He Has the House. He Still Wants to Tour the Neighborhood

There is something almost comical about a man who says he is happy with you while continuing to browse dating sites, because it has the emotional logic of a man who has just bought a beautiful house and still spends every Sunday attending open houses “just to see what’s out there.”

Apparently he is not moving; he simply enjoys examining other kitchens.

This is the strange little world of the man who never quite stops looking. He may be affectionate, attentive and perfectly comfortable in the relationship, yet somewhere in the background he keeps one eye on the market, as though a woman with better countertops could appear at any moment and completely reorganize his emotional floor plan.

He does not necessarily think of this as betrayal, because that would make the situation far too clear and considerably less convenient.

In his mind, there may be two separate activities. There is you, the actual woman he sees, sleeps beside, has dinner with and perhaps introduces to friends, and then there is browsing, which he treats almost like a harmless hobby he happens to conduct among attractive single women.

He is not doing anything, he explains; he is merely looking.

Of course, “just looking” is one of humanity’s more flexible phrases, usually heard moments before someone buys a coat, orders dessert or somehow ends up exchanging messages with a woman named Chloe.

The interesting part is the effort involved, because a dating profile does not accidentally update itself, new photographs do not wander onto it during the night, and conversations with attractive strangers require at least some combination of attention, curiosity and time.

So while he may insist nothing is happening, something clearly is: part of his romantic attention is still facing outward, scanning the horizon as though the relationship beside him is lovely but perhaps not yet the final edition.

And that is what makes these men so peculiar, because they may genuinely like the woman they already have.

You could be wonderful — warm, funny, beautiful, affectionate, interesting and remarkably tolerant of his habit of leaving cabinet doors open — and none of this necessarily cures the browsing, because the browsing may have very little to do with your shortcomings.

It may simply be how he approaches choice.

Some people choose and settle happily into the choice, while others choose and immediately become fascinated by everything they did not choose.

Give this man a lovely apartment overlooking the park and, within six months, he is wondering whether somewhere across town there might be one with a bigger balcony, better storage and perhaps a wine fridge he has never previously cared about.

The internet, naturally, is delighted to help.

There is always another profile, another face, another intriguing woman who likes travel, dogs and apparently standing on cliffs at sunset while wearing an enormous hat. She has no irritating habits yet because he has never known her long enough to discover any.

She is pure possibility.

You, unfortunately, are real.

You occasionally have a bad mood, you get tired, you may object when he behaves badly, and you probably have opinions about where wet towels belong.

The woman online has no such defects because, at this point, she barely has a Tuesday.

She is still an open house with fresh flowers on the kitchen island and absolutely no evidence of plumbing problems.

This is why endless browsing can become so seductive: reality has details, while possibility has staging.

The new woman has not yet repeated a story, complained about his driving or asked why he said he would call and did not. She exists in flattering photographs and a few charming sentences, which is an extremely easy condition in which to appear perfect.

So he browses, perhaps he messages, and perhaps he meets someone “just for coffee,” a phrase that has done heroic work over the years disguising things that were very obviously dates.

And still he may come home to you believing these two worlds have nothing to do with each other.

In one world, he has a relationship; in the other, he has options, and what he would really prefer is for nobody to make him choose between the comfort of having one and the excitement of imagining the others.

That is the real luxury.

Not another woman.

Possibility.

The possibility that somewhere out there is someone even more beautiful, more exciting, more compatible, more effortless — a woman who somehow combines everything he likes in you with none of the inconvenient evidence that she is an actual human being.

Of course, if he finds her and dates her long enough, she too will eventually become real. She will have moods, needs, opinions, probably a preferred thermostat setting and, if fate is feeling playful, very strong views about wet towels.

And somewhere around that time, another open house will appear online.

This is why some people can stay on dating sites for years. They are not necessarily searching for a particular woman anymore; they have become attached to the feeling that the next possibility might solve whatever ordinary imperfection exists in the current one.

They never quite close the search because closing it would mean admitting that every beautiful house eventually contains a drawer that sticks.

So they tour, compare, keep the brochure and continue wondering whether the next place might somehow come with charm, comfort, excitement and absolutely no maintenance.

Meanwhile, the woman beside them can spend an enormous amount of time wondering what she lacks, when the more interesting answer may be that nothing she could possibly become would satisfy a man who is emotionally devoted to the next listing.

There will always be another profile, another imaginary kitchen, another view and another woman who, from a safe distance, appears to come without a single inconvenient feature.

Some men do not have trouble finding a good woman.

They have trouble leaving the open house.