Love Hacks: Chasing it All

1: Bicycle

1: Bicycle

Falling in love is like riding a bicycle for the first time. Your heart races, your voice rises, and you thrill as your courage overcomes your fear of crashing.

Phoebe had never fallen in love before. How could she? Her first boyfriend in college would kiss her according to some internalized schedule and periodically ask, "Are you ready yet?" Her second, right out of college, was once captain of the swim team and expected her to fawn over him so he could conjure his glory days. And her third, the one she dated only because she was getting older, was so emotionally stunted that he made up fake narratives about his emotions and believed his own overwrought mythology of himself.

This was love with training wheels.

Most of her family, friends, and even some social media acquaintances accused her of being picky. They told her she should lower her standards. But when she described what she looked for in a man, it was difficult for anyone to deny that she was essentially describing an adult. Instead of "picky," this felt more like "wisely investing." And the currency of investment was her time and emotions. She wanted a payoff in the kind of love that makes the palms sweat and the stomach rise up to the throat.

She used to ask herself Why am I still single? at the weddings she went to. She wondered if there was something wrong with her. She once believed that maybe she'd allowed herself to be overly pressured to find a Princess Bride-style love and so had made it impossible to discover because it was only a fairy tale.

All of this was about to change. Soon, right at the point when she was giving up, Phoebe was going to feel what it was like to just let go and ride.