Timing Is Everything

Ten years ago, I took a two-month break from the Big Apple to explore what dating was like in other cities. While catching up recently with one of my favorite people from the trip, I found myself thinking about timing and the role it plays in finding love.

Connected by a mutual acquaintance, Cleveland native Kim introduced me to her fabulous then-single friends Ryan, Phillip and Diana. I remember fondly how quickly we all bonded over the ups and downs of thirtysomething dating. Flash forward to today. Diana is engaged while Kim, Ryan and Phillip are all happily married.

I understand now why they say love comes along after you stop looking for it. I spent the better part of my thirties wearing myself out trying to meet someone. Online dating, speed dating, Tinder, Hinge, Coffee Meets Bagel, blind dates – you name it, I tried it. When I finally gave up the search, that’s when I found the energy to let go of the emotional baggage that had weighed me down for so long and rediscover what made me happy. To become the most fully realized, best version of myself. I was doing something I genuinely loved when the life-changing moment happened for me and my beloved Steve.

It was a breezy, moonlit night at sea and I was enjoying a poolside concert by my favorite 80s cover band. Steve and I shared a brief but effortless conversation, one that continued seamlessly when he messaged me a few days after the cruise. There was no hesitating or deliberating for either of us. Just the undeniable, exhilarating joy of a deepening and completely mutual connection that felt right in every way. Steve described it as a key fitting into a lock.

So much of our popular culture tells women that the door to marriage and/or motherhood slams shut once you’re over 35. My urgency to partner up intensified after this age, fueled largely by society’s message that a woman’s desirability ends (or at least, drops off precipitously) as our childbearing years wind down.

Just how outdated is this notion? A top wedding planner told me most of her newly-engaged, never married female clients are in their mid-forties. One of my colleagues recently shared that she was close to 50 when she met her future husband. I’m newly 46. The bottom line – it’s never too late to find love. Like so many things in life, it may not happen on your timetable. But God’s timing is always right.

As poet and writer János Arany once said, “In dreams and in love, there are no impossibilities.”