Available or not?
Being ready for love also depends not only on being emotionally open but also emotionally available. The crucial instance of this is that, however long it is since our last relationship, if we still grieve that story, if we secretly hope to open up its pages again, we can’t move on to our life’s next volume. Yes, it’s common to believe that a new romantic connection will begin a new chapter. Scan the tabloid headlines and we find numerous triumphal reports of newly loved-up celebrities who underwent break-ups just a few weeks ago. Scan the online dating sites and we similarly discover the many profiles saying ‘We separated last week so now I’m keen to find love again’.
But the assumption’s unsound. Yes, humans are wired to bond – but when a bond breaks, humans are doubly wired to suffer and that makes us unfit to bond again for a while. Helen Fisher, Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University, MRI-scanned fifteen newly single students and found their brains shimmering with a pain akin to that of going cold turkey from drug addiction. So it’s not surprising that post-break-up is rarely the moment when we are emotionally available to connect with another. Problem is, that’s precisely the moment in which we may be driven to connect in order to dull the pain – but then, once the injury is healed, find ourselves looking at our newly acquired partner and wondering what on earth we just did.
So how long does it take after losing a love to be truly and wisely available again? There are no schedules here. For recovery after a break-up, the litmus test is whether we can yet think about our former partner kindly – or if not, then at least not with hate but with love’s true opposite, indifference. The delightful blog quantifiedbreakup.tumblr.com – by a blogger herself in ‘relationship recovery’ – lists several calculations for this, from ‘at least two years’ through ‘half the length of the relationship’ to ‘one week for every month you were together’.
When it comes to a variation on the theme of losing a partner – bereavement – the schedule may be more protracted; Jeanette Winterson’s downbeat but arguably accurate appraisal in her book Written on the Body, in which her heroine tries to come to terms with her lover’s leukaemia, is ‘To lose someone you love is to alter your life for ever.’ Whatever the situation, the only definitive truth is that being ready for the next relationship will always take just as long as it takes.
Being grown-up
The final, tough-love question about readiness is this. Are we yet ‘grown-up enough’ to pick a partner? Mischievously, that very wording is a test; if we’re willing to even consider the question, we’re probably on the way to ready, for success in partner choice often lies in the ability to question ourselves with mature and undefended honesty.
On this point, we turn to philosopher and social psychologist Erich Fromm, whose master work, The Art of Loving, is arguably the seminal statement of our contemporary view of what love can and should be. Fromm outlines in detail what he sees as the supremely ‘grown-up’ task of partnering another human being. In his view, mature partner choice needs the self-belief that we are worth loving, the self-insight to know what we need and the self-control to let go of our needs where necessary. Plus, the ability to teach a partner how to love us, the humility to learn from a partner how to love them and the insight to know that love doesn’t just consist of partnership but constitutes, in Fromm’s words, the ‘only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence’. At which point, most of us will run screaming from the room, thinking that for this weight of responsibility we’re not only unprepared right now but will always remain so.
Let’s not panic. If we can realize that the ‘art’ Fromm speaks of is not one we’re born with but one which, like any art, we learn, then the challenge becomes more manageable. Love is surely not a single act but an ongoing course of lessons. Which means that at this point, as we choose a partner, all we really need to ask ourselves is whether we’re ready to fill in the enrolment form.
Of course, it isn’t only we who need to be ready for love, but also the partner we choose. So it’s more than a good idea to also do due diligence on a potential partner’s readiness. We’re not talking here about the relentless first-date quizzing that makes the person on the other side of the restaurant table reach for the bill after the first course, but a compassionate awareness of whether the person we are beginning to care for is truly free. Do they have time and room in their life for love? Are they over their past relationship or actually still yearning? Are they reaching out to us through genuine attraction or to fill a life gap?
If the answer to any of these questions is ‘unclear’, we may be wiser to step back and allow them the time and space they need. And allow ourselves to find a partner more ready to be chosen.
3. Looking Back
Study the past if you would define the future.
(CONFUCIUS)
When we actively search for a long-term partner, most of us tend to think ahead. We map out goals. We create aims. And the more serious a partnership we want, the further ahead we tend to think – not just to meeting a new date, but to moving in, to getting wed, to which gender our first child will be. There’s wisdom in that. To choose well we have to gauge what the long-term will deliver.
But there’s wisdom too – as Confucius says – in first putting attention back to the past. How has it made us who we are? What does that mean for who we choose? It’s not only that our past partnerships have been preparation for this moment, giving us both ability and vulnerability around loving. It’s also that every event in our past – from the moment we were born, let alone from the moment we began to date – has taught us messages about partnership and partnership choice. Whom we choose may be our decision alone, but why we choose will be influenced by a whole lifetime’s cast of characters and scenes.
Your influences
It’s an interesting exercise to look back at our personal cast-list and our personal life-plot. Was it our mother, father or neither who taught us, by what they said or what they did, which kind of relationship we should aim for and which we should avoid? Was it our siblings, our friends, our teachers or our culture that told us we should choose a partner for their intelligence, their earning power, their beauty or their biddability? Was it being brought up in a conflict-ridden family or being a member of the debating society that has made us believe so completely that perfect partners either never argue or that, conversely, they regularly do? Is it our parents’ ruby wedding anniversary or our own recent relationship break-up that leaves us convinced either that love lasts for ever or that it is utterly impossible? And what role do Jane Eyre, James Bond, Fifty Shades of Grey or The Selfish Gene have in all this?
So review. Who have been your biggest influencers on how best to choose a partner? What has most shaped your thoughts and feelings about the kind of person who will be the best mate for you?
• Parents, siblings, extended family
• Religious or cultural leaders, teachers
• Your peer group and their partners
• Your past loves, requited or unrequited