Settle Down

I've gotta be one of the few people in the world whose closest friends gives her advice based on early 19th century literature.

I've sent one of my two best friends a loooooooong, feelings-heavy email. The length and email content are not unusual for us. She's one of the few people I confide in on a regular basis. She'd be delighted and horrified to know that I think of her as my Mother Confessor. Oh well. One of the best things about our relationship is that she's always let me communicate the things that are hard for me to talk about through text, and I'll always be grateful to her for it.

I feel like an asshole.

That's the rising action and the denouement. I feel like, and am, an asshole.

The bit in the middle is the complicated bit (isn't it always). It's the part of the email I rewrite seven times trying to find a better way to say that I feel blah about Blah.

The fact that my short name for a guy that I've been out with a few times, a guy who is genuinely interested in me, who returns my phone calls and texts with surprising promptness, who has a good, steady job, who owns his own house (in a part of the city I love). and pays all his bills ahead of time, Blah, concerns me.

It's--security, stability, niceness--what I'm supposed to want, right?

The email becomes less of an email and more of a journal entry on why dating Blah feels like settling. He is confused by the motion I make that means my heart is exploding. Like, actually doesn't understand the emotional intensity that I'm trying to signify. When I recite (Recite, people, there's no book involved) one of my favorite poems, for him he looks at me blankly and says "Oh, you like poetry?" He has asked me more than once to describe what I mean when I say seeing jazz live switches me on and makes my head buzz. When we go out we talk about work and baseball, sometimes about American History and I just feel . . .

blah.

***

I settle. 

My therapist knew it. My friends all know it. My mother regularly reminds me of it. 

It's easy to defend, especially as a woman. We get so many messages about how holding out for the exact right guy is going to leave us old, embittered spinsters. How there's no such thing as Prince Charming (as if the women who espouse settling never figured out Self-Rescuing Princess). How no one will ever be perfect and ohmygodyourjunkisgoingbad and you might as well just cut a few of those dealbreakers off of your list.

Do guys feel the same pressure?

I settle.

I regularly punch in a weight class that's justalittle beneath me. I date men who can't keep up with me intellectually, or who don't find arguing about Art and Fiction and Whether or Not Women Self-Select Out of Scientific Careers to be a turn-on. I date men who would rather meet me at Brothers after I've spent the night at the Artists' Quarter and who aren't curious or engaged in anything beyond work-family-home-sports. 

Look, I know how this sounds. Unless someone can finish the Sunday New York Times crossword in ten minutes or fewer I'm going to kick them out of bed. I am the worst person in the world because if you can't appreciate the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra's Concertmaster's solos on Mozart's Serenades I'm going to like you justalittlebit less. 

I know. Pretentious to the Nth degree. 

Go to hell. 

Most of the time the men I'm dating meet none of these criteria. None. And most of the time I end up miserable and hurt and disgusted with myself. But it's just so much easier to settle. It's easier to tell myself "Oh, these things aren't actually important. I don't actually need to be stimulated by someone's mind or passions or what moves them. I can handle football and happy hours and talking incessantly about cars." 

It's so much easier to settle, to drop a weight class than it is to try for the guys I actually want to date. I'm terrified that the men I want to be with--the brainiacs with weird passions, the Picard-types, the types of guys who can explain quantum mechanics or game theory to me--will be settling by dating me. 

I don't want to be the person someone settles for. 

***

The email that I get back from my confessor regarding Blah is characteristically sweet and funny. It's nice to have surrounded myself with loving, interesting people who genuinely care about me. 

The advice I get is based, on all things, Gone with the Wind. "Don't settle. Don't even think about settling. You will not be happy. The other person will not be happy. This is what I learned from Gone with the Wind. Nothing else needs to be said about that."

She's right, of course. I've got to break it off with Blah. The truth is that when we're together I find myself trying to switch off, trying to settle down because he finds my constant exuberance and enthusiasm odd. (And not charmingly odd, which seems to be the best I can hope for.) The problem, of course, is that once I'm switched on--about art or jazz or the book I'm reading or the food I've just made--it's really hard for me to switch it back off. 

And I don't want to switch it back off. 

The way, of course, to be able to live the kind of switched-on craziness that I crave is to stop settling. I've got to stop worrying that my beloved brainiacs are going to feel like they're settling because I require a simple(r) explanation of coronal ejections or irrational numbers. I mean, there's gotta be one out there who doesn't mind doing so if it means he gets his own walking database of poetry and fiction, philosophy and world religion, right? 

Right?

Blah.