Making Love... Happen

I was recently watching TV and a commercial for Match.com came on and it was boasting how if you don’t find someone in six months, then they’ll give you your money back, or the next six months are free, or something to that effect, and then after that was their gimmicky line:

“Make Love Happen.”

Make love happen? Can you make love happen?

You can try. Who hasn’t? And many do, and then think they have, and then realize, oops, guess I just made myself miserable. Time to start over. But is it really possible to make love happen? Doesn’t that counteract the real meaning of falling in love?

I’m all for people finding love in any way possible. I want you to be happy, I really do. But shouldn’t there be some sort of natural progression to love, instead of totally forcing someone into it? Call me old-fashioned, traditional, or, dare I say, romantic, but yeah, once in a while, it would be nice to hear a good love story from someone. When someone asks me how I met my future Mr., I don’t want to say, “I made love happen.”

It just sounds so terrible, and forced, like it’s a whole plot.

First, you find him of course.
Let’s see…where is Mr. Right-For-Me? Well, lately I’ve been getting excited for fall, so let’s have fun with that. Let’s make love happen at the Pumpkin Patch. Except at the Pumpkin Patch, there’s a Haunted House, because those really freak me out (some good “help me, I’m scared” moments there). Once, I volunteered to lead kids on a tour of this really lame one, and the ghost had to stop scaring them to ask if I was okay. I’m a loser. Anyway… So I’ve found him. Behind the best pumpkin in the whole patch. Because he’s the best pumpkin in the whole patch. Aww…See how it begins?

Second, we connect.
“Oh, that’s a nice pumpkin. Great rings, color, perfect size. Will you carve it, or paint it?” Who really cares? Not me. “Are you here alone to pick out your pumpkin?” he asks. “Of course I am, I’m here to make love happen. With you,” I tell him.

Third, we bond.
We hop onto a hayride where we discuss our personal lives a bit. Turns out he’s into raisins, and collects anything with raisins on them—raisin figurines, raisin paintings, he has a great raisin lampshade. In fact, he just ordered this raisin sweater. Whoa, so he was cute, we had some good banter, now this? Raisins? Not happening.

Four, make love happen.
I’m allergic to raisins, I tell him. He seems disappointed, and then tells me that really, they’re just shriveled grapes, and look kind of gross if you think about it. And I’ve changed him already, and we haven’t even made it to the cornstalks.

I don’t really hate raisins. In fact, after our imaginary hayride, at the imaginary goodie stand, I went and bought some imaginary yogurt covered raisins. But the point is, when you think you want love to happen, sure, you can make love happen. But really, is that what you want?

If you want to be in love that bad, you can make anything happen. And yes, it may make you happy for a while. Or you may think you are happy at least. But in the long run, it’ll wear off, and you’ll realize that yes, you were just making love happen, it wasn’t really love.

So here I am, years later, married to Mr. Pumpkin Patch. I have a severe deficiency of raisin nutrients, and he is depressed due to his lack of raisin paraphernalia (though I have caught him wearing the Raisin Sweater to run errands around town, but I haven’t told him. I’m slightly embarrassed for him.) The question is—would we have been happy if I didn’t try to make it work according to my standards? Or would we have ended up together at all?

You can make things happen. People tell you all the time, “anything is possible.” You usually want to slug those people, but if you think about it, it’s generally true. But when it comes to love, you have to think about it harder. Love is tricky. It’s not the same as trying to get a promotion at work. It’s a bond between two people, and that takes a little more than a pack of raisins or a love of pumpkins or a snuggle at a Haunted House. Yes, those intimate little moments and details help, but when it comes down to it, love has to take hold of you, not you of it.

I’d never put a down payment on the fact that I’m going to find love in six months, or that I have the skills to “make love happen.” But I’m okay with just liking what happens, in whatever span of time, because you never know what to make of it.

Don’t make love happen, just embrace what does happen. If all else fails, it is Pumpkin Patch season. They do grow large pumpkins there. Perfect for hugging. And you never know, there may be a handsome lad with a raisin fetish hiding behind it.

Dating Triumphs and Tragedies is published every Sunday by Online Dating Magazine columnist Nicole Roberge. She can be reached at [email protected].

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