At 31, Exhausted and Solo: Might a Series of Meetings with Men from France Restore My Joy of Living?

“Tu es où?” I texted, peeking out the terrace to check if he was close. I inspected my lipstick in the reflection over the hearth. Then agonized whether my elementary French was off-putting.

“I’m coming,” he texted. And before I could question about inviting a new acquaintance to my apartment for a introductory encounter in a different nation, Thomas knocked. Soon after we shared la bise and he took off his layers of winter gear, I realised he was even more good-looking than his online images, with disheveled fair hair and a hint of chiseled core. While getting wine as insouciantly as I could, inside my head I was exclaiming: “It’s going as planned!”

I conceived it in fall of 2018, burned out from almost ten years of residing in NYC. I’d been working full-time as an publishing professional and working on my book at night and on weekends for a few years. I pushed myself so hard that my calendar was written in my journal in 10-minute increments. On end-of-week nights, I came home and carried an cloth tote of dirty clothes to the self-service laundry. After returning it up the several floors, I’d yet again open the manuscript file that I knew, realistically, may never get published. Meanwhile, my contemporaries were moving up the ladder, getting married and buying fancy flats with standard fixtures. At 31, I felt I had few accomplishments.

Men in New York – or at least the ones I dated – seemed to think that, if they were above average height and in banking or legal, they were highly superior.

I was also effectively celibate: not only because of busyness, but because my ex and I kept seeing each other once a week for dinner and Netflix. My ex was the earliest gentleman who spoke with me the first night I ventured out after moving to New York, when I was 22. Although we separated after several years, he drifted back into my life an amicable meeting at a time until we always found ourselves on the far sides of his settee, groaning companionably at series. As reassuring as that tradition was, I didn’t want to be intimate companions with my old partner while having an inactive love life for the foreseeable future.

The occasional instances I played around with Tinder only shattered my self-esteem further. Dating had shifted since I was last in the dating world, in the dinosaur era when people actually communicated in bars. New York men – or at least the ones I dated – seemed to think that, if they were more than 6ft tall and in banking or legal, they were elite. There was little initiative, let alone pursuit and passion. I wasn’t the only one feeling offended, because my friends and I compared experiences, and it was as if all the singles in the city were in a competition to see who could be more indifferent. A shift was necessary, drastically.

One day, I was organising my shelves when an old art history textbook caught my attention. The cover of a classic art volume features a closeup of a ancient artwork in gold and lapis lazuli. It brought back my time passed in the study hall, poring over the illustrated pages of reliquaries and analyzing the famous artworks in the Parisian museum; when a tome presuming to explain “creative evolution” and its evolution through civilization felt significant and valuable. All those thoughtful debates and hopes my peers and I had about aesthetics and reality. My heart ached.

I made up my mind that I would resign from work, move out of New York, place my items at my family home in Portland, Oregon, and reside in France for a quarter. Of course, a notable group of literary figures have departed from the United States to Europe over the generations – famous authors, not to mention countless minor bards; perhaps following in their footsteps could help me become a “professional author”. I’d stay a month apiece in various towns (an alpine destination, a coastal spot, and Paris for Paris), relearn French and experience the artworks that I’d only studied in photographs. I would trek in the mountains and bathe in the sea. And if this put me in the path handsome locals, why not! Surely, there’d be no superior solution to my exhaustion (and dry spell) than setting out on a quest to a nation that has a reputation for romance.

These idealistic plans drew only a subdued response from my companions. They say you aren’t a New Yorker until you’ve resided a decade, and nearing the mark, my tired acquaintances had already been fleeing for better lifestyles in other destinations. They did desire for me a fast rejuvenation from Manhattan courtship with attractive Europeans; they’d all been with a few, and the general opinion was that “Frenchies” in New York were “weirder” than those in their homeland but “hot” compared with other choices. I left such discussions out of the conversation with my family. Long worried about my demanding schedule and regular sickness, they supported my decision to focus on my well-being. And that was what motivated me: I was satisfied that I could arrange to look after myself. To restore zest for life and figure out where my life was headed, in work and life, was the goal.

The debut encounter with Thomas went so as expected that I thought I messed up – that he’d never want to meet again. But before our garments were removed, we’d laid out a chart and talked about hiking, and he’d committed to take me on a trek. The next day, accustomed to letdowns by fickle American men, I messaged Thomas. Was he truly planning to show me his preferred path?

“Certainly, relax,” he texted back within seconds.

He was much more romantic than I’d anticipated. He held my hand, complimented my every outfit, made food.

He was reliable. A couple of evenings after, we traveled to a trailhead in the alpine region. After hiking the white path in the dark, the city of Grenoble lay shimmering beneath our feet. I made an effort to embody the affection of the moment, but I couldn’t banter in French, let alone