A New Wish List

What I seek in my second mate is much different than my first.

My daughter called home one night a while back with excitement in her voice to tell me about a new young man she'd met. She was full of hyperbole as she described him. "Mom," she said, "you have to meet him! He's perfect!"

I hadn't heard her gush like that since our fairytale days of reading Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. We'd embedded those stories into our brains like little neurosurgeons. My daughter's young man turned out to be perfect for her, and today they're engaged.

I'm thinking about perfect mates now not only because my big girl will be walking down the aisle soon, but also because I'm without a mate. I divorced last summer after decades of marriage. My future is as wide open as a novel without an ending.

I was 27 - my daughter's age - the last time I was unattached. Back then, I had a love wish list of the things I was looking for in a mate - father, breadwinner, a man who made my heart skip and who'd be fun to be around for half a century or so. My family had to like him, too.

But my life has changed. I'm no longer looking for a partner to have kids with or settle in the suburbs with, so what am I wishing for?

Like everyone my age who's starting over, I bring a lot of the past with me to my next love story. I'm still a romantic and I'm still hoping for another happy ending, but my rose-colored glasses are gone. (I traded them in for progressives.) Without a wish list, would I even recognize the perfect man if he came along? I've been pondering that question, and I posed it to several people my age who are divorced or widowed and searching like me. There are lots of us - close to one-third of men and women age 45 to 59 were not married in 2003, according to Census figures.

"What I want now is quite different from what I was looking for in my 20s," a good friend told me recently. She's 60, knows herself well, and is about to be remarried. She had whittled her love wish list down to one essential thing. "What I've found in a mate is what I should have been looking for last time - this relationship is for me," she says. "Now I have the strength of character to not be so swayed by the outer trappings of appearances and what the culture and my family suggested I look for."

A widowed friend who lives in Paris, where she's surrounded by love, doesn't have a clue about her wish list. "But I came to the conclusion in the Metro today that I would like to find love again," she wrote me recently. "I have no idea when, where, or how, but that would be perfect."

Another friend is slowly getting around to thinking about her wish list. She was crazy in love when she married at 22 and heartsick when she divorced 25 years later. "The first time I chose with my heart. Next time, I'll choose with my head and my heart."

There's this saying attributed to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis: "The first time you marry for love, the second for money, and the third for companionship." In middle age, when your hormones have quieted down some and your head and heart are hopefully in synch, a great companion to grow old with should probably be at the top of everyone's short list (because that golden pond is just around the bend). Some people are lucky enough to find that when they're young - and it lasts a lifetime.

Jackie O's last love, Maurice Tempelsman, her companion for the final years of her life, was nothing like her first storybook prince. But he was loyal and devoted and was said to have brought great joy to her life.

Celebrities and fairy tales aside, what about my wish list?

I know I no longer yearn for the things I wanted once upon a time - the white picket fence and the perfect father and mate. This time around, I want the imperfect man for me, warts and all. Maybe it's time to trust my instincts and retire my love wish list. Start with a clean slate. I'm old enough now to wing it.

Marianne Jacobbi lives in Cambridge. Send comments to coupling@globe.com.