My Formerly Hot Life (17 page)

What I did when I was in my 20s was similar to Diana: I was all too quick to hand over aspects of myself for the sake of whatever relationship I was in. I didn’t have a strong
enough sense of myself to stand firm for what I wanted—indeed, sometimes I didn’t even think to
ask
myself what I wanted. I’d let the guy set the terms—how serious things were, how often we’d see each other—as if I were completely flexible. I wasn’t, but I was afraid my need was too vast, too off-putting to express. It was only after he was on the hook that I allowed myself to examine my catch. As often as not, I’d realize he wasn’t such a catch after all and I’d throw him back, apparently inexplicably, twitching as he hit the water. Not that I understood any of this at the time; I mostly just walked around bewildered, hurting people or getting hurt, and then doing it again. For years there were entire neighborhoods of New York City I’d have to avoid, for fear of running into one of my ex-fish. Now I can see that I didn’t know myself well enough to share myself.

Later, in my early 30s, I maybe overcorrected a little—I had a brief hard-ass phase, during which I carried a figurative “what I’m looking for” checklist on a clipboard—before doing what most people do: muddle through figuring out how to be part of a pair in love and still be yourself. Eventually I got together with Paul. And now in the Formerly years, since my sense of who I am feels less tenuous and less assailed and more of a simple fact of life, I rarely need to defend it against perceived onslaughts. In our case, it makes it easier to see the other person’s point of view.

Like, I’m much more open than Paul is. Just ask and you’ll know which medications I’ve taken, whether I’m currently in therapy and why I prefer Playtex to o.b. tampons. OK,
maybe not the last one, but you get the idea. I can’t be bothered to keep things I’m not ashamed of a secret, and it seems to make other people more comfortable talking about sometimes taboo stuff, too. Years ago, Paul would grimace when I spoke about personal things at a party, and later, in the car home say, “Do you really think you should have said that?” I’d get defensive and say, “Obviously I thought I should say that because I DID say it.” I’d then lay out my case for why what I said was fine and how I’m a highly socially successful human being and have rarely offended anyone, and what the hell, did I have to act like the Queen of England, for chrissakes, and who appointed him my personal censor, anyway?

I felt as if he was saying that my entire personality was wrong and offensive and that he needed me to be someone else. If such an exchange were to happen now (which it likely wouldn’t because he’s used to my big mouth and trusts me not to reveal his private affairs, like the time he—Just kidding!), I’d simply raise an eyebrow at him. I know I am less private than him—than most people, in fact—but it works for me. If what I say sometimes embarrasses him, it means he has a lower threshold for public revelation than I do, not that I’m a big boorish (Formerly Hot) mess. When I look at it that way, I don’t feel as defensive, and I’m able to be sensitive to his discomfort and maybe not go into my whole birth control history with his mother.

Of course, this level of understanding could simply be because I’ve been married for a while now, and I feel more secure.
It’s hard to tease out what changes in a relationship are due to being a wise Formerly and which are due to simply having figured out the best way not to act on the impulse to grab a letter opener and inflict multiple puncture wounds on one’s partner (not that I’ve ever thought about that). I know for me, nowadays, the more “right” I think I am, the less I need to fight about it and get my husband to agree with me.

Another friend of mind, Jenna, who has been married 10 years, has come to something similar. “Before, it wasn’t so much that I needed to be RIGHT as that I felt like we needed to agree—that it was fundamental to our relationship. How can I live with a man forever who thinks THIS while I think THAT???” Today Jenna gives less of a hoot what people in general think of her, and that includes her husband, in the best possible way. “When we fight,” she says, “I think we both mostly just want to be heard. If I get that from him, I don’t need to agree or be right.” Personally, I find that yelling ensures you get heard, so that’s my first resort. Kidding. Another thing I’ve learned: The opposite is true.

I love being married to my husband, in particular, but if God forbid something were to happen to him, I highly doubt I’d do it again. For one thing, my husband has ruined me for anyone else—I can’t imagine another man trying as hard to make me happy or being as patient with my faults. But the big reason is that marriage breaks your balls. It’s far harder than parenthood, at least for me. Sarah, divorced when she was 32, is dating, but with no real urgency or momentum.
And while she’d like to meet someone—regular sex is something she misses, the man hunt is not the all-consuming focus of her limited free time, as it might be for someone who has never been married. This is partly because at 43 she’s reconciled to not having biological children, and so has no deadlines to beat.

Being a Formerly usually means that your life experience has disabused you of any romantic fantasies of being whisked away from the icky parts of life, least of all by another person, let alone one on a white steed. “Having been married, I know that there’s nothing magical about it—there’s nothing that’s going to magically change when you say ‘I do,’” Sarah explained. No joke. After having slogged through some of the harder times in my marriage, I’ve come to the same conclusion. In fact, you only become more yourself the longer you’re with someone, and this realization—that real life is not always as sparkly as the kind of fantasies I had about love when I was younger—is richer and more reliable. As Sarah put it (I swear the girl should be an oracle, or at least a life coach): “I know that whether I’m alone or with a partner, I’ll have joys and disappointments. They’ll be different ones if I’m not with someone, but they won’t be fewer.” I do believe she’s right.

If a single Formerly actively wants a partner, of course, the apparent dearth of decent men doesn’t make it easy. It’s a nationwide mystery and a source of endless speculation where the ones who aren’t married, aren’t fatally flawed and are looking to be in a relationship congregate. The romantic
possibilities don’t feel endless, as they did when we were all in college. Another friend of mine, let’s call her Helene, has been divorced for five years and is dating in earnest. She told me, with a roll of her eyes, “Instead of asking a guy where he lives or where he went to summer camp, it is more like, When you say you’re separated, does that mean you still live with your wife and you just don’t sleep with her anymore?” Part of what’s tough about it is that many people are paired off, or there’s a glaring reason they’re not. Not to mention that guys date down in terms of age, whereas, cougar stereotype to the contrary, women generally prefer their more mature peers.

But back to Sarah. Spending time with her and hearing her opinions on the various men she has dated recently has made me aware of something that may explain the relative dearth of decent guys at our age: an unwillingness to bend to the point of discomfort, to, say, become involved in a relationship that requires you to change your already jam-packed, lovely, rich life too much. She is the walking, talking, good-life-living embodiment of what makes being this age so wonderful—knowing yourself, not caring much what others think, and a hard-won sense of confidence and independence. But needing so little can make remaining unattached way more appealing than trying to cram a round relationship into a square hole. There’s no moving to Pittsburgh for a year while he finishes med school, and there’s no being with someone you hope will improve with time. Sarah said: “Things work really well now, and there is so
much that’s fulfilling to me already, so to bring someone into my life, he has to add to it.” Sarah inspires the hell out of me, even though I am married.

The truth is, I always thought the people I was with when I was younger added to my life—why would anyone go out with someone who doesn’t? It was just that the specific things they added—drama, intensity, wild anecdotes I could share about the things they wanted me to call them in bed—weren’t what I needed, and it took me a long time to realize that. Many of the men I dated, of course, were wonderful, but the good things they contributed weren’t enough to balance out what I felt they were taking away. Now that we’re all older, we want a lot from the people we’re with, because in many ways we need less. After a date with a perfectly nice guy, in which she came away with a vague sense of why his last relationship didn’t work out, Sarah said, “I am not willing to commit to someone’s potential anymore.” The handful of friends I know who have gotten separated or divorced have done so because the guy they thought they’d married didn’t live up to his potential, and being alone (and free to look for someone else) was preferable.

Lest this sounds like the guy needs to be perfect, that’s not what I mean. I never thought I’d be married to a guy who eats all but one bite of cottage cheese and puts it back in the fridge, because—my theory—being the kind of guy who snarfs all the cottage cheese doesn’t fit in with his self-image. (Of course, I don’t realize we’re out until it’s too late for me to get any.) Knowing your own foibles can make you more
tolerant of others’, and I know I do things he finds equally irritating. Shocking, I know.

But we’re talking foibles, not major obstacles to being a successful human being—such as having a primary care doctor, an income or a viable plan for generating one, or being able to accept that if, by age 42, his band hasn’t broken through, then making music is merely a fun hobby—that a guy isn’t taking responsibility for. I love the way Sarah explains it (clearly she’s devoted no small amount of thought to this): “We’re at midlife, so he needs to be at least midway toward living the kind of life he wants.” Given the number of guys she eschews, that would seem to mean she has high standards, but it doesn’t sound that way to me.

The flip side of having such a full life without a partner is that it can be hard to clear out emotional closet space for one. But having been around the block more than your average 25-year-old makes it easier to spot the right person when he does happen by (and friends tell me that you have fewer superficial deal-breakers, like he must surpass your height in heels by at least two inches). That’s what happened with my never-married friend Andrea, who last year, after much dating, finally met her life partner. She knows he’s right for her because “In every relationship I was in, I would jump through a million hoops to make it work,” she told me. Her guy fits into her life and she to his—she needn’t change hers in ways that are important to her for the sake of staying together. Now she knows that while relationships take work, “Not everything needs to feel like work. Your life should
feel like it’s opening a bit because of this person, not closing.”

I feel lucky to have realized this in my 30s, and so knew to grab Paul when I had the (second) opportunity. And with him I feel like my life is opening. And that’s why we’re still together—that, and the fact that at this age, I know it’s mostly my job to keep my own life feeling full of possibility. I think that’s why Sarah is happy, despite not having met the right guy. “I want to meet someone, yes, but I want a lot of things.” She shrugs. “It’s kind of a relief—if you’ve got the resources to have a happy life, you will have one. It’s nice being less invested in the outcome.”

Not every Formerly is so circumspect, of course. Some single women feel as if it’s now or never, and the married ones are sometimes not content with their lot. After a few drinks, I know more than a few women who fret half-jokingly that they can’t believe their husbands are the last people they’re ever going to have sex with. To borrow a phrase from
He’s Not That Into You
, they don’t want to “waste their pretty” on the men they married! They say, “I look good now, and that won’t last forever, so if I’m going to cheat, I’d better get on it.” They are mostly kidding, of course, but some probably feel like a part of their lives that they miss is being closed off by their relationships, or in some way the relationship is not doing it for them. That happens, especially because what you and your partner (who is probably also hitting Formerly right about now) need can change over time. No amount of hard-won wisdom and maturity
can protect you from shit happening, or from the fact that unless you’re Julia Child (who—according to the movie
Julie and Julia
, anyway—had one of those rare, enviable marriages in which she and her husband only found each other more endearingly quirky over time), spending every day with the same, imperfect person can sometimes be … just what it is.

But knowing yourself, and knowing what you need, gives you a huge leg up when it comes to love, and keeps you from bailing at the first or 15th sign of blah-ness. Amy jokingly bemoaned the tepid romance in her marriage, but then clarified: “I used to think romance was important. Now I know that having a guy who will—without any whining whatsoever—go without sleep all night to stay up with you when you’ve had a horrible sinus surgery and will then drive you to the hospital in the morning in a snowstorm so they can fix it, that’s what’s important.”

That, and someone who thinks you’re sexy even with moustache bleach on your lip.

I
knew something had changed for me at work when, one afternoon a couple of years ago, I walked down the hallway to my office, balancing my drink on my sandwich and stabilizing the whole setup with my chin as I slid open my office door. I was working then at a magazine at which I managed a group of junior editors, whose cubicles were in a row outside my office. Three of them were huddled around one of their computer monitors, not an uncommon sight around the features department, where people often help one another with tricky on-screen issues. I smiled and raised my eyebrows at them as I bumped open the door with my hip, to acknowledge how goofy I must have looked. They smiled back. After setting my lunch down on my messy desk, I realized I’d forgotten to take a straw. I stuck my head out of my office, preparing to ask if anyone had a spare.