L.A. Affairs: After a lot of wrong turns, love veers left

I was always told the right guy for me would end up being a little to the left of what I thought I wanted. But the only men I met were so far left they fell off the spectrum. I think I might be the only person ever who was matched with an embalmer and a convicted sex offender by the same dating site. And I might be the only New Age spiritualist who ever wound up on a communal Shabbat dinner date.

My tolerance level for dating turned subzero after a horrible split with the man I thought I was going to marry. It ended with me furiously packing my bags, his slamming of the door and me standing alone on the corner of La Brea and 3rd hiding my tears behind Chanel glasses. OK, fake Chanel glasses. Whatever.

Looking back, I should have known it wasn’t going to work out with him. Like most women in denial, I chose to ignore the signs. But despite everything, I did love him, and that breakup broke me. So if love was a little to the left, I was turning right and far away from it.

For more than a year, I dated men as though they were in an assembly line and my job was to call out “Next!” I didn’t care who it was as long as it was a free meal and a good story to tell my girlfriends.

But my belief in finding the right guy diminished with every tall, dark and crazy I dated. And I couldn’t deny the fact that I was still a hopeless romantic who longed for my very own meet-cute. You know, the kind of fated encounter where you randomly bump into Mark Ruffalo and happen to be holding the same green tea latte headed to the same yoga class.

So I finally decided to stop dating and immerse myself in therapy instead. I even bought the self-help book “Calling in ‘The One’: 7 Weeks to Attract the Love of Your Life” for extra study.

I devoured the book as though I had been on a juice cleanse for a year and had just spotted my first cookie. With laser beam focus, I inhaled every heart-chakra-opening exercise and therapeutic writing lesson. Daddy issues? Why, yes, actually. Body abuse? Check, check. When it asked me to draw pictures of my feelings, I bought a tower of scented crayons.

And when I finished the book, like magic, I suddenly had seven quality dates lined up. Out of nowhere, everywhere I went, people tried to set me up. But these weren’t just any men. They were now doctors who ran charities and chefs who made the best pasta e fagioli in L.A. The book title could have been changed from “Calling in ‘The One’” to “Calling in Everyone with a 401(k).”

Then one day, along came Miles. At first I said no to Miles. He wasn’t at all what I had drawn up. He hated coffee, and I lived for it. He wasn’t a morning person, and my alarm was set for 6 a.m. He had a dry sense of humor, and I was sensitive. I was driven. He was settled. He was calm, and I chronically overreact. Need I go on?

But Miles, above all else, was persistent. He kept calling, and eventually I picked up. He kept asking me out, and with a roll of my eyes, I eventually said yes. And suddenly I found myself wanting to see him when I opened my eyes in the morning. Wanting to hear the resonance of his voice and feel the touch of his hand. Wanting to make jokes just so I could witness the way his chin drops to his chest when he laughs really hard.

I was always told the right guy for me would be a little to the left of what I thought I wanted. If you look closely, you’ll notice Miles’ left foot turns in when he walks and that his left earlobe looks as though a small dog nibbled on it.

Back in grade school, I said the Pledge of Allegiance every morning. I would stand up and place my right hand over my heart that I always assumed was in the center of my chest. But I’ll never forget the day I learned the heart was actually someplace else. That all those years I thought I was touching my heart, I was wrong.

I think of this now when I think of him. Because I learned that day that my heart was not in the center but had always been perfectly placed, off to the side and — just a little to the left.

Rich is a Pilates instructor and writer who lives in Los Angeles.

L.A. Affairs chronicles dating and romance in contemporary Southern California. Past columns and submission guidelines are at www.latimes.com/laaffairs. If you have comments to share or a true story to tell, write us at home@latimes.com.