I once dated a cute guy in high school who served me spaghetti by candlelight and taught me to play Frisbee. He was a great kisser. He was good at French and geometry. But I had to break up with him because he liked the rock band Journey. Plus, he wore a puka shell necklace.
In college, I dated a gorgeous Rhodes scholar who spent his summers distributing sacks of grain to starving children in Africa. He took me to wine tastings and the opera. But I had to break up with him because his name was Yehuda. Imagine having sex with someone and screaming, “Oh, do me, Yehuda.” Just not possible.
After college, I had to break up with a civil rights lawyer because he had a mullet.
I broke up with a pastry chef because he didn’t know who C-3PO was. When we were talking about the movie Star Wars, he kept referring to him as “that gold guy.” I’m sorry, but what thirty-year-old of my generation doesn’t know the main characters in Star Wars?
I dumped the architect because he had silver fillings instead of white ones.
I dumped the sportswriter because he said “lyberry” and “sammich” instead of “library” and “sandwich.”
The stockbroker? A Capricorn.
The junior congressman? Back hair.
As for the stand-up comedian, he simply liked me too much. I’d wake up in the morning and he’d be staring at me the way people stare at wide-screen TVs in appliance stores. Creeped me out.
Today, I am married. My husband is a stunningly kind, strong, handsome man who’s actually as intelligent as I am. The Amazing Bob, as I call him, makes me laugh — in fact, we have been cracking up over the same stupid jokes since approximately 1996. When he wraps his arms around me, I feel like I’ve come home. Even before we got married, the Amazing Bob and I gave money to the same charities, got outraged by the same injustices, shared the same passions for travel, books, politics, art. And oh, do I love him! But eventually, I’ll have to leave him, too.
Because for starters, when I first met him, he drove a brown 1985 Ford Tempo with two hubcaps missing. (The fact that he drives a silver Peugeot now is strictly my doing.) If left to his own devices, he’d play his old Smiths and Husker Du albums until everyone in a three-block radius was ready to commit suicide. Occasionally, he uses the word good as an adverb. Worse still, he likes to go fishing (snore). Also, his favorite big red Chicago Bulls sweatshirt isn’t an item of clothing so much as a billboard.
But most important, when I first met Bob outside a coffee shop, I didn’t feel any fireworks, thunderbolts, or butterflies. Afterward, I didn’t twirl home to call my best friend and announce breathlessly, “Tonight I met the man that I’m going to marry.” Instead, she called me, and I said something vague like, “Well, he didn’t seem like an asshole.”
Sure, as time went on, Bob and I fell in love. Sure, it dawned on me that we were a great team. Sure, we shared a vision for the future, and had a lot of fun together. And so, eventually, I said “yes.”
And so he’ll do — for now. Because as any woman in America can tell you, this Bob may be amazing, but he ain’t Mr. Right.
When it comes to Mr. Right, we gals know the hallmarks. We have been inundated with more subliminal messages about True Love and “finding the one” than we have been about anything else in the world (except, maybe, diets). If we’d received half as many cultural messages about, say, how to choose a mutual fund or split an atom, we women would occupy every slot on the Forbes 400 list and have first-strike nuclear capabilities by now…. — Excerpt from Susan Jane Gilman’s essay “I’m Still Waiting,” appearing in the book Mr. Wrong: Real-Life Stories About the Men We Used to Love, edited by Harriet Brown (read for free)
