Last week, a week before Valentine’s Day, I had a breakdown when I got home after grocery shopping on a sunny Saturday. Nothing crazy, just an intense cry. Not that unusual for me, actually. The tears started coming while I was driving home from Trader Joe’s. My neighbor, who usually acts like she hates me, gushed about how beautiful I looked as I was opening my front door to bring in my groceries. I had gotten all dolled up because I thought I might go for a drink with a friend at a brewery event. That fell through and I didn’t have it in me to go to another social event by myself so I went grocery shopping instead. I smiled weakly at my neighbor, said thank you, closed the door, and immediately started bawling while my cats looked at me bewildered.
Maybe I was PMSing.
Maybe not.
There are certain times of the year that just suck when you’re single. Birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Valentine’s Day. They’re reminders of how you’ve failed somehow. “Why are you still single?” people ask me.
I don’t know.
There are probably a multitude of reasons and if I really want to feel sorry for myself, which sometimes I do, the story is, nothing seems to go right for me in the world of romance anymore. Nothing.
If I’m honest with myself, I’ve lost hope. I’m scared to open up. I’m very jaded, a little dead inside. Tired of being rejected by the ones I like, and there’s not many I like. Men don’t approach me anymore, not that they’re really approaching women in general these days. The apps are a second job I’m not interested in participating in. I’m working on my books, redoing my house, and my garage needs to be cleaned.
I’m sure I’m doing something wrong (see previous paragraph). I have been single for eight years. I haven’t had a Valentine’s since 2017. Take that in. Yeah. Guess I’m a loser.
The truth is the older I get, the more apprehensive I am about opening up to a relationship. Or maybe I’m too realistic about what won’t work. Or too scared of the wool being pulled over my eyes again. After years and years of dating, my intuition is spot on, which cuts a lot of potentials out. Because I can see the future. They’re called red flags. It’s happened too many times, so now I have to listen.
I don’t know how to spot a good man, but I sure know how to spot a bad one.
I think the main thing is I’ve lost my spark. My naivety. When I was young and dumb, the world was my oyster. I was falling in lust almost constantly. It was fun, but in the end I didn’t choose right. I didn’t listen to those pestering red flags. In my thirties I had to face the music several times. Come to Jesus moments about the men I had invited into my life. Who I had made my entire life.
My forties? Well, I had high hopes in the beginning. I was coming out of a two-year cougar phase at around forty. Ready for a real relationship with an age-appropriate man. Ready for an actual man. Except I wasn’t meeting men. Sure, they were my age, but there was always something; they wanted to play the field, they were forty-year-old bachelors who didn’t know how to hold a relationship, they used to be meth heads or alcoholics or sex addicts, they didn’t fit into my life and I didn’t fit into theirs—I mean there are a variety of things when you reach middle-aged singledom. I won’t get into the dirty details here. I’ll save that for the next novel.
So I retreated. Pretty much this entire decade so far has been a retreat, between Covid and practically being a nun. A long, long retreat. Though I have been busy. I bought my own place. I finally published my novel. It hasn’t been a total loss. But no Valentine—even though I tried. And boy did I try over the years.
Near the end of last year, a certain someone popped up in my texts out of nowhere. This had been a long-standing crush, I’m talking years of being in and out of each other’s lives. I honestly hadn’t expected to hear from him given it never seemed to be in the cards for us, but I always had a gut feeling it wasn’t over per se. Turns out his situation had changed and he reached out. We hadn’t texted in years. We had just seen each other for the first time in a long time recently, and the spark was still there. Which led me to think the obvious—he was free to pursue me and that’s what he was doing.
I was surprised, confused, and over the moon. I mean, as excited as one could be for him not explicitly saying what he wanted, which was never his strong suit. He likes to dance around things, keep you hanging. Predictably to anyone else but me, an actual romance was not what he wanted. After going around in circles for months, while I guess he “breadcrumbed” me morning, noon, and night—and I let him—it was pretty clear that he only saw me as a crutch through a hard time or just as a friend to whom he was attracted, but nothing more. After all these years, surely I was more than that, wasn’t I? I wasn't just some ho on Bumble to chat endlessly with for a confidence boost. We had a history of flirtation and yearning, drunken I love you’s, a love letter thrown in there, real life consequences, and yet, he just loves to downplay our connection.
He said, why can’t we be friends?
But we were never really just friends, I told him.
Clearly, I don’t understand men.
And now I have to leave to see Wuthering Heights…
‘Tis the season for unrequited love. Get the novel.
