Playing With Fire

People ask me what my type is quite often these days, and I have discovered I am terrible at answering because the older I get, the less interested I am in describing a man and the more interested I am in describing what happens when two people with entirely too much personality get left alone together. Everybody expects a neat little checklist: tall, funny, successful, honest, good with children, emotionally available, and presumably capable of assembling furniture without threatening to burn the entire house down. Those things are fine, but I have never read a list of admirable qualities and thought, Well, there he is. Somewhere along the way, I stopped imagining a face and started imagining a relationship, which is probably unfair to the man involved because I have already created the entire thing in my head and he has not even been given an opportunity to review the terms and conditions.

I have never understood why everyone acts like the goal of adulthood is becoming easier to love. Somewhere along the way, we are all supposed to become quieter, calmer, less opinionated, less emotional, less sarcastic, less passionate, and generally less likely to disrupt anyone else’s carefully regulated nervous system. Apparently, the grand prize at the end of personal growth is becoming so agreeable that no one ever has to wonder what we are thinking. That sounds absolutely exhausting to me. I spend my days arguing with judges, prosecutors, clients, insurance companies, title examiners, and occasionally the copier, so if I suddenly become a soft-spoken little woodland creature at five o’clock every afternoon, somebody should probably check me for a pulse.

I do not fantasize about finding someone who will balance me out, because I am beginning to suspect that “balance” is often a polite word for finding someone willing to absorb the full force of your personality without returning fire. I do not want a man whose primary function in the relationship is calming me down, redirecting me, handling me carefully, or congratulating me for being “better” on the days I take up less room. I do not want someone who responds to every disagreement with, “Whatever you want, babe,” because if those words leave his mouth every time I ask where we are eating dinner, we are probably not making it to dessert. Have an opinion. Defend it. Tell me my restaurant choice is terrible and support your conclusion with admissible evidence. Make me reconsider my position, or at least make me laugh while I refuse to reconsider it. Hell, beat me fair and square every now and then, because there is nothing remotely attractive about a man surrendering before opening arguments.

I want someone who knows exactly what he is getting when I walk into a room already irritated and halfway through an argument no one else knew had started. I want him to make it worse on purpose sometimes, not cruelly, but because he knows the fastest way to get my attention is to challenge me, grin when I rise to it, and stand close enough that somewhere between my second point and my third, I forget whether I still care about winning. I want the kind of chemistry that can turn a completely unnecessary debate over the thermostat into a forty-five-minute trial, complete with exhibits, objections, impeachment evidence, and at least one argument I know has no legal foundation but intend to make with tremendous confidence anyway. I want him to keep arguing because he enjoys watching me build the case, and I want to enjoy the fact that he is not intimidated enough to let me win.

Maybe that sounds combative to people who believe the healthiest relationship is the one with the lowest possible blood pressure, but I do not want peaceful in the sense that nobody says what they think. I want peaceful enough that we both know the relationship is not fragile and passionate enough that the neighbors occasionally wonder whether we are arguing or flirting. I want the freedom to be annoyed without somebody immediately packing an emotional suitcase, and I want him to be able to challenge me without either one of us treating disagreement like a formal notice that the relationship has been terminated. I do not want us fighting to wound each other. I want us fighting because neither of us has ever done anything halfway, including making a point neither of us will remember by morning.

I think the relationships that stay alive are probably a little inconvenient. They are not two perfectly regulated adults taking turns using approved communication techniques while seated six feet apart with excellent posture. They are two people who remain genuinely interested in each other, even when that interest is temporarily expressed through an aggressive disagreement about the correct route home. They tease each other, challenge each other, interrupt each other, laugh at each other, and occasionally turn the purchase of toilet paper into an Olympic event. They can argue over whether anyone needs forty-eight rolls at one time, flirt in the middle of Costco, and leave with the paper towels, a television neither of them intended to buy, and absolutely no recollection of who won.

I have this completely unsupported theory that chemistry does not compartmentalize itself. I think the same thing that makes two people laugh until they cannot breathe is the thing that makes them lose track of time talking, stay awake until two in the morning debating something neither of them actually cares about, and find reasons to touch each other every time they pass in the kitchen. I think chemistry follows people through the entire relationship, and when it is real, it does not politely clock out when the conversation ends. It simply changes clothes.

I have also reached the age where I no longer feel obligated to pretend sex is not important to me, because it is. I am a woman who likes sex. There, we all survived the sentence, and nobody needs to alert the church elders or convene an emergency meeting of the local bar association. I do not think that makes me shallow, desperate, inappropriate, or any less interested in emotional intimacy. It makes me honest. We are perfectly comfortable admitting that we crave laughter, affection, intellectual conversation, adventure, loyalty, emotional security, and someone who remembers how we take our coffee, but the moment a woman admits that she also wants a hot, passionate sex life, everybody starts whispering like she has confessed to a federal offense.

I do not want to whisper about it. I want the whole relationship. I want the intellectual chemistry, the emotional chemistry, and the physical chemistry, and I do not believe those are three separate departments that operate during different business hours. I want the flirting that begins while we are still pretending to argue, the hand at my waist while I am trying to finish a sentence, and the kind of kiss that makes both of us forget the original subject of the conversation. I want somebody who can challenge me intellectually all afternoon, make me laugh until my stomach hurts over dinner, and make me late the next morning. If we are going to build imaginary relationships in our heads, there is no reason to become responsible and modest halfway through the fantasy.

I have never understood couples whose entire relationship eventually becomes professional. Everything is respectful, measured, efficient, and apparently reviewed by Human Resources before being allowed into the house. They communicate beautifully, schedule date nights, remember anniversaries, maintain a shared calendar, divide household responsibilities, and discuss the grocery list with the solemn concentration of two surgeons preparing to separate conjoined twins. Wonderful. Genuinely. I am happy for them. But somewhere between the color-coded calendar and the automated reminder to replace the air filter, they begin to sound less like two people who once could not keep their hands off each other and more like co-managers of a small regional accounting firm.

That cannot be the finish line. I refuse to believe the grand prize for surviving decades together is politely discussing who forgot to buy milk before climbing into bed to have the kind of sex that could be accurately described as “perfectly adequate.” If that is maturity, I hope I remain just immature enough to embarrass my grandchildren one day. I do not want to reach an age where desire is treated like a charming little habit we outgrew along with skinny jeans and staying out until two in the morning. I want to be sixty-five, still flirting in the grocery store, still irritating him on purpose because I know exactly which look I will get, and still occasionally making decisions that require us to apologize for being late.

Maybe that is the part we have gotten backward. We spend years teaching people how to become less emotional, less opinionated, less affectionate, less jealous, less excited, less angry, less passionate, less needy, less intense, and generally less human. Then we are somehow surprised when two people who have spent decades sanding off every rough edge look at each other across the dinner table and cannot figure out where the spark went. We trained them to extinguish it, rewarded them for becoming manageable, and then acted shocked when neither one of them felt particularly alive anymore.

I do not want to be managed, and I do not want a man who requires managing. I want someone who likes the volume, who can match my sarcasm instead of taking it personally, and who sees my entirely unnecessary closing argument forming before I have even opened my mouth but decides to stay for the show. I want someone who is just as impossible as I am because I have begun to suspect that “too much” only feels like too much when you are standing next to someone who was always looking for less. The right person would not tolerate the fire as though it were an unfortunate medical condition. He would have some of his own.

Maybe life eventually gets its hands around everybody’s throat. Maybe children, careers, mortgages, court dates, sleep deprivation, doctor’s appointments, and the endless administrative hell of adulthood eventually turn every great romance into two people texting each other from separate rooms about paper towels. I have seen enough evidence to admit that the prosecution could make a decent case, but I still refuse to concede the point. I refuse to believe passion has to disappear simply because life becomes crowded, or that growing older means we should become grateful for affection that is dependable but never hungry.

I hope there is a man somewhere who is not looking for a quieter woman and does not need me to become one. I hope he laughs too hard, argues with conviction, works too much, feels everything, wants everything, and understands that the parts of me that can be difficult are attached to the same parts that love without restraint. I hope we can make each other furious over something stupid, make each other laugh before either of us admits defeat, and then make each other forget there was ever supposed to be a winner. I hope the chemistry is not reserved for anniversaries, vacations, or the three Saturdays a year when nobody is tired. I hope it lives in the kitchen, the car, the grocery store, the middle of an argument, and every room we enter together.

I do not want us to spend the rest of our lives trying to become easier for each other to handle. I want us to spend the rest of our lives proving that the right person does not make your fire smaller; they hand you a flamethrower and grin.

Judith L. Hampton

Attorney at Law

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