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but I was hoping that with some guidance and insight, I’d come closer to finding the right guy. Maybe I’d help others do that, too.
What follows isn’t an advice book or dating manual. There are no worksheets to fill out or “rules” to follow. Instead, it’s an honest look at why our dating lives might not be going as planned, and what our own roles in that might be. Then it’s up to the reader to decide what kinds of choices she wants to make in the future.
I’ll warn you that you might not like what some of these experts have to say. At first, I didn’t either, and I spent a lot of time kicking and screaming in denial of the facts. But eventually I realized that knowledge was power, and this journey changed me and my dating life profoundly. It could change yours, too.
Because in the end, I discovered that finding a guy to get real with is the true love story.
One night, my friend Julia called to say that she had just broken up with her boyfriend, Greg.
“I just wasn’t inspired by him,” she said.
When Julia met Greg two years earlier, they were both 28 and he was her coworker at a nonprofit. She thought he was cute, sweet, and very smart. He was kind of unstylish—he wore nerdy highwaisted corduroys all the time—but she liked how “real” he was, how “unpretentious” and “nonmaterialistic.” She also felt at ease with him in a way she hadn’t with previous boyfriends. Julia had never dated anyone as supportive as Greg. Whatever her goals were, he helped her out. Whenever someone wronged her, he had her back. Whenever she felt insecure, he made her feel beautiful. You’d think this would have made her love him all the more, and it did—at first. But now, as Greg started talking about marriage, it began to have the opposite effect.
“Greg made me feel like I was the most wonderful woman in the world,” she said. “So then I started thinking, ‘If I’m so wonderful, maybe I should be with someone better.’”
By “better” she meant, in part, “someone more charismatic.” Greg could be shy and somewhat insecure in social situations, while Julia was confident and outgoing. Julia was quick with the one-liners, while Greg had a more subtle sense of humor. Greg came from a more modest background than Julia did, so he didn’t always share the more sophisticated references that came up with Julia’s friends in conversation.
Meanwhile, thanks to Greg’s encouragement, Julia had risen up the ladder at work—and eventually earned more money than he did. Not a lot more, but it made Julia uncomfortable.
“I want to work,” Julia said. “But I don’t know. It’s not how I imagined my marriage would be.”
When I asked how she imagined it, she let out an embarrassed sigh.
“Honestly?” she said. “I guess I want my husband to be more of a go-getter.”
I pointed out that Greg was sweeter than anyone she’d dated, especially her last boyfriend, the ambitious lawyer who often “forgot” to call her when he said he would. Greg was loving and reliable. He was passionate about his work. They had great sex. They shared similar interests, especially because they worked in the same field. They had a lot of fun together.
“But he wasn’t inspiring enough,” Julia repeated. “He’s just this, you know, really nice, regular kind of guy. I started feeling like, ‘This is it? This is the guy I’ve waited all my life for?’ I’m worried that long-term, I’m going to outgrow him. I’m going to want more.”
“More what?” I asked.
The phone line went silent for what seemed like a long time.
“More like I imagined,” Julia said. “He just wasn’t husband material.”
And with that, another great guy bit the dust. Or did he? What were people looking for in a husband nowadays anyway?
ANYTHING BUT BORING
Not long after my conversation with Julia, I got together with five twenty-something single women at a bar in Los Angeles and asked why it’s so hard to find “husband material.” Their consensus: We’d like a guy, but we don’t need a guy. So why should we lower our standards?
“I’d rather be alone than settle,” said Olivia, a 27-year-old Web designer. “I’ve had annoying roommates in my early twenties, but I can’t imagine having to eat all my dinners and sleep in the same bed with a male roommate who happens to be the husband I settled for.”
The others nodded.
“I don’t know about you,” Olivia continued, half-joking, “but I would need to love someone very deeply in order to brush my teeth two feet away from where he’s taking a dump every morning.”
I suggested that, all kidding aside, bathroom doors can be closed, but opportunities to meet good men aren’t always open, and I asked the group how they defined settling. Did it mean picking a guy who’s truly annoying, or compromising on some desired qualities but getting other, more important ones? And what would those important ones be?
“Even if he’s nice and smart and attractive, I can’t be with someone boring,” said Nora, a radio producer.
“Exactly,” said Claire, a graduate student. “There are guys who are smart but then you’re shocked to learn that for all that intelligence, they’re just not that interesting. They have to be smart in an interesting way. They have to be curious.”
“Curious, but not earnest,” said Nina, a marketing executive. “They have to be a little edgy.”
“But not too edgy,” said Nora. “They have to be normal. But just not boring.”
I asked the women for examples of what they meant by boring.
“They have to have a sense of humor,” said Nina. “They can’t just be sitting there laughing at something funny I might say. Boring guys aren’t funny, but they think you’re funny.”
“Or the opposite,” said Claire. “They think that if a woman laughs at their jokes, she has a sense of humor. Only a boring person believes that.”
“Or a narcissist!” said Lauren, a fund-raiser for political causes.
“Well, narcissists are boring!” said Olivia, and the group broke into laughter.
I told these women—all reasonably attractive but not drop-dead gorgeous; all interesting but not off-the-charts fascinating—that at a certain point, they might get lonely going on all these dates looking for The Perfect One instead of building a nice life with Some One.
“I’m already lonely, but loneliness is better than boredom,” said Lauren. She’s finds her stable fund-raising job boring at times but it’s often fulfilling, too, so she won’t leave it for her true passion, painting, because it seems too risky.
“So you’ll compromise in your choice of a job but not your choice of a partner?” I asked. “You’re willing to spend eight hours a day in a good enough career instead of leaving it for your true love, being an artist?”
Lauren thought about this for a minute.
“Well, that’s different,” she said. “I’m practical about my career. But to be practical about love? You can’t be practical about a feeling. That seems so … unromantic.”
Just then, a cute-ish guy who seemed to be about thirty walked by and checked out the women. They ignored him. I asked why.
“Too short,” said Olivia, who is 5’2”.
“And what’s up with those glasses?” added Claire, who wears