The Man in the Brochure

Well, somehow, after just a few lovely dates, your imagination has already booked a romantic holiday with a man you have known for eleven days.

The destination looks spectacular. The chemistry is excellent, the attention is flattering, and the gentleman in the photographs appears to have arrived directly from a very expensive brochure advertising a place called Your Fabulous New Life.

Naturally, you would like to go.

Welcome to the Grand Romantic Resort

Five stars. Ocean view. Emotional availability subject to seasonal conditions.

The brochure is impressive. There are wonderful dinners, affectionate messages, spontaneous plans, and perhaps a sentence such as “I feel like I’ve known you forever,” which is particularly efficient because it allows two people who met eleven days ago to behave as though they have already survived several winters together.

The photographs practically turn their own pages.

And the lovely thing is that the brochure may be entirely truthful. The ocean really is blue. The suite really does have a balcony. The man really may be attentive, funny, generous and delighted to see you.

The brochure has not necessarily lied.

It has simply chosen not to photograph the laundry room.

Beginnings are wonderfully incomplete, which gives the imagination an enormous amount of room to decorate. A thoughtful gesture becomes evidence of a thoughtful nature, a beautiful date suggests a beautiful future, and a man who remembers how you take your coffee is suddenly showing remarkable potential as a lifelong companion.

Your imagination upgrades the reservation.

Perhaps a suite would be more appropriate.

After all, he is affectionate, he plans ahead, and nobody has yet discovered any substantial reason to be disappointed. His peculiar little habits are still somewhere behind the palm trees, and the parts of his personality that may eventually make you stare silently at a wall have not been included in the tour.

There is also something intoxicating about being wanted in the beginning. Attention arrives fresh every morning, plans appear without negotiations, and nobody has become casual about anybody yet.

The resort has just opened.

Management is everywhere.

Then ordinary life checks in.

Sometimes this is when the destination becomes even better than the brochure. The glossy excitement settles into affection, familiarity, and all those ordinary little things that would make terrible advertising photographs but rather wonderful relationships.

The resort becomes a home.

Lovely.

But occasionally, the destination turns out to bear only a passing resemblance to the brochure.

The man who originally seemed extraordinarily attentive becomes rather relaxed about contact. The great planner develops a mysterious inability to know what he is doing beyond Thursday. Emotional availability, once advertised as an all-inclusive feature, begins operating reduced hours.

You glance at the brochure.

This is odd.

The gentleman beside the infinity pool looked extremely available.

Perhaps you booked the wrong package.

And because the beginning was real, the imagination keeps producing the original photographs as evidence.

“But he was so attentive in the beginning.”

Yes. Page seven is particularly beautiful.

“He said he had never felt like this before.”

That quotation received a full-page spread.

The difficulty is that the brochure has become the standard against which the entire destination is judged, and it has several unfair advantages. It contains no boring afternoons, inconvenient habits, disappointing discoveries, or former girlfriends wandering through the lobby.

Nobody in the brochure suddenly announces that he “doesn’t know what he wants.”

The brochure knows exactly what it wants.

It wants you to book.

The actual relationship may now resemble a small regional airport.

But the brochure remains magnificent.

Occasionally, the resort even produces another perfect day. The attention returns, the connection feels wonderful again, and suddenly the old photographs seem completely accurate.

See? There is the ocean. There is the balcony. Everything is exactly as advertised.

Then someone closes the pool for three weeks.

And there you are, at a rather different resort, still clutching the original brochure and waiting for the man from the beginning to return, while the man you are dating is standing right in front of you.

The gentleman on page three was magnificent.

Unfortunately, he seems to have checked out.