I'll Never Fall in Love Again

What do you get when you fall in love?
A guy with a pin to burst your bubble
That's what you get for all your trouble
I'll never fall in love again
I'll never fall in love again


What business do I, as a 58-year-old man, have spending any time imagining what it would be like to be in love again?


I've been in love lots of times. It's a messy roller coaster and I am tired of disorder. I want to be like Miss Jane Marple in the Agatha Christie mysteries, exerting myself only to pick weeds out of my garden and spending my evenings quietly sipping tea and figuring out who stabbed who 47 times over at the vicarage.


Love. Bah. Something I ought to give up for Lent.


What do you get when you kiss a guy
You get enough germs to catch pneumonia
After you do, he'll never phone you
I'll never fall in love again
I'll never fall in love again

The year he met me, my ex-partner, Rdaddy, told our then-pastor that he had decided what to give up for Lent that year.

"And what will that be?" said the pleased pastor, taking the bait.


"Abstinence," he said, getting a stern look from her. She was no fun --- a year or so later, she announced her intentions to find a nicer parish and leave her husband during the same sermon.


Don't tell me what it's all about
'Cause I've been there and I'm glad I'm out
Out of those chains those chains that bind you
That is why I'm here to remind you

I have no idea whatever happened to that pastor. Her ex-husband, a nice straight guy, occasionally drops in to announce that he will never marry another woman. I tell him I've reached the same conclusion, but for different reasons. We joke for an evening, finish off a bottle of wine, swear we'll renounce love forever, and then I send him on his way, knowing that neither of us truly means it.


I don't flirt with men anymore. I gratefully accept flirtations when they come, but don't initiate them or expect them. Doing so might lead to emotional contact, to romance, and --- horrors! I might fall in love again. Silly thing to do at my age.


Carol Burnett, as down-to-earth a human being as she is a brilliant comedian, once said in an interview that after two divorces, she didn't think she wanted to marry and live under the same roof with a man again.


"I wouldn't mind having a man living next door to me so I could send him home afterwards," she said, getting a laugh.

What do you get when you give your heart
You get it all broken up and battered
That's what you get, a heart that's shattered
I'll never fall in love again
I'll never fall in love again

I hate living alone. I like the sound of someone else's snoring (within reason) and the smell of another guy's sweat and after shave on my pillow. I look at pictures of handsome men --- including some of the handsome men on LifeOut --- and I think, "I'm still young enough to appreciate THAT!"


But I'm afraid of another guy taking residence in my heart and soul. That part of love makes me feel every year that I've lived, plus 10 to grow decrepit on.

Out of those chains those chains that bind you
That is why I'm here to remind you



I've gone through two marriages to women, one marriage-like relationship with a man. Assorted love affairs with both sexes fill in the gaps. All the songs about love hurting apply. Yet, when I see two people in love --- like my daughter and her husband, like my son and his partner --- I feel like that cast-aside mop in that TV commercial, looking in his former owner's window to the music of "Love Stinks."


I want it, too.


At church, there's all these widows and widowers, a few years older than me. Some of them have told me, "I will never marry again. I miss him/her, but I don't want it again." They sound believable. I know I could never say that. But then again, I'm a divorced man, not a widower. I didn't get my fill.


I know I'm still going through the healing part, the grieving after a break-up. And I'm probably not fit to be with anyone now. What would I talk about if someone new came along? Oh, sure, you make jokes, you ask each other questions, you learn things about each other, maybe take up new interests because the new guy's made you curious.

What do you get when you fall in love?
You only get lies and pain and sorrow
So for at least until tomorrow
I'll never fall in love again
I'll never fall in love again

But then it comes down to the nitty-gritty --- do you just have sex or do you let your guard down and make love? And can you keep from letting your guard down, if the guy seems really, really nice?



Makes one want to back away, say, no, no, no, let me have a heart of stone. An impossible wish when you know your heart is made of sand.

I'll never fall in love again.

Yeah. Right.