mimi the cockeyed optimist

My ‘faithful reader’ PT wrote the following comment to the previous post. I should say that I have absolutely no idea who PT is; I know nothing more about her than she (assuming PT’s gender is as represented) has revealed in her many comments since her first one on June 5, 2007. And No, I’m not going to turn into an Ann Landers of middle-aged Manhattan dating. But my response was too long for a comment.

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Mimi, you seem convinced you will find a great guy. You recently said you wanted to marry, though in the past you said you didn’t, though clearly you want a great guy to be permanent in your life.

As do I.

But I don’t have much hope. And you do. How come? After your failed marriages and your lack of success with online dating, you remain convinced that you will have a successful relationship with a great guy. I remain convinced that I won’t. Where is he and how will I meet him? I simply can’t imagine.

I know it is a blog response cliche to say “Hang in there, keep the faith and he will come along at some point.” I don’t actually believe that is true. I read plenty of obits of women who never married or never remarried. The best I can muster is “You are not alone.”

Not to be a downer, but why are you so optimistic? Do you allow for the fact that you might have a series of first-dates and short-lived relationships, but never find a great guy of the caliber that you want, who is right for you over the long haul ?

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PT,
The short answer, à la Nellie Forbush: “I’m stuck like a dope with a thing called hope.’

And look what happened to Nellie F.: she got Emile de Becque.

But the South Pacific is too far from my zipcode, 100xx. Will not relocate to remote tropical island.

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The long answer (requires itemized responses):

1) there are probably, somewhere, statistics about how many twice-divorced 61-year-old urban professional women get married a third time; and the statistics are probably inconsistent and unreliable. So I’ll answer your question suspecting that there are statistics out there (perhaps several contradictory sets of them) but entirely ignorant of what they might be.

2) for a non-statistical look at the situation, you can read the VOWS column of the New York Times and see how many twice-divorced middle-aged women find love again, in many cases on the internet (and quite apart from divorced people or middle-aged people, the VOWS column has been featuring a lot of couples who met on the internet. But that’s an entirely different set of statistics).

3) okay, so, given the no doubt tiny number of women in my precise demographic who get married a third time, why would I be one of them? Let’s rephrase your question that way.

Well, someone’s got to be those women, and I’m a likely possibility, because

a) I’m actively looking; my profile will (not yet, but in a month or so) be up on two internet dating sites, and I’ll be pestering a few friends to think hard and see if they can introduce me to someone (not likely; hasn’t happened yet; but I’m working on it);

b) for my age, I look good;

c) at my best, I have qualities that middle-aged men (perhaps all dating heterosexual men) like – I’m funny, confident, cheerful, independent, professionally active and reasonably successful, etc. etc. Although I’m uneasy about sounding so obnoxiously pleased with myself, in order to explain my answer to your question I have to list the qualities that might tend to make me lucky in this buyers’ market. As my shrink put it to me recently, ‘You’ve got the goods.’

d) the very fact that I’ve been married twice shows that
i) men propose to me; at various points in my life I’ve ‘sent the right signals’ or whatever that have led to marriage; and
ii) I’m emotionally available, I take emotional risks and – for want of a better phrase – put myself in the way of love and marriage.

4) of course, in spite of my answer to # 3, I could get hit & killed by a taxi tomorrow or pushed in front of an oncoming subway or caught in the crossfire of a Manhattan gun battle. So the longed-for conclusion to my current romantic life might never occur.

5) I don’t accept your phrase about my ‘lack of success with online dating.’ First of all, the story isn’t over yet. And second, although of course none of the significant relationships I’ve had has been permanent, at least a third of the 33 men I dated, and perhaps more, were appropriate matches for me, the kinds of people friends might have introduced me to, had they known them. (One of my earliest dates said to me, ‘We know so many people in common, it’s surprising they never introduced us.’) Through these men, especially the ones I got to know well — Rolly, Performer, Plan C — I’ve gotten to know a lot about myself and the way I relate to men, the kinds of expectations I have, etc. I know, psychobabble, but true: online dating has given me the practice I need.

And oh yes — I’ve had a lot of fun!

6) I’m not only ever-hopeful by nature; I’m also dogged, very dogged. I’ve done things professionally that I myself thought statistically unlikely. That’s not to say I’m a wonder-woman – far, far from it – but I have doggedly, determinedly, refused to give up on things I wanted. And I’ve changed myself and adapted in whatever ways have seemed necessary to get what I wanted.

So that’s the answer to your question. Whether my hopes will be fulfilled of course remains to be seen.

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I wanted to find the Mary Martin version of “Cockeyed Optimist” on youtube, but I couldn’t. Stephanie Block’s is good, but not exactly what I was hoping for; her voice isn’t as high and uplifting as MM’s. And you have to wait through a bit of dialogue before you get to the song; if you put the little marker in the middle of the horizontal space, you’ll reach the place where the song begins. I like Kelly Lester’s singing better, but the acting is a bit cloying. Minimize the screen so you just hear her.

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And no, I’m not going to get cockeyed-optimist ringtones.

photo credit: musicals101.com

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