Me and Mister Unavailable Meets CITO

See The Telltale Garb, The Sit-Com Setup, The Lukewarm Fuzzies, Little Island..., Coffee=The End?, Well Done and "Recriminations Flared"... for the background on this one.

The day after the phone call from #133, I had an appointment with my new shrink—thankfully, the med-prescribing kind. I told her what happened and then put my head in my hand. “He just seemed so normal,” I said. But, clearly he was not. "This just keeps happening. I can’t do this again.”

All these guys looked different—some were cockier than others, some were more talkative than others, some were smarter than others, some were hairier than others—but, ultimately, they were the all the same. Unavailable.

“You seem like you’ve had enough,” she said. “Maybe this is your ‘I’ve had it.'”

And then, just like a bad infomercial, she recommended a book to solve my problems. Now, you may not like the sound of where this is going and I agree with you that developing what could be an ending based around a self-help-book solution is really weak, but, in my defense, I clearly needed help. I hadn’t had a relationship last longer than nine months in 15 years. There was no denying anymore that I was part of the problem.

“Have you heard of the book ‘Calling in the One?’” she asked. I had. “The woman who wrote it found herself in her early 40s, single and attracted to unavailable men. She was a psychotherapist, so she looked at what was keeping her back and wound up developing this kind of process that got her out of her relationship cycle. The book helps you get clear about what you’re looking for.”

I was clear about what I was looking for, wasn’t I? I was looking for marriage, wasn’t I? Then again, looking back, every single Mr. Unavailable from 2011—#118 through #133—had not been looking for anything resembling commitment, not from me, anyway. Somehow, deep inside, I was conflicted. I said I wanted one thing but kept finding myself attracted to men who wanted something else.

“The book takes seven weeks and I’ve known women who met someone right after they finished doing it.”

“Really?” I asked. I liked instant results.

It was time to do a little soul-searching. After my appointment, I went straight across Union Square Park to Barnes & Noble and bought the book. My shrink had also said that the book recommended going through it with one or a few other people, so I called Eva a few days later.

“I have kind of a weird question for you,” I said. “There’s this book that my shrink recommended and it’s meant to help you attract available men.

“You mean ‘Calling in the One?’” she asked. “I have it. I started reading it but never finished it.”

Eva herself had gotten out of a going-nowhere relationship a couple of months before, being the dumper, and then gone back only to experience a reverse-dump. Now she was obsessed—not with him but with her alternate-reality version of him.

“Do you want to work on the book together?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

That was easy.

The other thing I knew the book recommended was to make room in your home for another person. Coincidentally, after the apartment debacle with #126, it became clear that I was going to be in my apartment for at least a little while longer, so I’d already started on a home-improvement project that was now going to double as a making-room-in-my-apartment project.

Eva and I were only three weeks into "Calling in the One," which we nicknamed CITO (pronounced CHEE-toh) and I was in the midst of home improvements when I experienced the sudden return of Mr. Unavailable #113.

"Sometimes the right guy comes in before you even finish the book," said my shrink.

Like I said, I like instant results...