A Loser Rarely Looks Like One at First

The inconvenient thing about a loser is that he rarely arrives looking like one, which would make dating beautifully efficient if he did.

He could simply appear with a warning label and a small man behind him whispering, “There are structural issues,” but instead, he looks perfectly finished.

He is handsome, has a decent job, a good coat, a charming laugh, perhaps even matching towels, and he asks questions, orders wine without turning it into a performance, and gives every impression of having been successfully assembled.

So you relax, and then, very gradually, the little cracks begin to show.

At first, the cracks are small enough to ignore: he is “thinking about” changing jobs, “sorting out” his finances, has been meaning to fix something in his apartment since spring, and his ex was apparently impossible. His car also has a mysterious light on the dashboard that has been glowing for so long it is now part of the décor.

None of this means much by itself because real people have loose ends and life gets untidy; a good man can have a dreadful year without becoming a dreadful man.

The interesting part begins when every loose end somehow seems to drift toward you.

At first, you help because you are kind: you remind him about something once, encourage him through a bad week, and lend him a little money because the timing is awkward and he promises to return it Friday.

Then somehow Friday becomes more of an idea than a date, but still, he has potential.

Potential is a dangerous little word because it lets you admire the finished house while standing ankle-deep in plaster dust.

You can see exactly who he could be — more focused, more reliable, less chaotic, finally doing the thing he has talked about for two years, perhaps even buying a second frying pan — and because that improved version is so vivid in your mind, the current version gets an astonishing amount of patience.

You are not carrying him, obviously; you are being supportive. You are not organizing his life either; you simply happen to know when his insurance is due, what time his dentist appointment is, which bill he forgot and why his mother is annoyed.

Somewhere along the way, you find yourself holding the clipboard.

The charming man from the first date is still there: he still has the good coat, still makes you laugh, and may be affectionate, sexy and perfectly capable of planning a wonderful weekend when the mood strikes him, which is exactly what makes the whole thing confusing.

But everyday life with him seems to need a lot of help.

There is always one more thing that needs attention, and somehow you are the person noticing it first; he can live beside the crooked shelf for six months, while you mention it once and suddenly you are discussing brackets.

He is always almost ready — almost ready to commit, almost ready to save money, almost ready to deal with that recurring problem, almost ready to become the man he describes so convincingly.

And soon is where many renovation projects live.

After enough time there, tiny improvements can start looking magnificent: he calls when he said he would and you are impressed; he pays back half the money and this feels encouraging; he finally makes the appointment he has postponed since January and suddenly the evening deserves champagne.

Basic adult functioning has begun to look like a marble staircase.

Disrespect makes the picture less charming because if he lies, cheats, humiliates you, dismisses you or treats your feelings as an inconvenience, we are no longer discussing chipped paint and slightly crooked shelves; the wiring is on fire.

Yet even then, the original tour can be difficult to forget — the handsome man, the laughter, the lovely dinner, the glimpse of what the place could become with just a little work — and “just a little work” has quietly become years.

Then, Sometimes, You Leave

Then, sometimes, you leave, and this is when the renovation project may develop extraordinary energy.

The man who could not arrange a plumber for four months suddenly has plans, insight and several heartfelt paragraphs, while everything you had been saying for the previous eighteen months has become astonishingly clear.

Apparently nothing inspires home improvement quite like seeing the person holding the ladder walk toward the door.

Sometimes that change is real and people do wake up and grow, but sometimes the sudden burst of effort has less to do with becoming a different man and more to do with discovering that the comfortable system around him has disappeared.

That is why “loser” has very little to do with money, education, status or whether he owns enough grown-up shirts, because those things are mostly decoration.

What reveals him is the amount of work life beside him quietly hands to you: you become more patient, more resourceful, more forgiving and more capable, while he remains forever promising.

A loser rarely looks like one at first because, at first, you are admiring the façade; only later do you notice the tools in your hand.

He looked completely finished when you met him, which makes it rather funny how you ended up doing all the work.