Love permeates the airwaves as the soundtrack of your life. If those schmaltzy torch songs never pulled at your heartstrings, you’d be living under a rock. Please make my boulder a classic rock holder.
With a whopping 100 million tunes in existence, 71% lyricise dating and 57% romance.
Feel-good melodies have buoyed many upbringings, from the blues to country Western: breaking up, making up, making it, faking it and then, ahem, moving on. Even the notorious “hump and dump” became immortalised on pressed vinyl. Everyone was supposed to crave and cave, date and mate. Initials and hearts inscribed on trees might initiate exchanging vows.
These timeworn traditions comprise the rites of passage for most people; except neurodivergents, who suffer from a phobia. Schizoid personality disorder is Barbra Streisand’s anthem “People” in reverse. Navigating life without sentimentality tends to engender curiosity from outsiders and shame for the afflicted. How do I explain my aversion to intimacy and my lack of desire to bond to my colleagues, neighbours, classmates, and innocent bystanders? I wish I had a dollar for every time someone asked: Don’t I honestly want to catch that bouquet, garter, or guy?
A spinster was never chosen; an old fogey bachelor didn’t choose. Sexist indeed; and deflecting such queries without sounding defensive is challenging.
Making matches
I never questioned neurotypicals’ divergent paths as anything other than exercising their own alternative, free will. We are all privy to the conjugal failure rate, and know far too many misbegotten Mister and Missuses who secretly envy singles and regret being trapped. These couples coexist miserably, as did my parents. “Well, something must have turned you off from marriage,” a clinician opined.
For the most part, my guardians lead separate lives, with my father eluding my mother to the maximum extent. Her tearful confessions about his true nature jarred with the public perception of his affability. Privy to their fights, vicious accusations and volatility underscored what should have been my salad days. Mom recounted vignettes of her suicide attempts that terrorised me, vocalising Pop’s shuddering, callous dismissals of her threats. Polarising for any impressionable child. I tended to ally with my mother, who was a more vulnerable soul.
Smith College gave me a nunnery and an excuse not to date. Most introductions were fiascos, and I was far too maladroit to mingle at parties, discotheques, or casual meetups. Forget small talk, I’d rather walk. In French, being well in one’s skin (être bien dans sa peau) translates as a comfort level in oneself that should be acquired before coupledom. “You become the person you want to be with,” a rabbi intoned at a “Love, Dating, and Marriage” talk. Aside from envisioning yourselves commingling, you must share existential goals and respect another’s character. Notice how your significant other treats an underling or those who cannot advance him/her, a cabbie, or a server. You’re ringside to the purest lowdown on the highest order of partnership.
So how did I find myself attending that lecture as a midlife matchmaker at Together Dating Service with a few of my clients in tow? And what enabled me to create lasting alliances for others when I couldn’t for myself? A sweet paradox that would have soured most wallflowers.
My SPD made me more of a spy of social rituals and performances. I often felt like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain observing daily theatrics more as a spectator than as an engaged participant. Maybe this distance and detachment gave me a more authentic read on the hoi polloi while retaining a safe refuge.
No one in the dating service questioned my credentials or suitability. Pairings isn’t an exact science, since physical attraction and chemistry are completely subjective and elusive. And both sadly ephemeral.
The real human comedy took place in the post-encounter dramatics. There’s a lid for every pot; or is it just potluck?
Most any of us would be pleased enough to find a dime on the sidewalk. But how many would “gleefully” retrieve it? That act of parsimony sounded a death knell to a potential relationship. A morbidly obese man needed to enter the Together office sideways yet looked askance at the prospect of a woman ten pounds overweight. Despair disguised as desire drenched the cloying air surrounding my desk as the waiting room reeked, reprising Nynex’s slogan, “If it’s out there, it’s in here.”
I had my own good time conducting interviews with singletons, making introductions, and even planning getaways. But my personal life remained solitary. “The crop” lodged in beautiful Cape May during the balmy last gasp of summer. Come winter, we would convene for Valentine’s Day. No marketer services the lovelorn who are jilted, widowed, divorced, or in some other anguished transition. Cupid could create an orphans’ holiday for them. I did. Appropriating his arrow at my Eleanor Rigby, Father McKenzie first invitational dinner: a code red affair at Pondicherry Restaurant in The Plaza, complete with an exclusive “Kama Sutra menu”. No hook-ups emerged that evening. Yours truly returned to kiss the clowder goodnight. Soldiering on, declining phone numbers, and dodging disagreeable, stilted trysts.
Flying solo
We don’t imagine life to be like a box of chocolates or as saccharine and perfect as a wedding cake. Somewhere I became a matrimonial misfit, as did my dating members. “Expectations too high, single forever?” a New York magazine headline screamed. When Charles and Camilla tied the knot, the tabloids shrieked, “Two boring gits just got married.” Yet there I and my entourage mouldered in the rear pews. Watching vicariously as contemporaries enacted a venerated service that would culminate in offspring and all their attendant responsibilities.
“I am mentally incapable of marriage,” presumptive schizoid Franz Kafka penned and never mailed to his overbearing father in a prolix 45-page (Letter to His Father, 1919) treatise. Powerful talents, powerful fears. Even extremely desirable individuals jettison nuptials. Adorable Marisa Tomei has famously asserted that she is not a “fan of marriage as an institution” adding “I don’t know why women need to have children to be seen as complete human beings.” This authentic thesp prioritised independence and career while balancing her boyfriends and extracurricular activities. Brava!
Yesterday brought the dispiriting news of beloved Diane Keaton’s passing. The free-spirited luminary remained unfettered because domesticity exacted a toll on her mother and she simply didn’t want the same. What I beheld as a kid torn between my parents during their feuds became a future admonishment that this union doesn’t ensure unanimity. Far better to fly solo. Loneliness and solitude are more a matter of perception than reality for the well-adjusted.
Blair Sorrel is an author and innovator who founded StreetZaps to protect people and pets from stray voltage. She previously worked as a matchmaker and columnist, and wrote the memoir “A Schizoid at Smith“.
