’d been together a few months,” added Erik. “Because I didn’t want to come across like a ‘woo-woo’ kind of guy.”
“Is that even possible?” said Jake.
“Right?” said June.
The thing is, Erik had abandoned Match.com. That’s why he—GeekyGuy—didn’t respond to my note. But he continued to receive notifications about potential matches, including “WordWench in Paly.”
Erik said he had a feeling about that one. “It kept flashing through my mind that I should read that message from ‘WordWench’,” he explained to our friends around the table. The feeling persisted and intensified, until one morning, Erik woke up with that thought on his mind and over coffee renewed his Match subscription, read my note and replied. By 10 a.m. he had set a phone date with me.
It was the same morning I had decided to drop off Match.
“So, you’re saying it was divine intervention?” asked Sam.
“I don’t know about any intervention,” said Erik, “But it certainly turned out to be divine.”
I think back on all the homework Carol asked me to do—and in particular, the last assignment. The one where I described in detail a perfect day with my partner. I wrote about waking up together, making coffee and talking in the kitchen early in the morning. Working on projects or running errands together in companionable conversation. Taking a hike in the afternoon, and cozying up after that. I’d written about cooking together at home with family and friends, sharing food and stories; music and laughter. About sitting together under the stars, holding hands as we talked about anything and everything.
I’d described a day much like most days in my life with Erik.
“Truly divine,” I smiled at Erik.
At last.
