It’s not that I have a thing for Italians. It’s that Italians keep finding me. Finance Guy was from Southern Italy. 6’5. Brown eyes. If you had the week I had, you’d have understood why I wanted to cancel. He was so understanding as I explained why I wanted to reschedule for next month, that I thought…fuck it. There are worse things than a date with an attractive Italian man.

When I was younger, every date was rich with possibility. I’d let a romcom feeling overtake me with no regard to the emotional debt I’d be in later. The older you get, the more dating starts to feel like monetary policy. You want enough optimism to encourage investment without letting things get completely out of control. I moisturized, picked out a dress and heels, and hoped he really was 6’5. He was.

Finance Guy was an Italian gentleman. Well-dressed, charismatic, engaging. A few years older than me, he had left some consulting firm and started his own. I don’t even know what consulting firms do, but this let him travel more. He joked about the perks of having an Italian boyfriend: homemade pasta, excellent wine pairings, and the genetics of great eyebrows. He was witty and ambitious, or at least seemed like he was. At any other moment, I would have been swept away.

I’m far past emotional investment on first dates. Sometimes I wish I could still delude myself into thinking I’d met my person. The older you get, the more it feels like you’re trying to keep inflation under control when you’re sitting across a man who’s trying to impress you. Dating, at its most........

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