During my senior year of college, I dated a boy who was tall, dark-haired, and smoked a lot of weed. (If I\u2019d had a checklist, those would have been the boxes on it at the time.)<\/p>\n
We talked easily, about everything from medieval art to music, and I found his lanky limbs and soulful eyes very appealing. But despite how much we enjoyed each other\u2019s company, both in bed and out of it, I didn\u2019t, fundamentally, feel anything. If he\u2019d told me he never wanted to speak to me again, I wouldn\u2019t have cared, except that I\u2019d have needed to get my weed from someone else.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when I came up with the theory of the third thing.<\/p>\n
The premise is that there are three things that make you fall for someone. The first is a physical connection. The second is an intellectual connection. And then there\u2019s the third thing\u2026 whatever mysterious ingredient makes you imagine a future together. My friends and I spent hours sitting on the floor of my dorm room, listening to Matchbox 20 and drinking diet Snapple with vodka, trying to unravel what the third thing could be.<\/p>\n
I was a good student. I was naturally shy and awkward, but I was also used to thinking things through and figuring them out. In middle school, I\u2019d analysed my classmates\u2019 social interactions, realising that when someone told a story about themselves, you were supposed to respond with a story on a similar topic.<\/p>\n
In high school, I\u2019d made a checklist of all the things I needed to do to be cool (start reading Seventeen magazine, stop walking around with a book in front of my face, keep gum in my backpack and offer it to my classmates after lunch).<\/p>\n
In college, I\u2019d turned my attention to boys. It was easy to kiss them on sticky bar dance floors and meet them for coffee dates at the student centre. But I wanted to fall in love, and I wasn\u2019t sure how to do it. If I could figure out the third thing, then I\u2019d know the formula. I\u2019d know how to find someone who I was really excited about.<\/p>\n
I dated regularly throughout my 20s, but nothing lasted. Then, following another breakup, I found myself spending a lot of time on the phone with my friend Dan. We\u2019d dated briefly when we first met years before on study abroad. He was awkwardly, gawkily handsome, and was one of the smartest people I\u2019d ever met, dropping references to Byzantine emperors into casual conversation. However, at that time, there just wasn\u2019t that third thing.<\/p>\n
Then, suddenly, eight years later, there was. I wasn\u2019t sure what had changed. I still didn\u2019t know what the third thing was, but something was different, even if I couldn\u2019t identify it. For years we\u2019d just been friends \u2013 albeit friends who drunkenly made out occasionally when we ended up in his car together late at night. And now we were spending all our time thinking about each other. How had this happened? And what were we going to do about it?<\/p>\n
As it turned out, we were going to get married. Three years later, we found ourselves holding hands and saying vows in a historic library in Providence. We ate cupcakes, drank prosecco, and spent the night dancing with our friends and family among the stacks. It was the happiest day of my life; I\u2019d found a smart, handsome man whom I loved, and who loved me. We had chemistry; we could spend hours talking, and most importantly, we had the third thing. I felt like I\u2019d gotten exactly what I wanted.<\/p>\n
Except that after 10 years of marriage, it wasn\u2019t what I wanted anymore. Dan\u2019s brooding moroseness, which I\u2019d found appealing, had begun to seem whiny. My quest for self-improvement, which he\u2019d found admirable, had begun to seem exhausting. It had started to drive me crazy that he sang to himself. It had started to drive him crazy that I left the cupboard doors open. These were things that we\u2019d lived with for years. They hadn\u2019t been a problem. And now, suddenly, they were, and I wasn\u2019t sure why.<\/p>\n
There were other, bigger issues. We were politically divided. We wanted to spend our time in very different ways. My marriage didn\u2019t end just because we no longer had the third thing. But that was part of it. We were still attracted to each other. We still talked about everything as easily as we always had. But we no longer had that ineffable thing that made us feel romantic about each other.<\/p>\n
We tried. We left our son with his grandparents over the 4th of July weekend, went to a local brewery for IPAs and pepperoni pizza, shared a joint and had sex in front of a mirror. We sat side by side, feeling miles away from each other, and watched fireworks explode into distant sparks of light. We went to two different couples\u2019 therapists. They gave us worksheets. We did the worksheets. We still didn\u2019t love each other anymore.<\/p>\n
The hardest thing about the end of the marriage wasn\u2019t the loss of the present. At the time, we were sleeping on separate floors of our old suburban house, trying not to touch when we passed each other in the stairway. But in my imagined future, we were going to be one of those elderly couples who travelled around the country in an RV, who went to see independent films and had season tickets to the local symphony. We were going to sit side by side at our son\u2019s graduation, and when he crossed the stage, unimaginably tall but still wild-haired and bright-eyed, we were going to squeeze each other\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n
Instead, I was single and dating again in my 40s. From everything I knew about ageing while female, I figured that dating at that age would be some kind of barren wasteland. Instead, I discovered that the apps had come along and made it easy. I could go on a date with someone new every night if I wanted, and for a while I did. I was doing things I thought I\u2019d never do again, like kissing strangers at the entrance to the subway. And for the first time, I was dating women, which was something I\u2019d always wondered about. When I was younger, I\u2019d gone from one man to another, and suddenly I wondered if maybe the reason I\u2019d had trouble figuring out the third thing was that I didn\u2019t want to be with a man. Maybe my newfound queerness held the answer I\u2019d been seeking.<\/p>\n