Charisma Redux (I’m an Asshole)

If you think I’m a jerk in writing, you should meet me in person. I am WAY worse. All kinds of rude and inappropriate things spew forth from my mouth on a regular basis. That’s in large part why (as a general rule) I like to write. I’m usually a little better on paper. And trust me, that says more about my ability to speak than my ability to write.

So my Charisma post was potentially offensive in that you might have concluded (legitimately, based on my words) that I think if you’re single, you must be lacking in charisma. That is not what I think. Let there be no mistake. That would just be dumb. I am not dumb (mostly), just lacking in eloquence. Hard.

Charisma is not the right word. By its very definition, charisma is rare. You can’t divide the world into two categories along the lines of charisma. If you did, the world would be very unevenly divided and it would certainly not have anything to do with who’s married or who’s single.

So what was I trying to say? For starters, I think loneliness as well as happiness is a state of mind. When it comes down to how we feel as humans on a regular basis, when it comes down to what makes us happy and what makes us sad, it might have nothing to do with how or whether we’ve paired up. Sometimes loneliness is not about how many people share a house with you. I wanted to say that single, married, we are human together. Sometimes my single friends long to be partnered and sometimes my married friends long to be single, but ironically, both sides are often looking to solve the same feelings of loneliness.

I think my failure in the last post was to generalize. I started to theorize about people when honestly, I don’t know squat about people in general. All I know is my own experience. And in my little world, staying together is far more difficult than getting together. I am married and my husband and I work very hard to sustain what we have. I already have one failed marriage behind me. And sadly, that is who I come from: my mother, my father, my sister, my paternal aunt, uncle and grandfather: all married two or more times. That’s hard to say out loud.

So I guess, when I say it’s easier to get together than to stay together, I am not making some profound generalization about humanity. I’m talking about myself. It’s hard for ME. It’s terrifying. Maybe I can’t do it. Maybe I just don’t have it in me.

I was at a happy hour once with my friends Babs and Dipu (who are both single and fabulous) and I said something along the lines of “It’s not getting together that’s so hard; it’s staying together.” They both corrected me immediately and with a good bit of fervor. They said getting together was not so simple. It’s hard to find a good match: someone who’s intelligent enough, interesting enough, fun enough, and with whom you have chemistry on top of everything else. I buy that. That makes perfect sense. But you know what? At the risk of being a complete asshole, I confess: that was never hard for me. Does that make me charismatic? No. Better than my single friends? No. Not even close. I just seem to have other (huge) things to overcome. And maybe wording it the way I did in the last post allowed me to feel a little better about myself on a subconscious level.

Getting together has never been hard for me. I can walk into a restaurant or a coffee shop or another country and meet someone when I want to. I can see how good they are inside, find what I think I need in them, and fall in love if that’s what I’m ready to do. It’s sustaining that love over time that seems to be my issue. Maybe it’s everyone’s issue. It’s certainly easier to say it’s hard for everyone than to look in the mirror and say it’s just hard for me.

But there it is.