Closing the Window

I am closing my Window. I am double glazing it and locking it. I had reinforced the panes, yet still some insalubrious characters had managed to break and enter (a metaphor that will sound filthy when you read on and see where I’m going with this), leaving shattered glass and devastation in their wake.

For those of you not in the know, The Window is a concept immortalised in Sex and the City, and is a rule underpinning every miraculously functional relationship. The theory is that couples only get together when their Windows are simultaneously open (and – sigh – love can flow through them as gently as a summer breeze).

Two people can be on the same page of the same book. They can be heading towards similar goals in life; they can be each other’s ideal match. But if one Window remains closed, they’re never going to get it on.

My relationship Window remained firmly shut throughout my twenties. I was too busy building my career, partying, shopping, looking for new adventures, enjoying the freedom of hanging out with lots of different people. I never felt that anything was missing. Until, shocked into conformity by the crisis of my 30th birthday, the dwindling group of former clubbing buddies who would rather stay in on a Saturday night and be loved up, a little curiosity, and – oh alright – sheer bloody loneliness, I decided to open my Window.

And I tried, I really did. I went on dates with men I met at various parties, business networking events, at a child’s birthday party, at a fundraising evening; I even went out with two people (although separately!) I was seated on the “singles table” with at a wedding. I have emerged from my experiences with enough material for a book on How Not to Behave on a Date, and a slightly trampled-upon heart, by a v creepy man I was foolish enough to open up to, ignoring all alarm bells, until he turned out to embody Freud’s entire career’s worth of findings on dysfunction.

And now I give up. It is 4 months on, and I already have enough material to write a book on the good, the bad and the ugly dates I’ve had in that time. From the creepy one who decided he was in love with me after our first meeting to the one who “forgot to mention” his fiancée, not to mention the ones I’ve inadvertently managed to send running for their lives in the opposite direction, and several unrepeatable encounters with others. I’m telling you, it’s desperate out there. And I just don’t have the head space for it. The obsessing, the game playing, the self-doubting the dating game induces. It all requires too much effort, with – in my case – too little result.

And so I return to committed Singledom. Saturday runs in Regents Park, just me and my ipod; Sunday brunch with girlfriends, lone weekend afternoons sitting in a café in Hampstead, people watching, browsing the odd exhibition on my own. No hassle, no heartache, no effort. I’m closing my Window, so that my heart remains intact while I focus on sorting out my career issues and living arrangements.

All is not completely lost to any interested parties, though. My Window may be double-glazed, but a committed intruder will always find a way to penetrate shatterproof glass…