This is not how I imagined my life would be at age 33.
I’m not sure what I thought it would be like exactly, but I know it involved a magnificent apartment with floor to ceiling windows overlooking a park – was it Central Park or Regent’s Park? I know it wasn’t Sydney’s Hyde Park. No, no, no; that wasn’t good enough. It had to be somewhere exotic, far away. I was a very glamorous lawyer, I seem to recall, with numerous suitors clamouring for a moment of my time. One of the stronger memories was my hair. It was straight and neat and coiffed.
Maybe I imagined myself undergoing a severe personality transplant between the age of 9 and 33? As a matter of fact, I’m not sure my visions even reached the ripe old age of 33. All I knew was that in The Year 2000 I would be 23 and fabulous. Maybe I thought personality transplants would be commonplace by The Year 2000 and I would have one and therefore the willingness to every day wrestle with a turbo-charged blow dryer in order to turn my frizzy hair into a neat coif was something that would suddenly descend upon me.
I know I didn’t imagine myself married. Marriage and weddings were something I didn’t give much thought to. It was too far away – those thoughts of husbands and motherhood. I wanted to have a fabulous life; travel the world; date lots of men.
OK, so I have travelled a little bit. And some people may say that having lived in Sydney, New York, Barcelona (briefly) and London – coupled with the summer trips to Corsica and weekend breaks in Italy – was a fabulous life. But if I am honest with myself, this is not the entirety of what I thought it meant to be fabulous at age 9. No, the flash apartment, high-powered career and myriad men were all part of it.
And yet, here I am. Aged 33, freelancer writer with zero savings, on a plane by myself, braid falling out, streaked mascara, saggy-crotched leggings, a short fitted jumper over a long loose t-shirt, struggling to don my TED stockings in a shitty seat in cattle class (I’m pretty sure my future fantasy included business class travel).
With a copy of “Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr Good Enough”.
Next to a newly engaged couple (if the manic gesticulation with the left ring finger is anything to go by).
Mum surprised me with the book. She was really pleased with herself. She even told me she’d bought me a great book for the plane so I hadn’t packed anything else to read.
It isn’t the travelling by myself I mind so much. After seven years of living abroad, I am used to the long plane journeys alone. I normally pack several trashy novels and have a wide selection of new release films to watch on my individual entertainment system. I thank God every flight for the invention of individual entertainment systems.
When I first moved away from Australia, to New York when I was 25, they didn’t have individual entertainment systems. You had to get neck strain by watching the selected G-rated movie on one large screen at the front of the plane, as though the cramping from the miniature economy-class seats wasn’t enough pain to inflict. When I pressed the buzzer on that trip to request the flight attendant ask the man a couple of rows in front to move his pillow so that I could see the screen, she turned to the man next to me and said, “There’s one on every flight.”
I thought she was talking about the man with the pillow. She was talking about me. She said something to the pillow man but he didn’t move it. I couldn’t see a bloody thing on that screen, which was probably a good thing, because I think the film was rubbish anyway.
Thank God for individual entertainment systems!
Unfortunately, the entertainment system on this particular flight was malfunctioning.
Unfortunately, the only book I had to read was called “Marry Him” and the front cover was decorated with a doily and confetti.
Unfortunately, I was sitting next to an extremely over-the-top happy vegetarian American woman who had just got engaged to her scrawny British mate. Quite inconsiderate of them to be smiling and laughing and hugging so much when my tear-streaked face obviously pointed to the fact that I had just said goodbye to my family yet again, only this time, my four-year-old nephew had exacerbated the pain of goodbye by asking me: “What are those tears for?”
Completely inconsiderate! Obviously, I could not engage in conversation with them.
So, with all my potential channels of entertainment thoroughly exploited, I opened the book.
It starts with a joke. You know that old one about the Husband Store? To summarise (not worth recounting in full), there is a department store of husbands. As you go up each level, the qualities of the husbands available become more bountiful and attractive. When you reach the sixth and top floor you get this message:
“You are visitor 42,215,602 to this floor. There are no men on this floor. This floor only exists to prove that women are impossible to please. Thank you for shopping in the Husband Store.”
I have many problems with this joke and this opening to this book, but I will bore you with just two:
1. The author claims to have written the joke. I find this claim highly unlikely.
2. It’s stupid. Who wouldn’t go all the way to the top to get the best on offer, whatever it is? Imagine this: “Oh, there are smarties on the ground floor? Wow, I am so grateful to be given smarties that I won’t go up any further to see what is up there, even though I’m really a savoury and not a sweet person.” I mean, what if there’s a three course meal of lobster and beef wellington followed by chocolate fondant up there? Pulease!
Frustrated, but intrigued to see if the book could get any worse, I persisted.
It could.
What came next was a list of the qualities the author would like in a husband. There were 61. They included such qualities as (and I quote):
Intelligent
Extremely funny
Financially stable
Sexy
Over 5’10” but under 6’0
Decisive but not bossy
Free-spirited but responsible
Charismatic but genuine
Creative but not an artist
Likes discussing (but not arguing about) politics and world events
Cares about animals
Warm but not clingy
Grounded but not boring
Soulful but not new-agey
Vulnerable but not weak
Quirky but not weird
Has a full head of hair (wavy and dark would be nice – no blonds)
Emotionally stable.
Emotionally stable? What emotionally stable, rich, sexy, funny guy with a full head of dark wavy hair would hook up with a nutter that has a list like that? I mean, is she for real? Yes, I like dogs, but would I put it on a list of qualities I want in a man? (The answer is no, by the way, I wouldn’t.)
My list consists of two qualities: smart and funny. I’ve started to think of late that even those two might be a bit too much to ask for.
I looked around the aeroplane. I was trapped there for the next 24 hours. I tried the entertainment system again. No luck. I decided I needed to go to the toilet – anything to pass the time. Plus, I needed to calm down after reading a list of 61 qualities some nutter would like in a husband and who is now trying to give me (personally) dating advice. The temerity! How could my mother do this to me?
In the toilets I discovered that the toilet seat covers were empty, even though the bloody plane had just taken off. Not happy. Have you ever tried to squat in an aeroplane? I can now confirm it is impossible, even with my pilates-trained pelvic floor. I hate BA! Why, when I book Qantas, do I get BA planes from the 1980s? It is not the same thing.
The toilet experience, in the end, did not serve to calm me down. The lack of toilet seat covers had enraged me even more.
So, back to the book. The book with chapter titles that include “How Feminism Fucked Up My Love Life”; “It’s Not Him, It’s You”; “Don’t Be Picky, Be Happy”; and “The Good Enough Marriage”.
Don’t let the different chapter titles fool you. Each was simply a variation of the same theme: the author’s friend broke up with this great guy because he wasn’t the perfect Prince Charming she’d imagined in her childhood; he then met someone else, was now happily married – probably with several bright and well-adjusted kids – and she was still single.
To help prevent us idiot 30-somethings from suffering the same fate as her and her ‘friends’, ie 40 and single, the author furnishes the suffering reader with an incredibly repetitive set of dating rules and tips, which basically come down to this: marry anyone you kind of get along with because there are more single women than men and any boyfriend you break up with will go on to have a fabulously happy marriage with another, less picky, woman.
The problem with modern women is that we’re all just too fussy. We have an incredible sense of entitlement and unrealistic expectations of happiness. And what’s to blame? Feminism.
We simply must forget about our childhood fantasies and be realistic about who’s good enough for us to marry. I mean, marriage is the point of a century of woman’s struggle for equality, isn’t it?
As I read on, I became more and more livid. I mean, as a child I fantasised about myself with coiffed hair. Did I get to 23 in The Year 2000, discover it was still frizzy and shave it off? No, I tied it back!
What does my mother think of me if she thinks I need to read this book?
Just when I thought the book couldn’t get any more implausible, it did.
The author tells the story of her ‘friend’ Lisa. Lisa is 35 and single. She had a great boyfriend a few years ago. He really loved her. He said she was pretty. He called her in the middle of the day to say he loved her. But she didn’t feel he loved her enough. So she decided to test him.
One day, in the car, Lisa asked her boyfriend if something happened to her and she died, would he ever love another woman as much as he loved her. He said it would be different from the love he had for her.
“Different, as in you loved me more?” Lisa asked.
“Different as in…different,” her boyfriend said.
Wrong answer boyfriend! Lisa broke up with him after that because she didn’t feel he loved her enough. She wanted to be with someone who would be “absolutely crazy” about her.
This is not a dating problem. This is a mental health problem. Can you imagine anyone getting “absolutely crazy” over a woman who hounds a man about what he’d do if she died young? An absolutely crazy man, maybe, but nobody sane, surely? The absolutely crazy part falls squarely on Lisa’s doorstep in my humble opinion, which incidentally doesn’t count because I am 33 and single.
The author puts Lisa’s story into the book as an example for all of us of what not to do. What not to do, in my irrelevant opinion, is to let this woman loose on the streets. Instead of telling us that this friend is normally considered reasonable (by whom, I would like to know?) she should telling us about her efforts to get Lisa committed for severe self-obsession.
And then, just to make matters worse, a Hindu meal arrived in my row. And for whom would it be for, I hear you ask? None other than Ms Newly-Engaged sitting next to me, flashing her stupid ring around like a glow stick. Yes, that’s right, the white, blonde American woman. She did not eat a morsel of her Hindu meal when it arrived. No, she waited almost a full half-hour until her scrawny fiance’s meal to be placed in front of him to get stuck into hers. How sweet. I almost spewed all over them.
I ate my meal in silence and reflected on the relationships I’d had with men. Mum obviously thought I broke up with people unnecessarily. She obviously thought I was some kind of nutcase on a voyage of self-destruction.
Maybe it was true that in my 20s I judged the men interested in me a little too quickly. Mum maintains, to this day, that I broke up with someone for having rosy cheeks. I don’t remember the exact reason I broke up with that particular person, but it definitely was not for having rosy cheeks.
There were some men she barely knew and loved, and some she never knew and hated. Of course, she always loved the nice guys and hated the creeps. Even from all the way over there, she could tell the ones who loved me and the ones who didn’t. But I love to have my heart broken. If it’s not unrequited, it’s not love in my book.
This is obviously the reason she’s bought me the book. She thinks I should stick it out with the rosy-cheeked guys and steer clear of the self-obsessed ones. But how can I make myself feel something I don’t feel? How can I, for the first time in my life, find rosy cheeks attractive when I’ve always liked dark, hairy men with cheeky grins?
My brain hurt and I was grateful to hear over the PA: “Cabin crew, prepare for landing.”
It was only Bangkok but it would allow me to stretch my legs, lose the losers next to me for an hour and stop thinking about marrying men I don’t love.
I walked around the terminal wondering why every airport looked the same. If I’d been dropped in here unaware, would I know I was in Bangkok? Probably not. Was it necessary for every airport in every city to have that sterile, banal atmosphere that told nothing of the city itself? Chain restaurants, the same perfumes, make-up, alcohol and tobacco.
It would be nice to have someone to talk to in stopovers instead of wandering around aimlessly, feeling depressed about the effect of globalisation on the airport experience. Was this a reasonable thing to feel depressed about, I wonder? I felt like I was losing perspective fast and I didn’t know if it was the flight or the book.
I made my way to my departure gate. While feeling a little dishevelled, at least I’d brushed my teeth, changed my knickers and stretched. And the depression about airport banality had at least taken my mind off my husbandless state and that awful, awful book, even if only briefly.
I stood in the queue staring high up into huge glass walls that reflected the rows of seats beneath into infinity. It was a beguiling sight. The girl next to me was taking photos of it. I turned to look at her, maybe ask if I could see the result, and that’s when I saw him.
He was standing in the queue reading the Harvard Business Review. Just casually reading along while crawling slowly forward like the rest of us.
The Harvard Business Review? This guy is perfect for me!
I worried quickly about my book. Was it on show? I could not be seen to be reading this book in front of a potential future husband. I should have a copy of the Economist or something, even though I have never spent a penny buying the Economist in my life. Why don’t I have a copy of a good magazine, I worried? The New Yorker would do it, and I’ve spent lots of cents buying that over the years.
He wasn’t my type, look-wise. He was tall and thin and blonde. I go for dark men who are usually a little short (you can’t have everything – dark and handsome without the tall had always seemed like a reasonable compromise to me). But I don’t care, do I? Tall and blonde. Who cares? I can live with that! I’ve read the book! The most important thing is that he is reading the Harvard Business Review thereby indicating intelligence: my one-and-only criteria (I could live without humour if it meant never having to read a self-help book on marriage again).
Maybe this is a sign? Mum getting me this book, and forcing me to think - for eight hours straight – about my attitude to men and marriage. It made me realise that I can compromise! Who cares about dark hair and foreign accents? The most important thing is to be able to hold an intellectual conversation! To be able to learn things from my boyfriend and to be able to teach him things too. I would be able to teach him all about the things I read in the Guardian and the New Statesman. I do subscribe to the Economist’s podcasts. I bet he reads the Economist. I’m sure it’s a good publication despite its capitalist rapture. I am sure we would get on well, even if we didn’t agree on everything. Who wants to agree on everything? I have no problem arguing about politics. In fact, I love it. (See how reasonable I am?)
I gathered up the stray strands of hair around my face and re-braided it. I put on some lipgloss. I pulled my leggings up, smoothed out the t-shirt beneath my jumper. I turned slowly, casually to face him.
He was still reading the Harvard Business Review.
I turned around to face the front again. I waited as long as I could. I turned slowly, casually to face him.
He was still reading the Harvard Business Review.
Is it that interesting? Well, anyway, now that I knew this was meant to be, I was sure I would be seated near him. I mean, what else could all this mean?
We got our passports checked and moved into the lounge. I found a seat and just as I sat down, he walked past. He looked for a seat but there wasn’t one so he carried on. He definitely came toward me in order to sit next to me.
I blushed, my heart pounded. I tried to calm down, and then, when I did, I stood up. I looked out across the crowd and there he was, across the other side of the lounge, looking at me!
I blushed, my heart pounded, I sat back down.
They called my row and as they did I saw him stroll into the jetway and disappear. I tried to catch up to him, but the crowd was too thick. Oh well, I was sure he would be sitting near to me on the plane. He had to be. It had to be that way.
I got to my seat, shoved my bag in the overhead compartment and sat down all under a distressed pretense of casualness. I tried to act as I would if I wasn’t just about to meet my possible future husband.
He was nowhere to be seen.
My eyes darted frantically, tragically up and down each aisle. I used three different toilets within half an hour. He was nowhere. Disappeared. Phumph. Into thin air.
So I finished the book. And hated it even more. I thought about when I was 9 and what I dreamed about. And then I thought about now. I didn’t have neat hair, I wasn’t a lawyer. I didn’t care. OK, I am kind of disappointed that I don’t travel business class but all the rest I could take or leave. I like my life. I like my freedom to freelance and not answer to anybody. I would hate to work 80 hours a week for a corporate law firm. All those things I dreamed about; I don’t care they didn’t come true. So why is the romantic aspect of my life so depressing?
It can’t be because of what the book says. It can’t be because I am unwilling to give up my dreams of my fantasy husband. I never had a fantasy husband. I still don’t!
And what if that is it?
What if the precise reason I am not married is because I never dreamed about it? Perhaps, in order to get married, you have to want to get married?
Do I want to get married? Or is this just what everybody else wants? Apparently Mum wants me to get married, if I’ve taken the hint from the book with proper insight. I do want to have children. I would like to have a boyfriend I loved and who loved me and wanted to share things with me, like a child and political discussions.
But marriage? I’m not so sure.
I hated the person I’d become on this flight.
As I heaved my bag off the baggage carousel in Heathrow airport, I spyed the tall, blonde, thin man who was briefly my potential future husband.
Thank God for that poor man he was not seated anywhere near me. Who knows what I was likely to do under the influence of doilies, confetti and my mother’s expectations?
I know a century of woman’s struggle for equality does not boil down to the achievement of an OK marriage, but it shouldn’t boil down to torturing each other either.
I like my life. I don’t like that book. I do understand that you can take some, if not all, advice from people who love you. And for that reason, I will never, ever break up with a man for having rosy cheeks again. In fact, if I happen to meet one, well then, I’ll buy him a glass of red and ask him his thoughts on proportional representation.
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