The Ache

On dating, and loneliness, and finding someone who feels like home

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There is a restaurant near me, a sort of cozy, neighborhood-y spot where people know your name, and maybe even your dog’s name, too. It occupies a corner, and at night, it glows from within. When the windows are open in the Summer, you can hear the sound of revelry from down the street. The clink of glasses, the sound of knives and forks scraping against plates. You can hear laughter, soft like a tinkling bell. When the windows are closed in the winter, you can’t hear a thing—but you can feel the warmth from inside. You can see the candles blinking on tables, the sparkle of the Christmas Tree that sits in the corner for all of holiday season.

I love this restaurant. You can find me sitting at the bar with my kindle, sipping a drink and shooting the shit with the bartenders named Josh and Chrissy.

A few months ago, I found myself walking by while on a walk with my dog when the beautiful olive trees were lined with lights and the candles were flickering. And I found myself thinking how much I wanted to be in there, clustered around a small wooden table or on the corner seat at the bar, sipping a crisp glass of white wine. And I felt this intense twinge of loneliness, like I was on the outside, looking in, and might be forever.

It comes and goes, this loneliness. Sometimes, I’ll go months without feeling it. Other times, it threatens to pull me under. Those moments, the moments in which I feel, suddenly, like someone has taken a cleaver to my heart—I can never predict them. Sometimes they occur when I’m walking by a restaurant. Sometimes they occur when I see one person take another person’s hand on the sidewalk or at Woodward Park. Sometimes they occur while watching a movie, or while watching a friend interact with their partner. Oftentimes, they’re fleeting. But other times? Other times, they stick around.

I’ve gone on a handful of dates over the Summer into the Fall

On this fact alone, one could deduce that I am attempting, in my way, to put myself out there. This is something partnered people like to say, when you complain about being single. This and, oh, what i’d give to be single! As if your love life is a whim they’d love to explore, as if lonely is a cloak you can shrug on and off at your leisure. What these well-intentioned people don’t realize is how tiring it is to put yourself out there. To get all dressed up (or at the very least, to consider your outfit). To audition—to an audience you know little to nothing about—for a role as girlfriend or partner. To feel a tiny prickle of hope, then have that hope dashed when you realize, yet again, that this isn’t it. To sit across from another human—often a perfectly kind human—and realize you didn’t need to waste the time to get ready, drive across town or share one of your favorite bars/coffee shops/restaurants with a stranger.

I try and think positively when I agree to meet someone in person for the first time. I may be terrible in a party setting, but I’m a good conversationalist. I can ask questions, and I can listen—I’d go so far as to say I genuinely enjoy doing so. People are fascinating, and I like learning about them. So I go into my dates with an open mind. I put on makeup and I wear a cute outfit and I tell myself the worst thing that can happen is I meet a nice person that I’ll never have to see again.

Most of the time, this approach works. Often, I genuinely enjoy my first dates, even when it becomes clear I don’t like them, or they don’t like me, or some combination of the above.

But then I’ll walk by my favorite neighborhood spot, alight with laughter and happiness and rosy cheeks, and I’ll think, god, what I would give to have a built-in person to go out to dinner with.

And I know, I know. All of you partnered people are chomping at the bit to tell me your partner isn’t perfect, your partner doesn’t always want to go out to dinner, or you have kids and you don’t have time. And sure, yes, all of these things are true, sometimes. Remember, I was married for 10 years, we were together for 13 and we have two wonderful children.

But you have a person, and I don’t. And every so often, I just… feel the ache of that.

Not enough of an ache to settle for someone who doesn’t light me up inside, and not enough of an ache to stop doing the things I love—I dine out alone, spend much of my childfree weekends alone, sometimes travel alone—but an ache, nonetheless.

A few months back, I went to brunch with some girlfriends. One of them had party plans for that night, a friend of a friend’s birthday party. A birthday party she said I was more than welcome to come to if I wanted. And for a moment, I thought about it. I’d curled my hair for a date on Friday night, and I was sporting that sort of effortless second day wave I can never ever get on day one. Put yourself out there, my brain screamed. The apps are horrific and you continue to be let down! You’ll never meet someone in real life if you don’t go out in real life!

I told her I’d think about it, and that I appreciated the invite. After brunch, I stopped by Fig Garden Village where I stopped into a store hoping to find some stationary. I also popped into a bakery and ate my lemon bar on their patio while people watching.

By the time I got back home, the sun was setting and the air was still thick with heat. The thought of putting on a nice outfit, and going back out to Clovis for the birthday party of someone I’d never even met? I just…couldn’t do it. Put yourself out there! My brain screamed again. You have good hair! Go be fun! But then I thought about how I’d spend $40 on drinks celebrating a person I didn’t know, how I’d probably feel weird, and awkward.

And I realized: that while I had genuinely wanted to be invited, when it came down to it, I didn’t want to go. What I wanted was to go sit at my neighborhood restaurant and drink two glasses of wine, and eat a caesar salad and maybe even dessert, and then go home, and watch netflix on the couch.

And I wanted, desperately, to have someone to do this with.

I didn’t want to schlep to a stranger’s birthday party in hopes of meeting someone. I wanted to already have someone, so that I didn’t have to schlep in the first place. I wanted to have someone to turn to and say, hey, want to go to my fave spot for dinner tonight? I wanted to get ever so slightly tipsy, and then fall into bed, or onto the couch, and have perfectly good sex, and wake up the next morning and not have to question whether I’d done the wrong thing or said the wrong thing or been the wrong thing.

And I know this is just a feeling. I know that this is just a moment, a moment of feeling sorry for myself, of wanting the thing I do not have. And I know that I can do all the things I want to do all by myself. But sometimes, I don’t want that. Sometimes, I want someone to do them with.

It’s easy to get lost in this feeling—to see only the things I lack, not the abundance of things I am oh so lucky to have. And perhaps that’s just it: I want someone to share that abundance with. I am imperfect as all get out, but I have a lot to offer. I want someone to offer it to. I want to offer my hilarious and heartfelt friends. I want to offer my complicated but loving family. I want to offer an abundance of homemade baked goods. I want to offer my love of cooking, and the fact that usually, I nail it. I want to offer my comfortable bed, my fancy sheets and my fluffy pillows. I want to offer my plethora of scented candles, a home that always—always—smells good. I want to offer my sense of wanderlust and my impeccable eye for a good hotel. I want to offer my kindness, and my heart, and my desire to go out of my way to make a stranger’s day.

I am stubborn and sometimes overly sensitive, particular, and a total neat freak in a way that borders on obsessive. Sometimes I read too much into things, and I tend to hide away when I feel hurt. But I think I would make a good partner, and it’s impossible not to feel like there’s something pathologically wrong with me every time I go on a date and it doesn’t work out for one reason or another.

Did I laugh too loud? Did I talk too much? Was I too opinionated, or not opinionated enough? Did I seem too smart, smart in a way that made me seem like an asshole? Perhaps I seemed dumb like I couldn’t keep up. Did I seem too particular, too picky? Or perhaps it was too needy, an air of desperation wafting around me like cheap perfume. Was I larger than they expected me to be? Was I too short? Was the sound of my voice like nails on a chalkboard? Did I sound like I was bragging when I talked about my friends? Did I ask too many questions? Or maybe it was not enough. Was my hair too frizzy, too curly, or too straight? Did I reveal too much? Or perhaps I was too guarded?

I could write an infinite list of reasons why I didn’t get another date. All of which can and sometimes do take up residence in my mind, skewering my sense of self until I might as well be insane.

All of this just because I want someone to go out to dinner with on a Saturday night.

Later in the Fall, I went out with someone—a man who surprised me in ways I hadn’t expected. He’s caring, kind, and intelligent, and he has this way of making me feel special in so many ways, as though he sees me in a light I sometimes forget to see myself. He is sensitive and supportive and a constant surprise in the best ways. He has a way of talking to almost anyone about just about anything and makes it seem like he’s known them for years. I love catching him glancing at me when he thinks I don’t notice.

At one point during one of our first dates (which is a comical story in itself, and I’ll have to share on another day) we actually ended up at my favorite neighborhood restaurant. He pulled out his phone and showed me a list. Not just any list, but a thoughtful, thorough compilation of the qualities he’s looking for in a partner. It was so spot-on, it could have been written by me.

But there was one part of the list that stood out, one line that I haven’t been able to shake since he said it:

I want someone who feels like home.

What a feeling. I don’t know a lot, but I do know one thing for sure: when I find it, when I feel it, I won’t take it for granted. Not for a single moment. And then you won’t just see me anymore. You’ll see us. Together. Sitting at a corner table in my neighborhood restaurant, a candle flickering between us in the early evening light.