Of Course the Relationship Fits Him. You Keep Altering It

Some men are very fond of an “easy” relationship.

Easy is one of those lovely words that can mean relaxed, natural and pleasant, or it can mean the woman has quietly rearranged half her life so nothing ever rubs him the wrong way.

At first, it hardly looks like anything. He says Wednesday is better than Friday, so Wednesday it is. His place is closer to work, so you drive there. He hates making plans too far ahead, so you become wonderfully spontaneous, which is a glamorous way of saying you have stopped knowing what you are doing Saturday until approximately 4:30 p.m.

No great sacrifice has occurred, just a few alterations, and somehow, after enough of them, the relationship fits him beautifully.

This is Where Dating Starts to Resemble Tailoring

He arrives with his schedule, habits, preferences, moods and little areas where apparently nothing can be too tight, too demanding or too complicated, and because you like him, you begin adjusting the garment.

A little room here, a shorter hem there, and perhaps we remove the entire sleeve marked “I would like to see you more often.”

There. Much better.

He slips into the relationship and says, “I love how easy this is.”

Of course you do, darling. It has been made to measure.

The funny part is that women often do these alterations for perfectly sweet reasons. You want the relationship to have a chance, you know people are busy, you do not want to turn every scheduling problem into a summit meeting, and frankly, driving twenty extra minutes seems hardly worth discussing.

So you accommodate, then accommodate again, and soon you are the woman who always goes to his neighborhood because he has a dog, an early meeting, a difficult parking situation, a preferred pillow and apparently borders he cannot cross after sunset.

Meanwhile, your own inconvenient little life begins disappearing into the seams.

He may genuinely like you very much, which is what makes the whole thing interesting. He enjoys your company, loves having you beside him and thinks the relationship is going wonderfully because, from where he is standing, it probably is.

Dinner appears on nights that suit him, sex happens without much planning, you are cheerful when he has time and understanding when he does not, and even disagreements are remarkably well behaved because you keep deciding this is not the right moment to bring something up.

There is never a right moment, incidentally. Men who enjoy convenience have calendars in which serious conversations apparently fall on February 30th.

Then One Day You Stop Altering

Nothing remarkable happens; you simply cannot come over because you already have plans, so you say, “You can come here.”

And suddenly the relationship, which has been fitting him like a beautiful Italian jacket for six months, pinches under the arms.

Your place is far, he is tired, traffic is terrible, the dog needs something and tomorrow is apparently complicated.

It is extraordinary what forty minutes on the highway can reveal about love.

Or perhaps you finally say that the last-minute dates no longer work very well for you. This seems like a tiny change from your side, but to a man who has grown used to custom tailoring, it may feel as though someone has replaced his trousers while he was wearing them.

“What’s changed?” he asks.

You have — or, more precisely, you have stopped changing quite so much.

This is often when a woman begins wondering whether she has become difficult, which is a fascinating conclusion considering she may simply have asked the man to occasionally arrive at her house.

But convenience can spoil people, because give someone enough of it and ordinary effort begins looking extravagant.

A man who has never had to plan Saturday may experience Wednesday’s request for a reservation as an unreasonable burden, while a man who has always been welcomed at 10 p.m. may look genuinely puzzled when 10 p.m. suddenly stops being considered a date.

“But we’ve always done this.”

Yes, and that is exactly the problem.

Some relationships of convenience can go on for years because they are not necessarily terrible. They may contain affection, laughter, holidays, lovely mornings and a man who is perfectly pleasant as long as the garment continues fitting exactly where he wants it to.

That is why they can be difficult to recognize, because nobody is twirling a mustache and nobody announces, “I am dating you because you are wonderfully convenient.”

The man may not even have thought about it. He simply knows that being with you feels easy, while you know that keeping it easy has required the romantic equivalent of hemming something at midnight before a wedding.

The truth usually appears when your needs finally require some fabric too.

You want more time, you want a plan, you want him to drive, or you want him to show up for something that matters to you even though it is not particularly fun and there will be no cocktails.

Now we find out whether he liked the relationship or simply liked the fit.

Because a man who values the woman can survive a little inconvenience. He may complain about traffic, get the date wrong once and require directions to a restaurant that has been in the same location since 1998, but he moves.

The convenience man often behaves differently, and once the relationship stops arranging itself around him, his enthusiasm begins losing buttons.

That may be the funniest thing about being called “so easy to be with”: sometimes it is a compliment, and sometimes you have spent a year adjusting every seam while he stands there admiring the fit.