The Golden Condom (25 page)

“Take the initiative,” I told her once when she described a bashful but thoughtful and charming man she had met tango dancing and whom she had written off because he had never unequivocally approached her. “Suggest going out for coffee. He's as shy as you are. I think he likes you and is waiting for a sign.” He was. They married three years later, when she was thirty-eight, and are married still. She is now a judge herself, as well as a popular tango teacher.

Why did I feel compelled to intervene? I saw in her situation what could have easily been my own fate. She once told me that she was so ashamed of being single that she felt she had no right to walk down the street alone or have a meal in a restaurant by herself on Saturday night, and that sometimes, especially on weekends, she forced herself to stay up until she could justify going to bed, knowing she would feel as empty and alone when she arose as when she lay down. I had felt all these things myself.

I was thirty years old when I met the man I would marry at thirty-three, so I just squeaked under the age limit that would have qualified me as a late marrier, according to demographers. The thirty-year marker would be made infamous by a 1986
Newsweek
cover story (“The Marriage Crunch”). Citing seemingly impeccable scientific evidence,
Newsweek
proclaimed that virtually all women over age thirty were condemned to what used to be called spinsterhood. The chances of a thirty-year-old woman marrying were 20 percent, declining by age thirty-five to 5 percent and then dropping precipitously until by age forty, the likelihood of her becoming a first-time bride hit 2.5 percent—lower, so the story notoriously intoned, than her chances of being attacked by a terrorist.
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These statistics, which turned out to be seriously flawed, were taken as gospel by the media and by terrified women and were not recanted by the magazine until twenty years later.

I didn't need a magazine to tell me that nobody I wanted would ever want to marry me. This was an old and deeply held conviction of mine, rooted in my childhood experience, that persisted despite the fact that someone I cared about had actually proposed to me when I was graduating from college and I had been the one to refuse; I was lucky enough to realize at the time that neither his personality nor the life he envisioned were right for me. My dark presumption was catastrophically confirmed even more compellingly when the man I lived with for five years while in graduate school, who did seem right for me, left me abruptly on the verge of our being engaged, announcing at the door that he had ended a long affair with a mutual friend of ours the year before. I only realized in retrospect how blind I had been to aspects of his character that should have disqualified him. It took me the rest of my twenties to recover, during which I loved a series of men who were uncommunicative, ambivalent, distant, troubled, or inaccessible and whom I desperately tried to convert into real prospects, lamenting all the while that there was no one to truly love me. The only man to hug me on my twenty-eighth birthday was my unorthodox analyst.

It took intensive work in therapy—which in my case meant seven years, four times a week—to unearth the real reasons I gravitated to men who could not cherish me: my father, my mother, my parents' relationship, and my sense of myself. As a direct result of these labors, I eventually ceased trying to convert unresponsive people, both male and female, into responsive ones. Unavailable men lost much of their luster, and I began to feel I deserved requited love. At thirty, I finally met my future husband in a singing group that performed Renaissance religious music on street corners in New York City. He was a sweet-voiced journalist eight years younger than I, whose politics were diametrically opposed to mine, and he chose me despite the adamant disapproval of his family, which I dared not believe he would defy until he actually proposed to me. Thirty-five years later, I can hardly believe I found him.

ROCKY ROADS TO LOVE

There are many routes to finding a mate later in life, and few of them run smoothly. Therapy facilitates the search by alleviating anxiety and diminishing unconscious impediments to recognizing or responding to a soul mate, should one appear. Some people resolve to defy the odds and actively seek a spouse; the less sanguine cast fate to chance and hope a prospective spouse will seek them, putting themselves at least passively in the way of opportunity. And sometimes a lover finds a beloved by finding himself.

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Anna Schneider, a fifty-seven-year-old television producer-director, would never admit that she longed to be loved; she kept herself so busy that she hadn't let herself think about it for years, and she revealed her feelings hesitantly. No casual observer would notice that this dashing, intense woman had a reclusive streak, that she had spent the limited time she allotted to her private life painfully lonely, or that she had quietly given up on marriage decades earlier. “I put my career first,” she explained. “I've been highly successful and very well known in my field.” Even though many people find time for both a career and a relationship, she certainly picked the right profession to confirm her rationalization; her job was so demanding and she immersed herself so deeply in it that she found little time to think about what was missing emotionally, or why.

Secretly, Anna feared that her being alone forever was “not an unlikely possibility,” since most of her friends were single or divorced. “I know that desperate feeling many women get,” she said, uneasily including herself in their number. “You think only short term: how will I get through this holiday or weekend?” So, like others in her situation, she focused instead on achievements as the basis for her identity. But unlike my two patients the architect and the lawyer, who vocally resented or worried about the dearth of men in their lives, she had made strenuous efforts to suppress any desire for intimacy, because she felt she did not have a knack for it, and she was a self-critical perfectionist. “I'm not that good at relationships,” she admitted. “I don't like to be too analytical about my emotions; there are all kinds of ways I feel inadequate. I'd rather think about work.” Her confidence was confined to her professional acumen, for which she had to rely only on herself; as long as she was successful, nobody needed to know about her private anxieties.

For someone who had so painstakingly cultivated both her friendships and her career, it was surprising that Anna described her two previous ten-year relationships (the last one twenty years earlier) as “happenstance.” Even when she was younger, she had never actively pursued a man. “My default was to be involved with people who were not available,” she said. For years, she had prevented herself from acknowledging that there was a hole in her life; she almost obsessively avoided thinking about it because she felt helpless to fill it.

Though Anna comes across as warm and engaging, there is something guarded and closed off about her. “I'm not intimate with my own family,” she admitted. “My father is thoughtful and knowledgeable, but I'm not emotionally close with him.” She does not share much of herself, even with herself; activity, rather than introspection, is her métier. I got the feeling that beneath the energetic, stylish façade there was something untouchable that she broadcast to men. Her bright exterior masked sadness within.

Then, eight years ago, her life began to change profoundly as a result of a whirlwind courtship by a colleague whom she never expected to pursue her, let alone want ardently to wed her.

Anna was not looking for a mate when she met Dan, a senior television executive, at one of the countless conferences she was always attending. They had an enormous amount in common, and he was an excellent, enthusiastic mentor. Although his intelligence and expertise impressed her and she enjoyed his company, she never considered him a real prospect because he was fourteen years older and married, although unhappily. “I was a little surprised that he was so keen to stay in touch with me,” she said. And the honorable way he behaved, declaring himself early on and soon thereafter getting separated and divorced, impressed her. (“He was thoroughly serious, completely clean, and pure.”) For him, courting her was anything but happenstance. He was the one who had to convince her to marry. “The idea came from him,” she said. “He was keen to do it; he felt it was important.” And, like the shy creature she was, it took quite a while for her to consent.

Getting engaged was exciting (“I thought it would be really fun because I'd never done it, and there's so much promise around it,” she told me, as though she were describing a challenging new TV series she was creating), but she had continuing doubts about whether she was marriage material. “I like a little space around me; I may not want to be truly, truly intimate with anyone,” she worried. As is often the case with someone who has arranged her entire adult life to her own specifications, she felt resistant to the change and compromise living with another person always involves—even though they managed to slow down the pace of acclimation by living in different cities during the week and seeing each other only on weekends. “People think it's very odd, but it works for us,” she declared.

On a deeper level, she was terrified to rely on anybody, to let down a guard that had long been in place. She didn't want to have to reveal herself, something she never had to do before; she knew that marriage would require more openness than she was comfortable with, but Dan was confident and willing to wait. Since Dan's wife had demanded and required constant caretaking, Anna's self-containment and competence must have felt refreshing; looking after someone who, as an equal, looks after herself, feels like a choice—even a privilege—not a demand. After a lengthy engagement, they married when she was fifty-six, eighteen months before we spoke. Only now are they starting to look for a place to live together.

How did this confirmed loner, well into middle age, feel safe enough to go through with it? She had attended conferences for years and never met anyone before. The difference this time was that Dan, a man she admired, made all the moves and took all the risks. He was the one to seek her out, to recognize that she was what he was looking for, and to act decisively to win her. Being chosen and seriously pursued meant everything to her. It made her feel worthwhile, as being loved does when you have not had enough of true devotion.

*   *   *

Like many first marriages in maturity, theirs is unconventional; the relationship is about the two of them and the world they share, not family life—she is childless by choice—of which he has had his fill. Slowly she is starting to let herself need him. Anna's eyes shine as she talks about Dan, and she shyly begins to smile. “I was willing to take the leap,” she said. “I was finally old enough.” Marriage is always a leap of faith; she was finally brave enough. She does not mention it, and perhaps doesn't even realize it, but there is something retroactively curative in the way he cares for her that was probably absent in her childhood.

Love and marriage are a brave new world for Anna, and she is still adjusting, anxiety mingling with her delight. “I've had a hard time figuring out what a relationship really is,” she acknowledged. “I don't do a lot of caretaking. I don't do traditional things like cooking. I had built a lifestyle and work life for myself. There's a lot you don't know about a real relationship until you're in one, until you finally say, ‘I'm committed, I'm here.'” She finds herself wanting to be alone with Dan much more than she imagined she would. “Now that we're married, I don't feel as compelled to be out and about all the time,” she observed. She likes having someone to come home to, at least on weekends.

Mortality has a new meaning too. Considering their age discrepancy, I asked her if she was afraid of his dying. She answered decisively, if probably unrealistically. “Yes, but I think I'll go first; he's much healthier than I am.” Then, recalling her solitary years, she acknowledged that she might well face aloneness again, even if it would be a different aloneness. “I've learned what it's like to have a real sense of security with someone who is always there, but I haven't forgotten what it's like to have to be on my own and resourceful. I think I might be less able to do it than when I was young, and that would be my fear.” This legitimate fear does not faze her, however, because she is secure in Dan's love. “I have real comfort—I know he's there. I count on him a lot, actually for more and more. I get a lot of guidance from him; he's good at figuring out problems and helping me.”

There is relief in her voice about not having to do everything herself anymore. “He is really steadfast. I can absolutely rely on him, not like most of the male persuasion I've known. He knows that slowly things are changing between us as I come to relax with him.”

One perk of a good marriage is that your spouse can tolerate things about you that you find hard to tolerate about yourself. “I've become much more confident and accepting of myself because he's 100 percent accepting of me and does not judge, even as I grow older,” she says—a great comfort for a woman who has been so exacting. His tolerance of her wariness (“He knows our relationship is evolving”) soothes her.

For a woman who never felt in control of her relationships with men, she knows she was “spectacularly lucky” to find him, and she is proud of her intentional self-restraint. “Although I could have, I never pushed him to say when he would be free. It was entirely his own decision, and I was excited that he made it.”

He truly loves and appreciates her just as she is, quirks and all. He lets her be herself and waits patiently as she slowly opens to him. As Robert Frost said in his poem “Hyla Brook” about appreciating beauty all the more because of its uniqueness and fragility, “We love the things we love for what they are.”

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