Single Woman at the Wedding
I regret to inform you that I'm writing about love again
I was working a sleepy summer Monday in the shop recently when a couple wandered in from the outdoor café across the street. They were maybe in their 60s, I’m bad at guessing age, but they were petite and grey-haired and had simple, chicly cut clothes that suggested wealth. When I greeted the wife she sort of cooed in happy surprise and then announced, “I’m a little tipsy!” before grabbing a natural sea sponge from the display in front of her. “I need a new one of these!” she declared. “What is it?” her husband cried, stumbling through the door after her, slightly less inebriated but still inebriated. “Who cares what it is, I need it?” she hissed at him but not unkindly, and he looked at me like, “Why do I even ask?” and we both laughed. She apologized for being drunk and I waved her away. “They make them strong over there, I speak from experience,” I said, remembering the one time I ordered a martini after closing the shop last summer before meeting people for dinner, the effects of which made me self-consciously drunk for the rest of the night. “We know John, so he always over-serves us,” she said before walking away to sort through the kitchen linens. “This is after one drink,” her husband said as he settled at the register with me to wait for the damage to be done. I asked if they were visiting and they answered together—he from next to me and she from the other side of the store—that they grew up here but now live in New Orleans. They come every year and stay at the Regency (the hotel across the street) because they love the breakfast and the drinks made by John (the sweet, chain-smoking waiter/bartender who comes in once a year to spend some of his tip money), whom they grew up with. After several minutes and a couple hundred dollars, I learned they had been high school sweethearts but drifted apart after graduation, until he sent her a letter 20 years later, saying, “I think of you every year on your birthday.”
“You’ll want to take a nap before dinner,” he told his wife after she’d paid and was still chatting, trying to drag her out the door, winking at me.
“I won’t be drunk by dinner, I promise,” she told him, and then to me, “I want you to know that I’m a doctor, I swear I’m not usually this much of a floozy.” They left arm in arm, laughing.
My dear friend’s wedding vows opened with a scene from the pharmacy, where she was picking up medicine for their dog who’d just had gallbladder surgery. She remembered seeing a poster advertising vaccinations while waiting in line, in which an elderly couple happily held hands while getting jabbed, and thought, “That’s what I want.” Obviously, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
I texted my friends H and N before flying out to Washington for the wedding, saying, “I’m so excited to be with y’all without the threat of romance or sexual frustration hanging over my head,” because we, and the bride, all met in grad school, where we attended two in-person residencies that took on a somewhat lustful, debaucherous tone (well, for me at least). I always left our time together wishing I’d spent more time with them and less with whatever cute boy had distracted me. Finally, I thought, I could just have some platonic fun with my friends.
A nice thought. But this was a wedding.
Reminders of my perpetual bachelorette status are everywhere at weddings. The two friends I’d traveled with were both married, for one thing, and the people we ended up spending the most time with were married or soon-to-be-married couples, including one couple we affectionately referred to as The Kennedys because they had that classic American, old-money beauty that children of bohemians (we) can’t resist. My friends’ spouses didn’t come, so I wasn’t literally the only person without a plus-one, but as is the wont of a perpetually paranoid, self-involved writer, I certainly felt like I was.
There’s been a lot of media lately about dating “now” and how it’s different from how dating has traditionally been, or how bad it is, or about singles eschewing dating completely and building their lives around work or friendship rather than romantic love, or building a family without it, etc. There’s a whole genre of literature developing around this, like Dolly Alderton’s Ghosts and Good Material, L.M. Chilton’s Swiped, or Lilly Dancyger’s First Love, to name a few. There’s something going on with the men of reality TV, too: they’re all Peter Pan’s with commitment and intimacy issues, and they’re driving the storylines of their respective shows with their breakups and breakdowns and failures to launch. You’ve probably heard of Scandoval, and there was Carl v. Lindsay on Summer House, Kyle and Mauricio on RHOBH, the list goes on. Most recently, on the latest season of SH, newbie West Wilson captured the hearts of viewers (myself included, I’m ashamed to admit) when he seemed to fall for crowd favorite and literal most beautiful woman on the planet, Ciara Miller, at first sight. Despite his dressing like a mixture of Miami Vice and a little boy, despite him being an unemployed sports journalist, despite him freely announcing his commitment issues, we thought he had good intentions for our girl. Then, at the reunion, when Andy Cohen asked where their relationship stood and Ciara, teary-eyed, was like, “Ask him,” he explained that he’d dumped Ciara because he thought dating her wouldn’t be a good look when the show came out and he got all famous and the girls came knocking.
I, along with a thousand others, kicked myself and then unfollowed him on Instagram.
I’ve had so many Wests. The Wests of the world are the reason I am one of those single people who’ve eschewed dating. I’ve taken to saying I’m “single as protest” because I think it’s funny but also because the Wests of the world have reminded me that my independence and agency as a woman is still under threat in romantic relationships, no matter how much they’d like me to think it isn’t, so I’m kinda-sorta protesting that. That’s why I’m not dating, or at least that’s what I tell myself, because it sounds better than what my friends tell me, well-meaning as they may be, that I “just haven’t met the right person yet” or that I’ll meet the right person “when I least expect it.” Nice thoughts, but what if I simply don’t? Shouldn’t I still be able to enjoy my life without them? That’s what comforts me: making my life romantic and loving now, for myself, regardless of anyone else.
But then you go to a wedding, and your friend is talking about gall bladders and vaccinations and holding hands, and you think yes. The married friends you’re there with can’t help but compare this wedding to their weddings to their spouses, who they love so much they wish they were here right now, actually. You get drunk on expensive wine at the open bar with them and they call those spouses from the hotel room and when they slur, “I lurve yor,” to the voice at the other end of the speakerphone, you can’t help but feel that familiar pang of loneliness you’ve gotten so good and kicking away, and now it’s at your feet looking up at you like a sad little puppy and your body moves with the muscle memory to pick it up and tuck it into bed with you. Then you meet a happily-drunk couple who tell you about their courtship 20-years in the making and you think, That could be me and someone I’ve already met and I just don’t know it yet.
I, like all of the single women I know, have gotten really good at protecting myself from heartbreak. But weddings, and Wests, remind me that being immune to heartbreak is not necessarily a strength. The real reason West broke up with Ciara—a single woman utterly deft at protecting herself from heartbreak who had her heart broken still—underneath all the bluster about fame and temptation and ego, was because he was afraid of getting his heart broken. He said as much in a scene with his aunt, when they were talking about Ciara.
“I think I always look for little things to, like, not date someone,” he said.
“You know what happens is you have to open yourself up to being hurt. You’ve never allowed yourself to get that far,” his aunt responded.
"…You bring up a lot of good points.”
He’s protecting his heart too.
Billie Eilish recently had a conversation with Lana Del Rey for Interview magazine.
“When one of your romantic relationships ends, do you think you leave them with a thousand questions? Or do they leave you with a thousand questions? Or is it split 50-50? Is it more dangerous to fall in love with you? Or is it more dangerous for you to fall in love?” Del Rey asked.
“Big question, Lana,” Eilish said. “I don’t even know. I think 50-50 is probably accurate. I literally hate who I am so much when I’m in love.” Sigh. So, it’s not just me.
I’d say it’s 50-50 for me too. Historically, it has been immensely dangerous for me to both love and be loved. I lose myself under the influence of it. I leave with a thousand questions, and I’m sure so do they.
“I really don’t like being—I was going to say out of control, but there’s ways that I do like being out of control. I have a power issue, and a control issue, and I also don’t like being vulnerable in a romantic way. It makes me feel more uncomfortable, and I don’t know how many times I’ve really been in love,” Eilish explained.
This is about as accurate a description as I could give for my experiences. I’m most definitely a control freak, but being in control all the time is exhausting, so I tend to seek out social experiences that let me loosen my grip on the reins a little, hence the debaucherous residencies. Sometimes, letting another person take control is a relief. Most of the time, though, the line between control of an experience and control of a person is paper thin. This tends to be my problem—the scale always tipping too far in the latter direction—and I often don’t see it until it’s too late. So, I protect my heart. And here we are.
I’m old and weathered enough now (I think/hope) to be able to distinguish the people who’ll briefly take the reins for me and then happily give them back from the ones who will crash the cart before letting me drive it. Now it’s just a matter of waiting.
In the meantime, there will be weddings. And I’ll just be happy to be there.