Monday, February 22, 2016

The Heart Wants What The Heart Wants



Ira Glass

Do you know where you're going to do this? Do you know where you're going to ask the question?

Man

Yeah. Yeah, I know where and when.

Ira Glass

Where is it going to be? What can you say about that?

Man

At her home. Next week.

Ira Glass

So, man, so you're going in a week? Oh, my god. So are you freaking out?

Man

I'm a little excited.

Ira Glass

This man is 76 I'm not going to say his name here on the radio because he's hoping that the woman that he wants to marry is not going to get tipped off by some radio or podcast listener that he's about to ask her. And he doesn't know what she's going to say. He doesn't know, which is not usually how that goes down, right? Usually you ask somebody to marry you, you kind of know. He's totally shooting in the dark, anxious about what she's going to say. And this is somebody who he's had feelings about for a long time.

Man

I met this girl at a time when I was 17. She was 16. She was very popular. She was one of what you might say the queens in high school, right?

Ira Glass

But nice, he says-- really nice.

Man

And I didn't have all the confidence and courage that I needed at that time. And I just felt like I don't measure up. I mean, she can pick any superstar or whatever. I was a fairly good athlete, but I wasn't the superstar and whatever and stuff like that.

Ira Glass

I see. You didn't do everything you could.

Man

No, I didn't try. I just played like, well, hey, we're just friends. And then when it was time to go to the Navy, I just left. Took the coward's way out.

Ira Glass

But that experience changed him, he says. When he met his wife, he totally went for it. Didn't want to make the same mistake again. He and his wife were together for nearly 47 years, had children, who are now grown. And when his wife died eight years ago, after some time passed, he checked in with this woman from high school.
Well, her husband had died. And so this man started flying to the other side of the country to visit her, where she lives now. He stays in the guest room at her house.

Man

So the visits there-- I would visit her for a week or so. And we hung out every day. And we just did natural things. And we just went places and what have you. But there was really no intimacy involved realistically. We were just hanging out. And I believe she was having a good time. I was having a good time, you know?

Ira Glass

But you guys didn't kiss?

Man

Well, maybe only once or twice over those years and what have you. And every time we met, it was a friendly kiss on the side of the face or whatever, but it wasn't anything like a passionate, real kiss. And that happened only once along the way-- once or twice along the way.

Ira Glass

Now you must have been testing the waters and saying things to figure out where she felt and what her feelings were, right?

Man

I was trying very hard to find that out along the way, Ira. And I was getting some mixed signals. I didn't-- I had a sense-- on the one hand, when it was all--

Ira Glass

OK. Those mixed signals. She'd hold his hand all the time. She never hesitated when he would call her and ask to schedule another week-long visit. But at the same time, she seemed very encouraging about him going out with other people-- like, weirdly encouraging. And she did not seem interested in discussing her feelings towards him.

Man

It seemed like any time a question or anything came up that kind of related towards that and went in that direction, she tended to slide away from it a little bit.

Ira Glass

That does not sound good to me.

Man

That didn't sound good to me either. My feeling was that she doesn't want you to ask this question. She doesn't want to have to give you that answer.

Ira Glass

Did you tell her you love her?

Man

Yes, I did.

Ira Glass

Has she ever said "I love you" back?

Man

No. No.

Ira Glass

Well, is it possible she just wants to be friends?

Man

Very good possibility.

Ira Glass

OK. Ladies and gentlemen, I know what you're thinking. This does not sound promising at all. And, oh, my god, what lovestruck creatures we all are, wandering around this earth, right? Here is a 76-year-old man, a father, a grandfather, with the same logic-defying feelings dominating him that a teenager has.
He told me that back in July, after years of wondering what this woman-- OK, are we always just going to be friends. Is this ever going to be more than that, he finally told her, OK, look, we're going on a date. We're going on a date. It's going to be a real date. Are you up to have a real date with me? And she said yes.

Ira Glass

So how'd that go?

Man

It went well, but it didn't go any differently than all the other dates we went on, so--

Ira Glass

So nothing really changed?

Man

No. So realistically, if I want to be just honest with you and what have you, I don't know where this can go, what have you. But my feeling is that either she truly wants me to move on or she's waiting for me to ask this question-- will you marry me? That's really where I am. And I don't know which one is true.

Ira Glass

But people-- if somebody is interested, they let you know. If a lady is interested, she figures out a way to let you know, right?

Man

Yeah. Now some people might say, well, hey, she let you stay at her house. I mean, you stayed there all week.

Ira Glass

Oh, man, you are stuck on this lady. Oh, my god.

Man

Well, let's put it this way. That may be the case, but it doesn't change anything. That I just want to know that, hey, I did everything I could. And that's what I didn't do the first time. That's what I didn't do the first time.

Ira Glass

You know what strikes me is that this is just very inconvenient for you that you like her so much.

Man

That I like her so much? That that's inconvenient?

Ira Glass

Yeah. Yeah. That you're having these feelings, that you're stuck on this lady. It seems like you're in the grip of this thing. You don't even have a choice. It defies all good sense. You know all the signs pointing against it. And yet you feel like you have no choice. You have to ask this question.

Man

Oh, I do have to. Oh, in truth, I understand that. I do have to ask the question. My heart says, resolve it. Just resolve it. And if her heart doesn't want it, then I don't want it with her, you know?

Ira Glass

Honestly, over the course of this conversation, I went from thinking that it was a terrible idea for him to ask this woman to marry him next week to thinking he should totally do it. He totally convinced me that he needed to hear yes or no once and for all. And maybe he was going to get what he wanted, or maybe he was going to be set free, but either one of those was going to be better than just floating around her like he's been, wanting this thing to happen.
And then-- OK, we talked the next day on the phone. And I learned some weird thing happened in that conversation that he and I had had the day before, which is we switched positions. He had completely convinced me that he should ask her, but I had completely convinced him that he should not because she wasn't showing enough signs that she loves him, because it seemed doomed on its face.
So the next day-- Tuesday this week-- we got on the phone and he told me his new, very pragmatic, very sober plan. He's not going to ask her to marry him next week. He's just going to tell her his feelings and see if she's open to being in a real, actual committed relationship.

Man

This opens the door to get started with a relationship. I'm not really saying that she would want to do it-- go there. But if she does, then the question would be, well, where do we go from there?

Ira Glass

So he flies to his fate this weekend. He's asking her Wednesday, he thinks. The heart wants what it wants. Emily Dickinson wrote that. Though, depending on how old you are, you might associate it with Woody Allen or Selena Gomez.



Man

She was very popular. She was one of, you might say, the queens in high school, right?

Ira Glass

Do you know where you're going to do this? Do you know where you're going to ask the question?

Man

Yeah. Yeah, I know where and when.

Ira Glass

Where is it going to be? What can you say about that?

Man

At her home. Next week.

Ira Glass

And right before he left to fly and ask her the big question, he changed his plan. He decided that instead of asking her to marry him, he would just tell her his feelings and ask her if she wanted to be in a real committed relationship with him.
And he did it. And OK, I'm just going to cut to the chase. She turned him down. Turned him down flat. No interest at all.
She'd been married for 50 years. She didn't want it again, with him or anybody. Her life was full of friends. Didn't need it. That's what she said. Though, of course, that's basically the senior citizen way of saying, you know, it's not you, it's me.
He says, right at the beginning of his visit, he got a sign of where her feelings were when he made the suggestion for the week together.

Man

I said, the one thing I would like to do is to shut down the evening, if you didn't mind, by just dancing together, closing the evening down with maybe just 15 minutes or so of dancing. She didn't agree to that. She said, well, I'm not certain about that. That's something I'll have to think about.
And of course, she didn't agree to that. And I know why. She didn't want any emotions to be involved, perhaps even her own, you know?

Ira Glass

He was less sad about it than you might think, because he finally knew the truth, knew it was hopeless with her. He could move on. And he's kind of excited to move on. He says he knows now. If you meet somebody who's truly right for you, it shouldn't take years for both of you to recognize it and feel it.

Man

And if you don't, then it's time to cut it and run.

Ira Glass

Life's too short. He's hoping his status is going to change one more time.