Getting the Pretty Back

by Molly Ringwald

  DATE PLACES

  When choosing a destination for a date, it’s good to keep a few key considerations in mind.

  FIRST. pick somewhere that has lasting potential, as it’s disappointing to return a year (or more) later for an anniversary only to discover that it’s been demolished and replaced with a T.G.I. Friday’s.

  SECOND. make sure that it’s personal.

  Anyone can whisk someone off to a fancy restaurant—it’s generic and a little obvious. Try for something unique instead, someplace that’s unexpected and memorable and will show a revealing and, hopefully, interesting side of you. (Incidentally, that doesn’t mean you should totally forgo fancy restaurants; just make sure there’s a reason you picked it. For example, you visited Spain once and have loved tapas and sangria ever since.)

  One of the things I find endearing is when you are taken someplace that makes you feel separate from the world. If it’s during the day and you are sufficiently outdoorsy, hike to the top of a mountain. If you happen to be in New York City, channel Deborah Kerr in An Affair to Remember and head to the top of the Empire State Building. “It’s the closest thing to heaven you can find in this city.”

  Not to put too much pressure on any fledgling romance, but if one of your favorite films of all time is playing at the local movie house, why not just put him to the test right away? I mean, do you really want to spend your life with someone who doesn’t see the merit of Michelangelo Antonioni? (Or from my husband’s point of view, classic kung fu films. I confess I nearly failed this test, since I literally passed out during a viewing of Jackie Chan’s Drunken Master 2.)

  I’m pretty sure that in some way I was attempting to control the situation as much as possible, to control the heartbreak myself, like a Band-Aid that doesn’t hurt as badly when it’s you that does the pulling. But all glibness aside, we know that the heart has ideas of its own. I was falling in love with someone who was in another phase of his life entirely. (I do believe that our lives are lived in seven-year cycles. A concept summed up neatly by the Jesuit missionary St. Francis Xavier, “Give me the boy until the age of seven, and I’ll give you the man.”)

  Which has always begged the question in my mind: Why did my youth make all those older men I dated feel young? Being with a younger man didn’t make me feel younger. Quite the opposite. It made me feel older. It shined a light on all of my experience. It made me self-conscious about my body, for the first time, and it honestly took me years to stop saying things like, “Well, you probably don’t remember Devo…but they were really big in the eighties.”

  What do you do in this situation? The reality is that by the time we get into our thirties, and definitely in our forties, we are beholden to the choices that we made earlier on, before we knew better. Most people are in their forever relationships already (or on their second or third forever relationships). And most men, surprise, surprise, are attracted to younger women. I know, because for many years, I was that younger woman. Being the older woman all of a sudden was a role that I was unaccustomed to. It seemed to happen just like that—all of a sudden. And I don’t think that I’m the only one for whom it’s happened like that. You are the youngest person in the room, and then bam! You’re not. And sometimes, depending on the situation, you’re the oldest.

  This predicament was particularly hard to deal with, since I had always been the go-to girl for all of my friends for dating advice. Especially for my friend Eloise, who had hands-down the worst dating history of anyone. We met when we were both in our early twenties in New York, and we hit it off immediately. She was smart, beautiful, creative, funny, the only daughter of artistic, highbrow parents. It confounded me as to why, as the years ticked by, Eloise remained single. I think the answer dawned on me around the same time that I realized it was a good thing that she no longer drank. Since I love wine and adore sharing a beautiful bottle with close friends, it always irked me that I had a really good friend who couldn’t drink at all.

  “Not even a little teeny bit? Just a taste?” I’d wheedle during lunch.

  Eloise would shake her head. “You don’t understand,” she’d say as we waited for the check. She gestured to my wineglass. “You see that little bit you have in there, left at the bottom? It would be all I could do not to lunge for that, and drink it down before we left. It would torture me that you left that. In fact, it’s been years now since I’ve had a drink, and it still kind of tortures me.”

  Years later, as we got to know each other better, I realized that the same impulses that governed her alcohol (non)consumption were at play in her devastating dating history. She went after men with the same single-mindedness and intensity of an Amazonian spear fisherman. And the men responded exactly the way I imagine the fish do. The few that she managed to spear were very short-lived—usually just hookups.

  “Men are hunter-gatherers,” I continually reminded her, sounding like a fifties sociology textbook. “They like a little mystery.” Eloise, however, seemed absolutely incapable of holding back when someone caught her fancy. And everyone caught her fancy. She was able to read romance into everything and everyone. Even the postman could be a viable suitor. After all, he brought her letters and packages every day.

  Things reached a feverish peak when it became clear that she was getting to the age when the window on baby making was rapidly shutting and there was no candidate for fatherhood in sight. After watching her solicit every eligible man in Manhattan for his sperm, it got to where I was afraid to leave her alone with anyone of the opposite sex, lest she bring up her “project.” She visited my family over Thanksgiving one year under strict instructions not to bring it up. In the morning I discovered she had hooked up with my brother.

  “Well, you said I just couldn’t ask for his sperm, right? You didn’t say that I couldn’t sleep with him!”

  She at least had the dignity to look a little sheepish. Her quest for reproduction took her to far and unexpected places. She solicited every gay friend, old school chum, an ex-flame’s best friend (which I always thought was a little sketchy, since they were going for it “the natural way”—some friend!). The search culminated with a man she met on a culture trip to Cuba. She somehow got him to agree to “donate” his sperm and found various reasons to go back and keep trying, no small feat, given the stringency of the laws at the time. Her considerable efforts, however, ultimately met with no success.

  “Well,” she mused, during one of our late-night chats, “he does only have one testicle. That might have had something to do with it.”

  “What!” I practically screamed. “You have been flying back and forth to Cuba, spending a fortune on tickets, breaking laws, to become impregnated by a guy with ONE BALL?”

  “He has a fake one. But it’s incredibly lifelike,” she offered. “You know, I wouldn’t even have known unless he told me…”

  Eventually it got to the point where I told Eloise to talk to me before every date so that we could discuss areas of conversation that should be off limits. In addition, she would forward her e-mails to me, and I would do my best to decode them and help craft a response.

  “You should have a dating column, a sort of ‘Dear Abby’ for our time,” Eloise would enthuse. “You’re so good!”

  FIVE THINGS TO DO (OR NOT DO) AFTER A BREAKUP

  PACK IT UP. Take everything that reminds you of your now ex-significant other and put it in a box. Wrap strong sticky tape around it. This last detail is very important, since it can be tempting to bust it out and torture yourself after drinking too much wine. The tape is usually a pretty good deterrent—depending on how much wine you have actually imbibed.

  DON’T DRINK TOO MUCH WINE. There is a saying that there is no problem that can’t be made much worse by drugs and alcohol. I’m all for wallowing—it is an essential part of the grieving process; however, an excess of any mind-altering substance can keep you from genuinely feeling your feelings. Everything becomes a little bit better or a lot worse. The only thing that can heal you is
to honestly deal with the pain. Better to do it with a clear head and leave the wine to the good times.

  START A RIGOROUS WORKOUT REGIMEN. There is no better time to get into shape. It will do wonders for your fragile ego (and no one’s ego feels great during a breakup—no matter who is breaking up with whom). Mix the high-intensity cardio with relaxing and centering yoga.

  PLAN A TRIP AWAY WITH A REALLY GOOD GIRLFRIEND. Make sure that you don’t pick a place that has too many memories attached to it. One day when you are stronger you will want to reclaim those places, but now isn’t the time. Pick a place that you have always wanted to visit but were vetoed in the “Where should we go on our vacation?” discussions. Take lots of pictures of you looking gorgeous. (If you don’t feel gorgeous, act like it anyway. Your brain will eventually catch up.)

  IMAGINE THE POSSIBILITIES. Think of every interest that you have ever wanted to pursue but have never found the time, then try a few. I bet we would be very surprised if we added up the countless hours that were spent on unhealthy, destructive relationships. A Buddhist adage says something like: “If you weren’t thinking about that which makes you unhappy, what would you be thinking about?” So think about it. Whenever you feel caught up in the misery, stop and ask yourself what you could be doing with that time instead.

  Mostly I would give her time limits on how long to wait before she could respond. None of this, however, led to any improvement. This confounded me until I found out later, through mutual friends, that all of the suggestions and tips I gave her—what I considered to be thoughtful, practical, well-seasoned dating advice—went unheeded. No matter how many times I instructed her to let the guy make the first move, I would hear otherwise, like the tale about her trying to talk a man she had just met at a wedding into pulling over into a motel during the drive back. I threw up my hands after a failed relationship with a guy who founded one of those Internet travel sites. “It’s never going to work if you don’t listen to me!” I’d holler.

  “It’s OK,” she assured me, after the guy cheated on her with his ex-girlfriend. “I told him that I would forgive him if he gave me the gnome.” She holds this souvenir—a garden gnome from a travel site’s advertising campaign—among her other treasures: early Ramones tickets from the eighties, original scribbles from her old friend Andy Warhol, and Jonathan Larson’s notes from early drafts of Rent. Eloise definitely has a taste for knickknacks.

  Some of my other friends aren’t quite as laissez-faire about the dissolution of a relationship. Another of my girlfriends, Marie, has had her share of relationship mishaps in the past. A tall, ravishing redhead with impeccable taste in everything from home décor to food to garden design, Marie is a culture snob of the highest order, but with the goods to back it up. Her crisp South African accent only serves to add to her chilly allure. And yet in the years since we met, I witnessed one heart-wrenching breakup after another.

  “How could Marie possibly be single?” I pondered aloud to a male acquaintance of mine. “She is easily one of the most beautiful women I have even seen.”

  “Maybe she is more attractive to women than to men,” he said.

  It was a puzzling comment, but I figured that he was just responding to her temperature—her unreachable hauteur, perfect posture. Her habit of wearing all white all winter without so much as a smudge. The way she always had an umbrella when it rained, along with the perfect trench. Her guaranteed ability to know the perfect, obscure wine pairing for every meal. All qualities that women admire—certain traits that we aspire to, the way that we read fashion magazines, thinking that somehow if we buy the clothes and the makeup then we might actually be able to look like that one day.

  The last time that Marie was single is the last time I attempted to be a matchmaker. My husband and I were friends with an artist who had gone through his own recent heartbreak. He was successful, attractive, and a very close friend. One night after dinner I mentioned to my husband how great it would be if we could set them up.

  “It’ll be perfect!” I insisted. “She loves art. He’s an artist. She loves to cook amazing food. He loves to eat amazing food…”

  “I don’t know,” my husband said, ever the voice of reason. “What happens if it doesn’t work out?”

  “Oh they’re grown-ups!” I said, pooh-poohing his lack of enthusiasm. “I mean think about it! It’s always such a crapshoot when our friends get together with someone. Isn’t it a better idea to stack the odds in our favor? We like both of them already! It’s ideal!”

  My husband rolled his eyes. “Whatever it is that makes you want to do this, whatever gene it is…I don’t think I have it.”

  “It isn’t a gene, it’s gender,” I called out over my shoulder.

  I was already off to the kitchen to set about organizing a dinner party to make the introduction. When it comes to romantic setups, I always feel that it’s better to have a few people around, rather than overtly double-dating—which puts way too much pressure on the prospective pair. Blind dates, meanwhile, are just awkward and cruel for everyone involved. And in the spirit of full disclosure…I admit that I like to be there to survey my handiwork—there’s just that little bit of control freak in me. Either I have a God complex, or more likely a yenta complex. Did. I have to remember this is all past tense.

  For the dinner party I prepared a beautiful beef bourguignon the day before, letting it simmer for hours, and then transported it, along with all of the other culinary accoutrements, to our artist friend’s apartment. It was a magical evening, plenty of good food and wine along with intelligent conversation, set against a wintry Manhattan backdrop. The dinner was a resounding success. Our friends started dating almost immediately. I felt very proud.

  “You see?” I boasted to my husband. “O ye of little faith.”

  “Yeah yeah yeah,” he said. “Just wait. It’s just the beginning.”

  The relationship seemed to flourish, though there was an obvious underlying tension. Marie, like most women I know, tended to push for immediate intimacy, while our friend escaped into his work whenever things got a little too intense.

  I held counsel with Marie. My husband got the male point of view. “This is going to come to no good. I know it,” my husband predicted.

  The first breakup was about six months in. Then they did what all sadomasochistic urbanites do—they got back together, to see just how much pain they could inflict on each other. A year later, while my family was traveling across the country, our friend broke up with Marie a day before her birthday. When Marie e-mailed me to tell me the news, I did what any sympathetic friend would do. I fired back a quick reply, commiserating with her, elucidating my friend’s (now her ex’s) faults, and why she was better off without him.

  Little did I know that Marie, in a fit of fury and rage befitting the ancient Greeks, took on a little Martha Stewart do-it-yourself project. She put together a compilation of the worst e-mails that she had received about him, with choice words from her mother and her friends (including yours truly). These were forwarded to him in a tidy document with a virtual bow tied around it—his complete character assassination as a little memento to remember her by. I learned two important lessons from this Sturm und Drang. (1) I will under no circumstances try to fix any of my friends up, no matter how wonderful they are individually or how forlorn they seem around Valentine’s Day. (2) I will look long and hard at that “send” button before I press it.

  Did this sort of drama happen in our twenties? Certainly. But the way we felt about it was different. Getting broken up with at any age sucks, to be sure, but the sting we feel in our teens and twenties feels like an annoying little nibble from a gnat. We wailed and made really great mixed tapes full of bitter songs featuring the Smiths or Elvis Costello, but in a couple of weeks, we were on to the next. Getting dumped at thirty-six just feels like it has more weight to it. A nasty mosquito bite—like the ones that get you in the summer that swell for days. The closer you get to forty (if we continue with the insect a
nalogy), it is more like a bee or a wasp sting. You feel like if you don’t have the Epi-Pen on you, you just might die.

  So what do we do? Many women respond to the idea of being single at this point in their lives with complete and utter panic. They have poor judgment, they lower their standards, they dress inappropriately.

  THE JOYS OF BEING SINGLE

  Marriage and kids are great, but as many of my single friends can attest to, it isn’t the only way to be. There is an unquestionable stigma attached to being single in our society, though there shouldn’t be. I admire my friends who have made the choice to “go it alone” and confess to twinges of jealousy when comparing their personal freedom to my carefully structured time-managed existence. Here are some great aspects to being unattached.

  THE ABILITY TO TRAVEL ANYTIME, ANYWHERE WITHOUT HAVING TO SYNC UP YOUR SCHEDULE WITH ANYONE ELSE’S.

  NOT HAVING TO SWITCH OFF HOLIDAYS TO BE WITH “HIS” FAMILY OR “YOUR” FAMILY.

  BEING IN CHARGE OF THE REMOTE.

  HANDING BACK THE CHILD (AFTER HE OR SHE CRASHES FROM THE SUGAR HIGH).

  FLIRTING WITH WHOMEVER YOU CHOOSE.

  PSYCHIC SPACE.

  MORE TALK ABOUT SEX—LESS ABOUT REAL ESTATE.

  SANCTIONABLE SELFISHNESS.

  MAKING AN “X” IN THE BED.

  FALLING IN LOVE AGAIN.

  At their worst, they drag their children through their bad decisions. This sort of panic has to be looked at as akin to a bad acid trip. You are not thinking clearly. You need to wait for this drug to make its way out of your system. (Granted I have never actually dropped acid myself, but I’ve seen Trainspotting…or was that heroin?) Anyway, the point is we need to not make choices based on fear. Sometimes the best thing to do after a long-term relationship ends is to step back and let yourself heal. Don’t just fling yourself back into the dating pool without taking care of yourself first—odds are, you’ll just end up belly flopping. Don’t worry, the dating pool isn’t going anywhere; it’ll still be there when you’re ready for it.