The Love Adventure: Past Sell-By Date

What does falling in love feel like? I don’t remember. I am not talking about sex. I am not talking about the compromises people make for companionship. I’m not even talking about socially sanctioned labels and relationship statuses. I am talking about mind-knocked-over, nothing but this makes sense LOVE. I know I’ve glimpsed it, felt it, been touched by it, even if I am not the most gracious of hosts to love.

I have possibly been in love once, maybe twice in my life and even those I’m never entirely certain. I crush often and easily. I stopped agonising over these years ago. Lust became welcome in my mind sometime ago, making it easier for me to distinguish it from emotion. Attraction? That something plus the lust & compatibility checklists – I’ve been circling around it for years, in my writing, in my experiences and it’s a frenemy I’ve come to respect but not fear.

But these days, I find myself mildly disinterested. I have to work hard to feel attracted to someone. It’s not that there is a dearth of intelligent, nice-looking, friendly, accessible single men around. And by getting involved with someone years younger at 30, I opened up my mating pool to a wider group. But they all feel like more of the same. I’ve seen the moves, I’ve seen the fumbles, I’ve weathered the games, I’ve survived the mistakes. What’s new?

On the theory that attraction must precede love, I stoked up the dying embers for someone who’s been on the periphery of my life for years. It took effort to remind myself to communicate with him, to convince myself to overlook the sheer slowness that all of this takes. It’s not that he’s an unworthy person, as such matters go. Late 30s, intelligent, independent, adequately ‘my type’ as far on the lust meter, single and acquainted (maybe even friends) with me. We were talking about our work and the daily things that occupied us. I heard a note of something in his voice that I didn’t like.

“You don’t think this is a big deal, do you?”

I asked, my tone mild. But he’s wise enough to catch the challenge in my words, if he listens. If he listens. He said,

“I do think that a lot of the issues you’re stressing about are non-issues, yeah.”

And just like that the embers died.

I feel zero, zip, nada, NOTHING for him after that statement. Not anger. He doesn’t get it and he doesn’t have to. Not a burning desire to prove myself. Does it matter to me what he thinks? No, not much. I know relationships take effort. But should wanting to take that effort, itself be so much effort? Oh no.

It has been over a week since that conversation. I have barely thought about him since then. He texted a couple of times and I texted back. Both times we found excuses to not meet. Valid reasons but we’ve both lived long enough and bravely enough to overcome reason when we’ve wanted to. It seems neither of us wanted to, enough.

I guess I’m documenting this here just in case in the years that come up, I look back and wonder why I never considered him. I did. But there was nothing to take it forward. Damn. He was the best prospect in years and years.

Have I tired of men? Has my violently dramatic past burnt out any joy I can take in love, romance and attraction? I am not old enough to be at retirement age. But at the prime of my life when I enjoy a combination of experience-based confidence, hard-won privilege and good health, I feel so little inclination to use them in the humankind’s oldest endeavour – to seek love and companionship. Maybe there is a shelf life to one’s own capacity for wonder, a necessary component in love and attraction. Mine seems to have crossed its expiry date.