What’s in It for Me? The Dinner Party Behind Every Romance

Romance likes to present itself as terribly selfless.

Two people meet, fall in love and apparently begin giving simply for the joy of giving, floating through life on affection while requiring absolutely nothing in return.

Beautiful. Also suspicious.

Because underneath almost every relationship sits one small, deeply human question nobody likes to say out loud:

What’s in it for me?

Not in the villainous sense. Nobody is stroking a cat while calculating the emotional return on dinner. It is much simpler than that: you want being with him to add something to your life and, inconveniently, he wants the same thing from you.

Welcome to the dinner party.

Everyone has brought a dish.

Nobody Comes Hoping to Leave Hungry

You may bring warmth, affection, humor, loyalty, sex, encouragement, tenderness, excellent conversation and the rare ability to locate things he has been staring directly at for seven minutes.

He brings his own offerings. Perhaps you feel safe with him, perhaps he makes you laugh, makes ordinary life more interesting, or gives you the delicious feeling that somebody has noticed you properly. Perhaps he brings stability, excitement, companionship, affection, adventure or simply the pleasure of having someone beside you who knows why you are annoyed before you have finished the sentence.

Nobody likes to admit that romance has appetites because we prefer love to look spontaneous and noble, floating around in silk without asking for anything.

But love is not a decorative candle.

People do not generally fall in love hoping to become lonelier, more anxious and considerably less appreciated than they were while single. You arrive hungry for something, and so does he.

Romance merely puts flowers on the table so nobody has to mention it.

Everybody Brings a Different Dish

Two people can attend the same dinner and have completely different ideas about what is being served.

You may be bringing emotional intimacy, loyalty and a hopeful little casserole called Future, while he has arrived with chemistry, companionship and a bottle of Let’s See Where This Goes.

Both contributions can be perfectly genuine. They are simply not the same dinner.

For a while, nobody notices because everyone is enjoying themselves. There is attraction, laughter, perhaps very good kissing, and the table looks abundant enough from a distance.

Then eventually someone reaches for a dish that was never brought.

You thought commitment was coming. He thought everything was already rather nice.

This is often where romance becomes terribly confused, because each person has been enjoying what the other provided while quietly assuming the missing course would appear later.

It does not always appear later.

Sometimes there was never a Chef.

The Couple Nobody Understands

This little invisible feast also explains why certain couples make absolutely no sense to anyone except themselves.

You look at a woman and think, What on earth does she see in him?

Something.

She sees something.

Perhaps he makes her feel secure, perhaps he adores her, or perhaps he gives her a kind of peace nobody else has ever managed. He may be dreadful at cocktail parties but magnificent at two in the morning when life has gone sideways.

He is getting something too. Maybe she makes him feel admired, understood, wanted or wonderfully at home. Maybe she brings sparkle into a life that previously consisted largely of work, television and a refrigerator containing mustard.

From outside, the arrangement may look baffling. From inside, dinner is being served.

This is why relationships cannot always be understood by inspecting the man as though he were a handbag and asking whether you personally would buy him.

You are not eating at their table.

Then Someone Arrives with an Olive

Problems begin when the meal becomes noticeably uneven.

One person is bringing warmth, patience, affection, time, attention, emotional support and perhaps a rather nice dessert.

The other arrives holding an olive.

Not even a bowl of olives.

One olive.

He may still be charming, of course. He may place the olive beautifully in the center of the table and speak movingly about how difficult his week has been.

For a while, this can be surprisingly effective.

Especially if the olive is handsome.

But eventually somebody notices that she has been cooking for six months.

The invisible exchange has become embarrassingly obvious: one person is still being fed while the other is contributing increasingly elaborate centerpieces.

The strange part is how long people can remain at a table once they are hungry. Hope is an excellent appetizer, and so is history. Familiarity can keep a woman seated for years, particularly when she remembers how magnificent dinner used to be.

And occasionally the waiter passes carrying something promising, which buys another month.

The Dish Nobody Wants to Lose

Then comes another curious feature of human appetite: sometimes we do not fully appreciate what we are receiving until someone begins taking it away.

A man can be perfectly relaxed about a relationship until you start withdrawing your attention, and suddenly he is extremely attentive.

How fascinating.

The calls return. Plans appear. Feelings that had apparently been resting somewhere behind the cushions sit upright.

Perhaps he has realized how much he loves you.

Perhaps.

Or perhaps somebody is clearing his favorite dish from the table.

People can become remarkably emotional when something they enjoyed without thinking about it begins disappearing. That does not make the enjoyment fake; it simply reveals what was being enjoyed.

And perhaps that is the wonderfully unromantic machinery underneath romance: two people continue showing up because each is getting something from being there—something emotional, something practical, usually a deliciously untidy mixture of both.

Love may be generous, but nobody comes to dinner hoping not to eat.

The happiest tables are probably not the ones where nobody wants anything, but the ones where both people keep bringing something worth staying for.

And preferably more than one olive.