Must love dogs

I rewatched one of my favorite movies over the weekend, “Must Love Dogs” with John Cusack and Diane Lane. I lived vicariously through all of her dating disasters in the safety of my living room, comfy in my chair, popcorn in hand, with one forty pound dog on my lap and one at my feet. I snickered like I always do when Diane’s character Sarah yelled at the butcher for trying to upsell her on chicken breasts. I laughed hysterically as Sarah and Cusack’s Jake rally-raced through town trying to buy condoms only for the moment to fizzle before they ever make it home. I cried when Jake called Sarah “a unique constellation of attributes; she was my Halley’s comet”.

And then I realized nothing is going to change in my life until I take charge of it. Like Sarah, I want to be in love. “I want to wake up next to someone and see them smile, do the whole Sunday breakfast thing, go out and get the paper, stay in bed together all day”. So back to eHarmony I went. I reactivated my profile, paid the extra money in hopes the matches I receive are actual men and not artificial intelligence (or worse yet, some teenager from Pakistan). I set my parameters of height, age, location. Aha, location! Something I didn’t do the last time which explains the 105 profile views and 17 private messages.

And then I waited.

I was hopeful in the waiting. Surely there would be a handful of compatible matches. I thought my profile was pretty good. I’d date me! Imagine my surprise when I received a like the very first day. Unfortunately, that guy lived as far northwest as humanly possible. I know, love knows no boundaries and all that crap. But I’d like to actually be able to sit across the table from someone on a regular basis.

Anyway, there was only one man in my area and he didn’t have a single picture on his profile. A cameraman with no pictures. But, I’m a sucker for a great sense of humor. And his answer to the question “I wish I could” made me laugh out loud. No, you don’t get to know the answer. That would probably violate some rule in the eHarmony user agreement. But still, he made me laugh. Now what? Should the guy reach out first? Or do I click “like”? Is he even real with his “no pictures” profile? I was at an impasse.

So what do I do when I’m at an impasse?

Nothing. I do absolutely nothing. I go back to my comfy chair in my lonesome living room. I wallow with my crazy dogs and watch my most favorite movie ever “Serendipity”. Yes, there’s a John Cusack theme here. This one brings out all the feels. And begs the question, should I be choosing someone from a website based on answers to questions I never would have asked? If life is “a tapestry of events that culminate in an exquisite, sublime plan”, who am I to mess with that plan? Even the definition of serendipity flies in the face of online dating: a fortunate accident. There’s nothing accidental about online dating. It’s well-planned and thought out, sometimes over exaggerated, made-up even. And yet the need for companionship pushes us to extreme measures. The yearning for even a tenth of the love we had in our past calls for something different to be tried.

I woke up this morning exhausted from staying up too late over-analyzing everything. Call it what you want. Tempting fate, defying destiny. I decided to take a risk. I liked “no picture” guy’s profile and sent him a message.

Back to waiting and over-analyzing.

I’m not sure anyone would want to love this widow. I still love my late-husband. That’s never going to change. My Joe would laugh at my indecisiveness. He would wonder what happened to the ballsy, say it like it is, love in the moment girl I used to be. He didn’t get to witness the me after him. The crushing loss of love and life as I knew it.

But in “Must Love Dogs”, Jake understood. Every time I watch that movie, this quote makes me believe it can happen again. Blame John Cusack. I do.

“…but I think your heart grows back bigger. You know? Once you get the shit beat out of you. And, um, the universe lets your heart expand that way, and I think that’s the function of all this pain and heartache that you go through, and you gotta go through that to come out to a better place.”

So I’ll keep waiting. Hopefully not in vain.