Three days after I had given up, Martin emailed. It had gnawed at him, evidently, his silence, or he’d realised he had to put a stop to my expectations that our lunch was merely postponed. He told me more about the weekend with his parents. His wife had been there – a set-up job; he hadn’t expected to see her. She’s only 36, he added. She wanted children; the breakup had been about his not wanting them.
His parents loved his wife (he no longer called her his ex, I noted) and wanted them to go to counselling, to try again. They had offered to pay for a lovely holiday, so the two of them could be alone somewhere and talk things through properly. It was evident, reading this, that the breakup had been very recent, possibly the day he joined the dating site. His membership, our conversations, had been a survival mechanism, one likely to go nowhere.
He hadn’t decided about the holiday offer, he said, but whether or not it happened, it was obvious he wasn’t ready for another relationship. He wrote that he would probably regret it, but this was goodbye: he would not be in touch again. He was taking this step even though he was massively attracted to me. He didn’t want to mess it up and break my heart. Ah, yes, the I Am Nobly Going To Dump You So As To Save You manoeuvre; it was not unknown to me. I began writing a barbed and magnificent takedown, and then deleted it. Emotional energy should be saved, wherever possible, in no-win scenarios such as this.
There were some things he was ready for. I saw him on the dating site that very night, when I was sleepless at 12.30am and went miserably trawling, the light lit alongside his name. It was lit for much of the weekend. I kept the site tab open while I was doing other things, and watched, fascinated, as he came and went, perhaps entering into another rapturous, manic written intimacy with another substitute woman; perhaps with a series of them. I wrote a four-word text: “Go on the holiday!” But then deleted it, unsent.
As I was brooding about the Martin situation, I got a dating-site message from a man seeking a Christian woman. Merely born Christian, Christian identifying, wasn’t what he was looking for; a professing Christian, who would bring the relationship to God and invite God into it – that was his dating mission. His approach message said that I hadn’t mentioned matters of faith, and he found it frustrating that the site didn’t ask people to specify, but if I was a believer and saved, I should message him. I suspected a cut and paste and scattergun approach, as there was nothing personalised about his attempt, not even my name. I went to his profile. There, he had said he tried to see others through God’s eyes, but was having some trouble doing that on dating sites.
I asked him what he meant by that. He said he hadn’t come across a lot of humility. Well, of course not, I said. We are forced into a self-marketing role here, and for most of us that’s a humiliating thing to have to do. I asked if he’d had any dates. He said there had been one so far, with a church-going woman; she had turned out to be a feminist, pro women priests. But wouldn’t Jesus have been pro women’s equality, pro women’s ministry, if he was around now, I asked? Women were really important in the early church, after all; it wasn’t a male institution in the beginning, was it? That came later.
Ah, but we don’t know what role they really took, he said; it may have been social, nurturing, counselling: that’s what women are good at. “Men and women are equal but different,” he wrote. “As in the church, so in marriage: the husband is the leader, and the wife assists him. She should challenge him if he’s on the wrong path – that is her role – but should otherwise support his decisions and enact them.”
I’m not sure why you’re talking to me, I said. I couldn’t be further from your ideal. Yes, but you’re talking to me, at least, he said. So few women reply to me. I’m very lonely. I need to marry. I need to be loved. I want someone to hold, and to care for, and to go camping with. I don’t understand why it’s so difficult.
Stella Grey is a pseudonym
