Two months ago, my good friend Ann got married.  She and I were supposed to grow old together, single.  Two eccentric women on a park bench, we used to joke.  So when she met Frank, I was a bit wary.  He was recently divorced, with three kids under the age of ten.  “Be careful,” I said when she told me of a date spent watching the oldest child play soccer while the ex-wife sat two rows away.  “Make sure you get what you need.”

I’d seen marriage change some of my friends. I’d listened as Catie substituted “we” for “I,” as plans she once would have made spontaneously at four o’clock on a Tuesday now needed weeks of advance notice.  I’d heard a slight formality in Brenda’s voice the night she phoned to tell me of her engagement, as if she, my best high school buddy, were going underground.
 

Ann in love, however, was still the Ann I loved.  Always a forthright friend, she’d kept that best side of herself under wraps with the men she dated.  But as I listened to her talk to Frank, speaking her mind with love and confidence, I knew the mask was off.  The woman who used to fret over whether she’d said the right thing to some guy was now determined to be liked for who she is.  In college, when she encouraged me to part my hair on the side the night of a big date, she’d expanded my sense of romantic possibilities.  Now, by falling in love with a man with whom she could be utterly herself, she was doing it again.
 

Back in my 20s, during the first wave of weddings among my friends, I took mental notes on flowers and the pros and cons of receiving lines. I told myself (and others) that I was waiting for Mr. Right.  But I couldn’t have defined Right.  My fantasy groom was a blur, like a digitally altered photo of someone in the Witness Protection Program, while around him the details – the flowers, the necklines, my hair – sparkled in crisp Technicolor.  I’d know him when I met him, I figured.  And in the meantime, I shrugged when asked why Scott and I had broken up, or why I wasn’t interested in Kyle.  “I don’t know,” I’d say.  “Not my type.”  The truth was, I really didn’t know.  For years, my approach to dating resembled my response to overly solicitous salespeople:  just looking, thanks.

As I moved into my 30s, I thought it might help to think in specifics.  He will be taller than I am, and outdoorsy.  He’ll like diner breakfasts, stinky cheeses, and his work.  He’ll have a head for numbers and be gentle with children, animals, and my moods.  I dated men who appeared to fit the bill.  There was Chris, who talked enthusiastically about his job but went on at length about his druggy past.  Then came Will, a swimmer with a great smile—though not great enough to make up for the fact that he had nothing to say about an entire decade of his life.

My list of specifics, I’ve now realized, was only shorthand for what really matters.  My college boyfriend and I had both stood exactly 5’10” in our bare feet, and it had done little to dampen our ardor.  Shared food proclivities might make for a pleasant meal, but not necessarily fireworks  or even compatibility.  I’d pursued a few men for specific commonalities, but the larger things had let me down – the way they talked (or didn’t) about themselves, how open (or closed) they were about family and faith and future.

Ann, it turns out, has done more than leave me behind.  By finding, at an age the odds frown upon, commitment and love without selling herself short, she’s given me hope and taught me an important lesson.  She found a best friend and a partner – not by hunting down the embodiment of the perfect traits or by wearing bright colors (as one friend advised, when I told her I’d met a man I liked), but by being comfortable with who she was and open to the surprise of the unknown.  She’d never had a long-term relationship before Frank, but she stepped into it as if she’d been born for it.  She found the perfect guy; he just happened to come with three kids.

Singlehood isn’t an endurance race with a bow-wrapped mate at the finish line, any more than it is our own fault for spending too many Saturday nights with public television.  It might be something we actively choose or something we curse every February 14 – or a little of both.  But, either way, it’s a journey that shows us a few things, so that when the happy accident of fate or luck brings the right person into our life, we’ll be more likely to recognize him.

As I approach 40 and another year of filing Single on my tax return and wondering if I’ll ever kiss anyone again, Mr. Right is as elusive as ever.  But he’s no longer a gray blur amidst a froth of silk and flowers.  He’s a real guy, flawed but whole – the way, on a good day, I think of myself.