Pat Taub
GUEST POST by MICHAEL STEINMAN
We’re trained from kindergarten to know the answer, and our happiness in the classroom depends on it. At work, on a Zoom meeting, say, “I have no idea,” and the cyber-room fills with disapproving silence. Spiritually, we’re told that self-knowledge is the greatest good. Henry James wrote, “Try to be one of those on whom nothing is lost.”
In intimate relationships, understanding that the Beloved hates daisies but loves tulips, reveres Connee Boswell but rejects Ella Fitzgerald, adores that thing in bed but not the other thing – that’s all presented as the key to happy days and nights.
But in our sixties or adjacent decades, we know so much more about ourselves and others from experience. We know our faults: our impatience, our thin skin, our child-need for the right kind of loving attention. And we have an appraising eye for partners, real and imagined.
Having been married to X, we know that some emotional volatility is energizing; being pinned against the kitchen counter for two hours in argument is fatal. Having “dated” Y for six months, we know that although too much order is choking (when the Other has to have all your possessions neatly behind the closed closet door, you are sure to follow them) disorder isn’t a delightful antidote.
Tensions in past relationships often inform the search for a new relationship.
And the knowledge can also be positive. With decades of practice, we know how gestures send love – not greeting cards, but “They had the cherries you like at Trader Joe’s, and I bought you a bag,” is worth any number of young men with mandolins beneath Juliet’s balcony. Or the magical words, “Let me rub your feet. You’ve been standing all day,” are the riches of the Orient.
So we KNOW. And we congratulate ourselves on “knowing what we want.”
But does this awareness do us any good when we look, once again, for a partner, a companion, a lover? The irony would be hilarious if it weren’t so painful. We have lists of non-negotiable demands (remember those?) in our heads.
The Love Object must read these periodicals; share our politics; shun red meat; love cats; be taller than 5’, be in shape . . . oh, the list is longer than the Magna Charta. And as if we were shoppers in the largest online mall imaginable, we measure every new product against the Ideal in our heads. “That sweater would be just what I want, but it’s wool, and wool makes me itch.”
Making a list of non-negotiable demands in a partner
He’s such a nice fellow, but he doesn’t hike or climb. She’s gracious and warm, but how many of our rendezvous will take place in doctors’ waiting rooms? How much money do they owe on their many credit cards? And those same searching eyes are turned on you because you don’t fit the Inflatable Ideal of Perfection. “I have my standards,” “I don’t want to settle,” we say to ourselves or we hear those words, however naked or clothed, aimed at us.
If we “knew” less, would we be less alone?
Is silence better than wincing when the Beloved sings show tunes off-key in the morning? Is being adaptable, emotionally flexible, accepting our flaws and the flaws of the Other better than a solitude where we can please ourselves in every way but there’s no conversation? I think of the films and music that told us SOMEDAY MY PRINCE(SS) WILL COME. True for some; we see the examples. I’ve kept my door unlocked. How should we proceed in hopes of happiness?
All I can say is “I don’t know.”
My current mental soundtrack, Connee Boswell, “Hummin to Myself”
