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Is It Love or Just a Cheap Condo?

 When you're single, everyone has advice for you.  Especially people who haven't dated in over 20 years.  Boy, are they full of it!  Advice, I mean.  Of course, that's what I mean.

I never really felt like I had trouble dating when I was younger.  I liked a boy, he liked me, we went out.  Or either he didn't like me, I pined over him for 6-8 weeks then met a new boy.  It didn't feel that hard or complicated.  You spent time together, got to know one another, found activities you enjoyed doing together, checked on your chemistry and then boom!  You had yourself a relationship.

I'm not trying to make light of the tricky business of finding love.  Not at all.  On one hand, it's an absolute goddamm miracle that you can find a kindred flame in a whole other body.  And someone who looks and smells good too!  It's one of life's greatest beautiful accomplishments.

Rufus Wainwright said it best (of course he says so many things best): "Life is a game, and true love is a trophy".  Sing it, Roof.

By the by, since Rufus has a totally gorge husband and lovely daughter now, I think he basically shouldn't be allowed to sing about heartbreak ever again.  JS. 

But then when it looks like EVERY DAMN BODY is getting married, hooking up, meeting person after person it begins to look not quite so miraculous.  Kind of common actually.  Is this all really love?  Or is it just the best of what you could find?  Are you together because you knocked her up or because it's more economical to split the rent?

The thing called love?  Is it really miraculous?  Or just about real estate?  

I must quote the great Carrie Bradshaw (Candace Bushnell?) and I'm paraphrasing here....."if there were an endless supply of apartments in New York, we'd all stay single forever".  

Sounds superficial, but is she wrong?  

When I used to adore rom-coms, I also thought it so interesting that so many love stories are set in New York City.  I mean, c'mon....there are SO MANY PEOPLE.  You walk out your door and meet a guy.  You meet a guy in yoga.  You meet a guy waiting to get your cigarettes at the bodega (Carrie Bradshaw, again).  You meet a guy trying to catch the same cab, fighting for the same promotion, fighting for the same parking spot, fighting for the same man.....but you get it.....you meet men everywhere!  

So as a young and naive person I always wondered why?  Why in the name of Nora Ephron couldn't these people meet the right person and fall in love?  

It took me two marriages, two divorces, multiples dates and relationships before and after and many date apps created and cancelled to figure it out: too many choices.

I will now quote his honorable and majestic David Matthews: "It's a typical situation in these typical times.....too many choices".  

Why settle for that guy holding the door for you at Starbucks?  There could be an even cuter guy at Salsarita's at noon?  Why keep the mundane convo going with the guy you met on Bumble last night when you can swipe and swipe again to a more athletic guy with an even better-paying job on Hinge?

But please believe me when I tell you that this goes both ways, men and women and all sexual preferences and orientations.  What happens is that most of the "good people" give up and stop trying.  They sit at home, binge a lot of shows, paint their bathroom cabinets and whine to their friends about how they're never going to meet anyone.  Then if they do, by some miracle of the FSM, meet an eligible person, they dump the baggage they have been carrying from all this past relationship and dating trauma onto this new poor fool and hope he doesn't run away screaming.  If he doesn't, CONGRATULATIONS!  You have won the game of Life!  Enjoy your new relationship and that shiny new real estate. What if  he does run?  Welp....sucks to be you.....lather, rinse, repeat.....you're single again, baby.

If you're cuffed up, go and kiss all over your person right meow and tell that little sweetie there is no one better that could have ever landed in your dullard lap of mediocrity.

If you're not, come back here for more.  I have a feeling we're just getting started on this long and complicated road of single life, middle age and how much dating has changed since I was a young pup.  Yep, sucks to be us, don't it, hon?

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