At 32, I didn’t believe in love. I was only on the dating app for window shopping.
Alone in the evening, I would spend the last five minutes before bed scrolling through online profile pictures, amused by the men wearing dog collars, the men without shirts, the men with their tongues hanging out. Most disturbing were the men who did not correct their spelling errors and used acronyms only my 13-year-old son would have been able to decipher.
It was tough searching for a partner when love was not something I fully believed in. I loved my son, of course, and every member of my immediate family except my tyrannical father whose moods we tiptoed around growing up. But when it came to romantic relationships, I had never experienced that ooey-gooey feeling romantics everywhere seemed to feel. They called it love; I called it stupidity.
Also, where was mine?
I was about to deactivate my account when I came across Richard. He wasn’t too muscular, too posey or too naked. He wore an effortless smile, and his tongue was well-placed inside his mouth. His bio said: “Please don’t send a wink. Let’s have a conversation!”
A reasonable request, but it did put the onus on me. For “religion,” he described himself as agnostic. I decided to start the conversation there.
“Hi Richard,” I wrote. “I’m always interested in people’s spiritual beliefs. What does agnostic mean to you?” Over the years I have found it can mean “I’m not interested” or “I’m curious, open to possibilities.”
His polite reply indicated the latter.
While Richard lived in Sydney, a nearly four-hour drive from my home in the Australian countryside, we had a lot in common. We bonded over our dehumanizing jobs, and he was amused by my regular updates on Craig, a middle manager hired to disrupt employees from their work by telling them to work harder.
Richard and I shared a similar taste in music, reveling in the dizzying psychedelic rock of Mr. Bungle and the post-grunge riffs of Audioslave.
After covering work and music, we would shift into silliness. On one of our 3-hour phone calls, we discussed the personality traits of numbers.
“Number 5 is an absolute jerk,” he said.
“Yes!” I said. “Pompous old dude wearing a top hat. Probably smokes cigars.”
Having such a pleasant dynamic with a member of the opposite sex was new for me. Kindness and playfulness were not qualities I had witnessed growing up. Instead, there was a constant back-and-forth between my father’s anger and my mother’s desperate need to keep the peace.
Red-faced and with clenched fists, he called us “stupid” and “useless” when the trivialities of his day weren’t to his liking: a screen door open a second too long, his steak undercooked, my mother not agreeing with him over a neighbor’s unattractiveness quickly enough. She would apologize more, try to be a better cook and agree with him faster.
When I left home at almost 16, I started an on-again, off-again relationship with a man I would eventually have a child with, though our relationship didn’t last. While we mostly got along, there was no spark; I had set my bar for men so low that I was just happy he didn’t yell.
But this situationship with Richard was like hitting the jackpot. He not only didn’t throw tantrums, but was also kind, funny and seemed to genuinely enjoy my company.
Richard and I had been chatting for a month when I finally drove to Sydney to meet him in person. Playing it cool, I pretended I was coming for work and said we should meet up “since I’ll be in the area.”
We met at his local bowling alley. As I pulled into the parking lot, hands shaking, I saw him waiting out front in a white T-shirt and the same effortless smile from his dating profile. He kissed me on the cheek.
During our game, he cheered our spares and strikes and patted my shoulder after a gutter ball, saying with a smile, “Aww Neecey, I’m sorry you suck.” When we finished, he walked me to my car for another cheek kiss.
I beamed the entire drive home. Was this the infatuated feeling I’d been looking for?
The next time I visited, he had planned an entire day around me. At lunch, we ate bruschetta at his favorite cafe as every waiter became faceless and every piece of furniture a smudge in the universe. He smiled when I lifted my leg onto the side of his chair to show him my new boots and rubbed my knee with fondness.
Back at his place, we sat on his couch to watch a movie. What movie, I can’t tell you, as I wasn’t remotely interested. My heart raced with him right next to me, our legs touching.
At some point, he paused the movie, walked into his room and returned with a CD and black marker. “Music from Remarkable Richie for Magical Neecey” he scrawled on the disk before handing it to me. It contained all the songs he knew I wanted, downloaded from his collection.
When the movie ended, he walked me out and said good night. He hovered longer than necessary — or maybe I did — and I decided to get it done and kiss him.
While he wasn’t a great kisser (too much tongue), I later described this moment to a friend as: “I kissed him, and it felt like home.” An odd thing to say for someone who proclaims not to believe in love.
That big, sloppy kiss had taken things to the next level. Sitting in my cold work cubicle, I smiled every time my phone buzzed. It was always him. The highlights of my day were his quirky texts; even my annoying boss didn’t bother me.
“What do you reckon cows think about?” Richard texted.
My mind was opening to the possibility of love being more than an obligation to care for someone who made your life miserable. Maybe romantic love — that imaginary concept I had likened to Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny — was not so imaginary after all?
I decided Richard wouldn’t have kissed me back, planned a day around me and constantly texted if he wasn’t as interested as I was. It was time to shift this situationship into something a little more serious.
Richard was at the doctor’s office waiting for an appointment, and we had been playfully texting all morning.
“We both like each other,” I wrote. “What if I come up more often and we see how this goes?” I took a deep breath and hit send.
Silence.
I looked at my phone, willing it to buzz. He normally replied quickly, within minutes.
Perhaps the doctor had called him in? Unfortunate timing, but it was the only explanation. I felt certain my anxiety would soon be soothed by an enthusiastic reply. “That would be great,” he’d say. “Maybe I could come to you sometimes too?”
A few agonizing hours later, he finally replied. He explained that yes, he did like me, but he did not want anything that resembled a relationship. He hadn’t thought we were heading that way.
I spent the next few days in bed, crying and sleeping and crying, a seemingly endless stream of tears. I rolled out of bed and explained to my son the abridged version of the tale behind my puffy face.
“He sounds like a jerk,” he said.
I offered a weak smile and returned to my bed for another round of self-loathing.
Perhaps if I had waited, Richard would have decided he wanted this, too? Had I been foolish and impatient?
I tried to keep the friendship alive, hoping things could return to how they had been before I frightened him away. But it was never the same. He took longer to reply, hours instead of minutes. His texts were polite, careful and brief. No banter about bosses, music, cows or numbers. He was gone.
At the time, friends said that Richard led me on, and maybe that was true. Or maybe he just viewed the world differently. I’m not sure it matters.
My brief infatuation helped me reset my reality. While “not yelling” doesn’t equate to love, neither do some quirky texts and a shared playlist.
When Richard came into my life I thought he had pole-vaulted over the bar I’d set for romantic relationships, but I didn’t realize that my bar hovered at floor level based on what I’d seen from my parents.
Over the next few years, I would learn that love grows from knowing and respecting someone, far beyond superficial similarities and the bare minimum kindness I had received so gratefully from Richard. And that ooey-gooey bliss? When I can get a splash of it, that’s just a bonus.
Denise Mills is a freelance writer and part-time accountant in Orange, Australia.
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