12 Observations About Dating, Love and Other Human Peculiarities

Every so often, after watching people date, fall madly in love, lose their minds, reunite with men they swore were dead to them and explain perfectly obvious behavior with theories requiring several charts, I notice something.

Not a rule exactly. Human beings are far too unruly for rules. More like a pattern that keeps wandering past wearing different clothes.

So here are twelve of mine.

The relationship that begins at approximately 140 miles per hour can be wonderfully intoxicating. He is calling constantly, plans are appearing before you have learned his middle name, and by Thursday there is enough emotional momentum to power a small European country.

Then one day—gone.

Meanwhile, relationships that take six months to become relationships sometimes require another six months to understand that they have ended.

Perhaps people simply have their own speed for change. Some fling open doors. Others stand in the doorway for quite some time discussing hinges.

This seems terribly inefficient.

For employment, we want dates, history, references and explanations for suspicious gaps. In dating, a handsome stranger says he loves dogs and Italy and we think, Well, this seems promising.

Meanwhile his romantic résumé may contain four overlapping girlfriends, one mysterious engagement and a previous woman who would very much like five minutes of our time.

We eventually learn the résumé, of course.

We just learn it while employed.

Scarcity does funny things to us.

Put a handbag in a shop window with a sign saying LAST ONE and suddenly perfectly sensible women begin experiencing destiny. Put the identical handbag beside forty-seven others and destiny apparently goes for coffee.

Dating has its own version of this madness. Someone with a full life, his own plans and places to be can seem intriguing; someone permanently hovering three inches from your elbow can lose a little mystery.

There is a reason beautiful things are displayed one at a time rather than piled in a basket by the entrance.

Men change careers, leave relationships, fall in love with unsuitable women, relocate and occasionally behave like escaped circus animals at every age.

What changes later in life is not necessarily the behavior. It is the amount of furniture attached to it.

Leaving a six-month relationship is one thing. Leaving a thirty-year marriage can disturb children, friends, homes, finances, traditions and the Christmas seating arrangement.

An old relationship is like a giant oak tree. Pull it out and half the garden comes with it.

Perhaps that is the crisis.

Women naturally search themselves for explanations. Was I attentive enough? Interesting enough? Thin enough? Mysterious enough? Did I spend an unfortunate amount of time wearing the gray pajamas?

And yet habitual patterns have an inconvenient habit of existing before we arrive.

A man who has cheated repeatedly has already been conducting this particular orchestra. The newest woman did not invent the violin section.

This does not make betrayal less painful. It merely makes the idea that one magnificent woman could have prevented an established pattern rather flattering to our imaginary powers.

This has caused endless confusion.

A man can be kind, thoughtful, reliable and perfectly lovely while producing absolutely no romantic electricity whatsoever. Another may create enough electricity to illuminate Paris while possessing several qualities one would not especially recommend.

Women are not rejecting kindness.

They are discovering, sometimes inconveniently, that kindness cannot negotiate with chemistry.

Chemistry is unreasonable like that. It has never cared about anyone’s résumé.

Years ago I practiced something in front of a camera and became convinced I looked energetic, bright and wonderfully convincing.

Then I saw the recording.

Apparently energetic, bright Alexandra had sent a quiet, rather shy understudy.

I was horrified.

We all live partly inside our own interpretation of ourselves. A woman may feel perfectly friendly while walking around with the facial expression of a duchess who has just discovered someone seated incorrectly at dinner.

Perhaps “men never approach me” occasionally contains another mystery: they have concluded that approaching you requires written permission.

Over the years I noticed that people who were relentlessly critical at work often seemed just as difficult to please in their personal lives.

Nothing was ever quite right. A coworker was incompetent, a friend was exhausting, a partner was too this or not enough that—and sometimes there was no partner because apparently the entire available population had been reviewed and found wanting.

Of course, being single does not make someone difficult. But when colleagues disappoint you, friends disappoint you, dates disappoint you and every new person eventually develops a fatal flaw, one begins to suspect the common denominator may be sitting rather close to home.

Some personalities do not leave the magnifying glass at the office. They bring it to dinner.

Early dating is magnificent for this.

You know approximately seven things about him, yet somehow a complete man begins forming in your mind. He is thoughtful. He is emotionally mature. He probably communicates beautifully during conflict.

He has not yet experienced conflict.

He merely held the restaurant door open.

Then reality starts supplying additional information and everyone acts shocked.

“He is nothing like I thought!”

Quite possibly.

But for several weeks, half of him was you.

Some people can spend an entire evening speaking to you without ever really meeting you.

Their childhood, their job, their divorce, their boss, their gym routine, their difficult neighbor—you eventually know enough to write the unauthorized biography.

You, meanwhile, remain an attractive listening device.

Other men ask things. They remember. They return to some ridiculous detail you mentioned three days ago.

A person who is curious about your world while you are standing in front of him has at least noticed that your world exists.

A surprisingly encouraging beginning.

This is one of the more peculiar romantic complaints.

“I’m so lonely. There is absolutely nobody.”

Then somebody appears.

Too short.

Another appears.

Too boring.

Another one: wrong shoes.

Another: laughs strangely.

Another: perfectly nice, but apparently commits the grave romantic offense of not causing immediate hallucinations.

There certainly are lonely people who genuinely struggle to meet anyone compatible. But occasionally loneliness sits beside standards so exquisitely specific that the future partner would need to be custom-manufactured in Switzerland.

There is an enormous difference.

A woman may believe that saying yes to everything makes the relationship warmer: his schedule, his preferences, his disappearing acts, his sudden returns, his plans made at the last minute because apparently calendars are oppressive.

Eventually she has become marvelously easy to have around.

That does not necessarily create devotion.

Human beings tend to notice the shape of something partly because it has edges. Remove every edge and what remains may still be lovely, generous and accommodating—but rather difficult to distinguish from the furniture.

And perhaps that is the strangest thing I have noticed about relationships: we spend so much time trying to understand other people while forgetting that they are quietly learning us too.

Not from what we announce.

From what we repeatedly do.

Which is terribly inconvenient, because behavior has always been a dreadful gossip.