The Great Romantic Fitting Room

After several disappointing relationships, you may begin to suspect that the entire male population has been manufactured in the wrong size.

You have tried the handsome one, the charming one, the serious one, and the one who seemed promising until you discovered that his idea of a relationship involved seeing you whenever nothing more interesting was happening. Each time, you entered with hope and left wondering how something that looked so lovely in the beginning could become so uncomfortable.

Eventually, the romantic boutique starts looking less like a place of possibility and more like a place where you have spent an enormous amount of time trying on things that were never going to fit.

Welcome to the Great Romantic Fitting Room

The mirrors are flattering, the selection is unpredictable, and the returns counter has seen things.

Our first customer has found a magnificent dress. The color is gorgeous, the fabric is exquisite, and the price suggests that somebody important has approved it. Unfortunately, she cannot breathe.

She looks in the mirror.

Perhaps if she stands differently.

Perhaps if she skips dessert.

Perhaps if she simply becomes a slightly different woman, the dress will stop behaving like a medieval torture device.

This is where dating can become wonderfully absurd, because a man may be attractive, accomplished, charming and completely wrong for you, yet the temptation is to assume that the fit would improve if only you could make a few adjustments to yourself.

You become less expressive, more accommodating, less interested in the things that matter to you. You discover that you can be remarkably flexible about almost anything when the man is handsome enough.

The dress remains the same size.

You, meanwhile, have become rather difficult to recognize.

And sometimes the problem is not even that the man is a poor specimen. He may be genuinely lovely, with excellent qualities and absolutely no desire to make your life miserable. He simply wants a different kind of life, a different kind of relationship, or a different woman.

A beautiful dress can be the wrong dress.

This is not a scandal.

The fashion industry has survived it for years.

Next comes the clearance rack, where the prices are irresistible and the imagination becomes unusually optimistic.

You were not looking for a man who lives three states away, does not want children when you do, or considers commitment an interesting concept best discussed by other people. But he is charming, the chemistry is wonderful, and surely one cannot be expected to walk past such an attractive opportunity without at least trying it on.

Besides, perhaps the distance will not matter. Perhaps he will change his mind. Perhaps the relationship will somehow become exactly what you want despite several important details suggesting otherwise.

The bargain is becoming rather expensive.

And then there is the dress you have already bought.

You have spent months with it. You have invested time, affection, patience, and an impressive amount of emotional energy. It has been altered, repaired, and given several opportunities to become the dress you thought you were buying.

At this point, returning it feels almost like admitting defeat.

So you keep it.

Not because it fits particularly well, but because you have already spent so much on it that you feel compelled to get your money’s worth.

The fitting room has become a hostage situation.

Of course, people are not dresses, and nobody can know everything about a man after a few dates. Some of the most important things about a relationship only become clear with time, and even a promising match can turn out differently from what either person expected.

But the shopping comparison reveals a peculiar difference in how we respond to disappointment.

If a dress does not fit, we rarely conclude that we are unworthy of beautiful clothes. We may be annoyed, especially if it looked magnificent on the mannequin, but we do not generally return home and announce that fashion has rejected us as a person.

Dating, however, can make an unsuitable match feel like a verdict on our entire romantic future.

One disappointing relationship becomes evidence that we have terrible taste. Another makes us wonder whether we are asking for too much. After several, the imagination begins preparing a gloomy little speech about how perhaps love is simply not meant for us.

The boutique has had a difficult season, and suddenly we are questioning whether we deserve to wear clothes.

Meanwhile, the magnificent dress is still too tight, the clearance bargain is still three states away, and the purchase we cannot bear to return is still taking up an extraordinary amount of space.

Perhaps the problem was never that you were the wrong size.

And perhaps the next lovely thing does not need to be altered, repaired, or persuaded to become something else before you can enjoy it.

The romantic boutique is still open.

The selection is still unpredictable.

And the returns counter, mercifully, does not require a written explanation.