Would Jane admire my patience?

Those of you have have listened to me whine over the years are well aware that I have never had a boyfriend.

(Is this a shock to the rest of you? In any Jane Austen novel this admission would qualify me as a triple spinster. )

There have been many occasions where I thought I did. Or was well on my way to. We met. We flirted for a day or for three months. We held hands on the Chapel Choir tour bus. We watched thunderstorms by candlelight and drew patterns on each other's forearms. We went to Wally's before walking along the Charles at 2 a.m. He picked me up at the airport. He remembered that I didn't like the hops in IPA and ordered me something else. Or that I take my coffee dark with cream and Equal, and ordered that without asking.

Then date 4, 5 or 6 would come...and there would be a grand silence that all the e-mails in the world wouldn't penetrate...or an admission that he had met a 19-year-old and thought he was in love....or a suggestion that the "spark" between us had never sparked.

It was always date 4, 5 or 6. And I'd always be thrashed....far more emotionally invested than 4, 5 or 6 dates justified. (Not exactly picking out bridesmaids' dresses. But happy. Excited. Hopeful enough that I had probably mentioned him to my mother, thus having to rescind the name in every subsequent conversation when she asked after him.) And I'd be thrashed for a good long 4, 5 or 6 months. Crying on the T. Crying when his favorite song came on the radio.

Tonight while crossing the Financial District on foot, I encountered a favorite ex-roommate. He's a gossip and a clothes horse and, like me, a single serial dater with 100 stories of loves-lost....who always wants to talk about it. I once did the favorite-song crying-thing on his shoulder.

But that was 2 years ago, so we had to play catch-up. We immediately set to discussing recent adventures: he with a next-door neighbor (random lust over the weekend) and me with the CFO. We also hit on the less successful outings: him coming across an ex-boyfriend on Craigslist....me surprised by a recent--and most dangerous--flirtation with an extremely unavailable man. It seemed that for every story I had, he had one to relate with similar temptations or fall-offs.

"We must have been born under the same star," I said.

Which in hindsight is prescient, because his birthday is the day after mine. (We're both Aries!) But what made me include Tim in this tale tonight is a tale he told: His life has been rife with funshort relationships. But unfailingly, at the point he realizes that it might become anything more (as in BLAM! I really like this guy!), it all changes. He gets dumped. Or loses interest.

That is precisely how I feel. And have felt so many times that, recently, I sat down and wrote out how many times I hadn't made it past date 4 and realized there is no way to remember them all.

And then I remembered (yes, seriously, and not just for the purposes of this blog entry) something I had read from Uncle Ben Stein yesterday:

"Long-term investment pays off. The impatient day player will fare poorly without inside information or market-controlling power. He or she will have a few good days but years of agony in the world of love. To coin a phrase: Fall in love in haste, repent at leisure."

Perhaps I am lacking in patience. Wanting so much to be in love that I'm willing to overlook faults to assume that I am there long before it is true. Not really knowing the person well enough. Feeling hacked to death when my man's better nature reveals itself in the form of a louse, a recalcitrant, or a person who just doesn't find me interesting. Jumping so far ahead of myself I jump right into that man's fears....and spending months regretting my rashness.

I'm enjoying this revelation. Because perhaps I might apply it to future dates: go with the flow for way longer than I think I should.

Ah Jane, I'm going to be patient. Don't judge my spinsterdom.