What single men want

Dating is, inarguably, one of the best spectator sports there is. While the players are racked with endless anxiety, awash with insecurity and a debilitating uncertainty about what their next course of action should be, spectators can sit back, shake their heads and smirk. Having spent countless evenings with friends as they have gone on and on about the neurosis of the lawyer or the psychosis of the photographer, all I have wished for is the foresight to have brought along some popcorn and a drink. It is, by far, the perfect way to spend an evening.

The stories from the battlefields of dating, though, have long had strict gender codes. Women talk about the travails of their dating lives. Women (and gay male) friends listen to these. Whether it is Bridget Jones or Carrie Bradshaw, even as late as the last decade, dating was entirely a woman’s story. Little was known about the man, even though he was the centrepiece of the narrative. Like an otherworldly alien or a masterpiece of modern art, men were puzzlingly observed, seriously analysed and little understood.

Until now, that is. Adelle Waldman’s The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P is a worthy attempt at correcting this gender imbalance. Our protagonist, Nate, like most young people in the borough of Brooklyn, is a young writer. He is “a product of post-feminist 1980s childhood and politically correct 1990s education. He has learned all about male privilege.” Yet, in the second page of the book, Waldman has Nate bumping into Juliet, whom he had been out with three or four times. But the course of their possible future relationship was blighted by a broken condom. And although Nate did the “right thing” by going with her to the abortion clinic and staying the entire day with her, he never calls her again. Waldman is determined to have you, the reader, think of all possible circumstances before you decide whether you like Nate or not. It is, as introductions go, not the most favourable one.

Much of the narrative of The Love Affairs… is what goes on in Nate’s head. In Juliet’s case, Nate is willing to concede (to himself) that perhaps he should have stayed in touch with her. “But at the time he hadn’t known if a call from him would have been welcome. It might have been a painful reminder of something she would rather put behind her. Nor did he know what he’d have said. And he’d gotten distracted, caught up in other things — in life. She could have called him.”

Between culpability and belligerence lies Nate’s inaction. Women, in fiction and in life, spend an awful lot of time trying to decode male behaviour. More often than not, they end up ascribing the blame for their date’s lack of response to themselves. Maybe I was too pushy. Maybe I should have worn something else. Maybe I should have suggested drinks in the evening instead of brunch in the day. Waldman’s account of what goes on in Nate’s head is indicative of the fact that all of these could be the reason but, more often than not, none of them are.

The central affair of the book is the account of Nate’s relationship with Hannah. She too is an aspiring writer. She is beautiful, smart and not emotionally high-maintenance. She is immensely likeable and, even if you think she is too good for Nate in many ways (privy as you are to most of his imperfections), you are rooting for her. ‘Make this work, Nate,’ you want to yell, ‘don’t screw this up’. Yet, between the torrents of his desire for her and his “tenderness” for her, Nate is still looking for reasons to reject her.

What makes Nate’s story important is the revelation that he is as confused about how he should look upon women in this post-feminist world as the women themselves are. He wants to be charitable and think of women as clever equals, yet he finds it difficult to accept that they are. “He thought women were every bit as intelligent as men, every bit as capable of figuring out how long it would take for train A to crash into train B if the two were moving towards each other at an average speed of C. They were as capable of rational thought: they just did not appear to be interested in it.”

He likes that Hannah challenges him intellectually. Yet, he finds himself incredibly turned on when Hannah describes past sexual behaviour that shows her in a rather smutty light. He finds her beautiful. Yet, he is put off by a jiggly bit of underarm skin or an unflattering pair of jeans. Nate seeks Hannah to be everything he is certain she humanly cannot possibly be.

If Nate is everyman, it is no wonder that the dating game is fraught. In many ways, it is indeed easier to decode a pre-feminist man, one who is focused on the shallow or steeped in the traditional. Eventually, though, most post-date analyses are laid to waste. There isn’t one thing you can do or say that is certain to determine the course of another person’s feeling. As Nate puts it, “I am not sure it’s about the right person. I think it’s about the right time.” He’s probably right.

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