As a romantic, I sometimes take the evidence of love in nature as proof and prophecy, especially when it comes from birds. I used to cite bird love like that could be my reality: “Even vultures mate for life!” I would chirp to anyone willing to listen, as if birds remaining coupled season after season made it possible for me to find someone willing to do the same. However, even birds break up. In the birder realm it’s more commonly referred to as divorce.
Bird divorce is defined as two birds no longer remaining together in the next season, despite both returning to the same location. Some birds divorce after every mating season, seeking a new partner each time (looking at you, flamingos). Some birds never leave their original partner, and continue returning to them again and again. I see this as romantic and try imagining my own partner wanting to be with me through multiple seasons.
Perhaps it’s from watching too many romantic movies growing up and seeing marriage presented as the self-actualizing moment in a woman’s life, but I want that moment. I want to choose a partner for life, and I want our love to continue after that day of declaration. I want a love that will stay with me, a love that I will dream is fated, that if we didn’t meet in this life we would find each other in the next one. Birds who remain with their partners, who do mate for life, are an immense comfort to me. “See?” I say to myself, “If birds can do it, why can’t I?” I look at birds nuzzling on telephone wires and think, “Why not me?”
In studies about human breakup tendencies, I have read that people will often breakup in the spring. As the weather warms, we untangle our bodies and go outside. We see all the other options we hadn’t noticed while huddling for heat. I can’t help but feel anxious with a partner in spring. I am both excited for our entwined summer schedules, and on edge that the more we plan together, the more we will have to cancel when the relationship ends.
The reasons for bird divorce are sometimes unclear. A study focusing on the Eurasian blue tit revealed that while a bird who returned to its same mate tended to have more success than a bird seeking new partners, mating with the same partner was mostly due to timing. If Bird A returned to mate before its partner, Bird B, then A wouldn’t wait for B to arrive and would find a new love. Some 64% divorced throughout the course of the study. How could you be expected to wait to have kids if your partner might never show up again? They could be hurt, stranded with a broken wing where they last landed, or even dead.
I have overly romanticized almost every relationship I have been in, and I am still doing it today. I looked at each high school boyfriend like he was it for me. Eli was certainly the one. Well, okay, maybe not after breaking up with me, but then certainly Austin. Austin was it. Until I learn to be the one to take things less seriously, I’ll looked at each mate as my life-partner. The father of the future children I didn’t even know if I wanted.
Animals in the wild mate almost exclusively to reproduce. The end goal is babies. Always babies. However, many psychological studies on humans have debunked evolutionary psychology, which claims humans are mostly behaving out of their base desire to reproduce.
When I asked my mother to describe the defining moments of her life, her own self-actualizing points, she did not mention marrying my father, whom she later divorced. She said it was having my sisters and me. Giving birth and raising us was maybe the most important thing to her. I didn’t know what to say or how to relate to that feeling then, and I still don’t now.
I want a partner who will love me infinitely, yet I cannot guarantee offspring. I cannot promise my partner children I may never wish to produce. But would I change my mind if I loved my partner? Would they change theirs? I am of the opinion that you should decide about children on your own. If you have them out of love for your partner, not a genuine desire to have children, I think it is the wrong choice.
My present partner agrees with me. We just can’t seem to agree on our choices. But my choice of him as my partner is deep rooted. Emotionally I have built a staggering nest for us without acknowledging the consequences. When I think of losing him, of the potential breakup, I fall out of our metaphorical tree into a hole of depression I dug myself. I am endangering my own happiness, and risking his, with the thought we won’t work out. The thought that not even this one, this one I love so much, is the one.
The birds with the best record, the least divorce, 100% remaining pairs throughout their lives until one dies, are albatrosses. The albatross is a large sea bird. It is born on land and then sails the winds above the ocean for years, often traveling hundreds to thousands of miles before returning to meet its mate. They appear similar to seagulls in color but with beaks bearing a slight resemblance to the dodo, though infinitely more graceful. They look like supermodels of the bird world, sharp eyes shaded with grey feathers as if contoured for the runway. They can grow a wingspan of up to 12 feet and make seagulls look trivial and tasteless with their French fry-thieving tendencies.
Albatrosses can spend years seeking out the right mate through demonstrative dance and displays of long necks and massive wings. The dancing involves romantic moves like beak touching and a lot of screaming. When albatrosses finally settle down, they continue dancing with only each other, making specific steps between them. It may take up to 15 years to find the right mate and settle down. That sounds like a long time for a bird, but the albatross can live over 40 years, one of the oldest surpassing 68 years and she is still laying eggs with her mate.
My current relationship is arguably the most serious relationship I have ever had. He has a key to my apartment, where he stays even when I am away. I have begun wondering when people do things. When do people move in? When do people talk about marriage? When must people reconcile differing opinions on serious life decisions? When do people separate when those differences cannot be reconciled? We have friends who became engaged after one month of knowing each other. We have friends who are getting married after dating for ten years. One day I said we had our whole lives to do something and it made him happy. It made him look at me like fireworks, like someone seeing a baby bird leap out and fly for the very first time.
An albatross will lay one egg each time it mates, and both parents take turns flying, sometimes thousands of miles, in search of food for the chick. Their babies are grey, fluffy, and rather silly looking, like small Muppet creatures, very different from their elegant and smooth parents. The babies are important and treasured since an albatross will not mate every year. Sometimes pairs do not return to their nesting area for two years or more. However, mates always return to one another at the right time. We don’t know how albatrosses agree when to return to their nest, but they must make some arrangements knowing they will lose one another at sea.
We also don’t know if birds, in general, decide to find new mates due to personality differences, though researchers have hypothesized that this, along with mating difficulties, may explain divorces. The only really emotionally wrenching discussion I have had with my partner is about children. And we have had it repeatedly, each time leaving me struggling to breathe between tears. He would, if possible, like to have them. I am on the fence on good days, usually days where I haven’t heard a baby crying. The first time we tried to talk about it, we both ended up crying on a bathroom floor. We keep saying it is too early to talk about, keep asking “why are we talking about this?” and we’ll take turns telling each other it’s okay, that it’ll be okay. We will be okay. But I always worry later if, when he said “we,” he meant us together or apart.
Albatrosses have mastered isolation. While they mate for life, they are often not physically together. At sea they often split up, circling the earth alone. I am, at best, clingy. When my partner first used the word to describe himself in past relationships, it was the opposite of a warning sign to me. It was a lighthouse. The first sight of land. Someone like me. Something to cling to. If I were lost at sea for years waiting to see my loved one, I fear I would drown. Not because I don’t know how to swim, but because I simply couldn’t bring myself to go through the motions of living only to live alone. Sometimes I am afraid I might do anything to avoid solitude.
Occasionally, a male albatross might have a brief affair, especially in situations such as the one on the island of Oahu where there are same sex female couples who still intend to have a chick but need a male donor. However, after such transgressions, the male albatross will then usually return to his original mate. There is no abandonment in albatross behavior, despite familiarity with separation. When born, the baby will remain with one parent, while the other parent flies the ocean to bring back food. And when the chick is ready, it will unceremoniously leave the nest by itself, setting sail for about six years before it heads back to land to find a love.
This type of lasting love, the same kind I want, feels impossible. It feels like something people made up to justify marriage today with its basis in romantic ideals. I do not have great role models. My parents are divorced and rightfully so. But my father cried when he married my mother, a fact I always interpreted as magical. At a recent wedding I attended, the bride and groom cried while delivering their vows. Several months later, she was filing for divorce because he cheated on her even before the wedding. They had been together for nine years. Is it possible to find something I am not even sure exists? Despite my skepticism, I do not know how to stop looking at each person I am with, at my present partner, as my possible forever.
To be an albatross is to be an island, a paradise. I want to be a heaven for someone, the person someone always wants to come home to, no matter how long they have been away.
In my living room, a few months into our relationship, I taught my partner how to waltz to the soundtrack of My Fair Lady. Afterwards he wanted to keep waltzing around in small circles, letting me step on his feet even though I had shown him the moves, putting the songs on repeat. There were times in those early months, when everything was new and perfect and glowing, where he looked at me and frowned while smiling, like he was considering something immensely sad during a happy moment. He looked at me and I thought he would marry me. Sometimes I think he really would. Of course, it is far too early to tell, to think the thought. It is an imagining, a vision caught from the corner of my eye, a mistake to acknowledge. It’s still too early, and for now we will simply have to keep on dancing.
