Dating. What a ridiculous word.
It conjures up dinner reservations, spontaneous weekends, cocktails, flirting and two people wandering around pretending they haven’t already Googled each other.
Maybe that’s dating when you’re 23.
Try it in Grants Pass when you’re 43.
At that point, we should quit calling it dating and start calling it what it actually is: compromise and sacrifice, occasionally interrupted by dinner.
This isn’t Los Angeles. There aren’t four million strangers roaming around within a 30-mile radius. Grants Pass is a relatively small community with an older population, and once you graduate from the younger dating crowd, reality arrives quickly. A substantial number of available adults have already been married. Many have been divorced. Many have children. Some are raising those children alone. Others are co-parenting with somebody they once loved and may now communicate with primarily through terse text messages and calendar negotiations.
None of that makes anybody undesirable.
It does, however, make Friday night considerably more complicated.
I say this from the perspective of a single man without children, although a single woman without children can find herself standing in precisely the same pair of shoes.
You meet somebody. You like her. She likes you. There is chemistry. Conversation comes easily.
Then you meet the schedule.
The schedule is undefeated.
There are basketball games, soccer games, school functions, birthday parties, custody arrangements, illnesses, homework, holidays and the former spouse who remains part of the equation whether you particularly enjoy that fact or not.
You were going to spend Saturday doing absolutely nothing?
That’s adorable.
There’s a tournament.
You made dinner reservations?
Somebody’s kid just started vomiting.
You wanted to disappear for the weekend?
Check the custody calendar.
And here’s the reality: that’s exactly how it should be. A responsible parent is supposed to put his or her children ahead of the new romantic interest who wandered into the picture three weeks ago.
The question is whether you are comfortable being that person.
By the time people reach their 30s, 40s and 50s, we aren’t meeting blank slates. We’re meeting fully constructed human beings with histories, obligations, preferences, mistakes, exes, children, careers, habits and a few emotional dents accumulated along the highway.
People call that baggage.
Children aren’t baggage. An ex-spouse isn’t automatically baggage. A previous marriage isn’t baggage.
Unresolved chaos is baggage.
If every conversation somehow involves the ex, that’s baggage. If every custody exchange resembles negotiations at Camp David, that’s baggage. If you’re expected to become the therapist, chauffeur, financier, referee and emotional hazmat team before you’ve learned where the coffee cups are kept, you’ve probably wandered beyond dating.
You’ve been hired.
And this is where being single begins receiving unfair treatment.
People talk about being single as though it is a condition requiring treatment.
“Are you seeing anyone?”
No.
“Oh.”
There is always that little oh, as if you’ve just announced that the transmission went out.
Maybe nothing is wrong. Maybe you’ve simply discovered that sitting peacefully in your own house is not the personal tragedy society keeps insisting it must be.
There is an extraordinary freedom in peace.
You go where you want. You eat what you want. You spend time with your friends when you want. Nobody else’s former spouse can alter your Saturday. Nobody is interrogating the meaning of a text message you sent at 9:17 p.m.
You can sit on the couch and stare at the wall if that’s how you want to spend Tuesday.
The wall rarely starts an argument.
That peace becomes more valuable with age because eventually you realize that companionship and compatibility are not the same thing.
Anybody can occupy the other side of the couch.
Finding somebody whose presence improves the room is considerably harder.
If you genuinely want a relationship, particularly with someone who has children, you have to accept that it cannot always operate according to your convenience. Plans will change. Holidays become complicated. Another family’s traditions may become part of your life.
You compromise because the other person matters.
They should be compromising for you, too.
Compromise does not mean one person continually rearranges his or her existence while the other provides instructions. Sacrifice shouldn’t require surrendering your identity, friendships, independence or sanity simply because somebody attractive agreed to have dinner with you.
Maybe that’s the real difficulty with dating in Grants Pass. By middle age, people have lived enough life to know what they want, what they won’t tolerate and what they’re no longer willing to pretend doesn’t bother them.
Eventually the questions become simpler.
Does this person bring peace or chaos? Do our lives actually fit together? Am I willing to accept the complications that come with this person?
And is this relationship better than being alone?
Because being single for the right reasons is infinitely better than dating for the wrong ones.
If you’re willing to compromise, sacrifice, accommodate schedules, accept somebody’s history and occasionally spend Saturday afternoon sitting on aluminum bleachers watching a sport you still don’t completely understand, you may find something wonderful.
The trick isn’t finding somebody without baggage, complications or history. At our age, you’d have better odds hunting Bigfoot somewhere outside Merlin.
The trick is finding somebody whose complications you can live with and who can live with yours.
If you find that person, compromise away. Make the sacrifices. Go to the birthday party. Sit through the soccer game. Cancel dinner when life intervenes.
Maybe it will be worth every inconvenience.
But if you’re unwilling to make those compromises, don’t force yourself into a relationship simply because society has decided two people sitting together must somehow be happier than one person sitting peacefully alone.
Some of us have discovered something rather valuable in our own company: freedom, personal space and peace of mind.
I’m not opposed to love.
I’m just no longer convinced it automatically deserves the keys to the house.