Left at the altar, he traveled the world

“You have no idea what I’m talking about,” I said.

Over dinner that night I convinced Kurt to extend the honeymoon for two years and fifty-three countries. Now, this was not exactly how I dreamed my honeymoon would go. But the two years offered a world of discovery, enlightenment, and renewal, as well as a strengthened relationship with a long-lost best friend who just happened to be my brother. The planet made me a believer in many things — optimism amid chaos, soccer as a legitimate sport despite the grade-school playacting, green tea, siestas, the power of faith beyond the pulpit, Eastern medicine, a father’s right to improve the lives of his children across all borders.

The world showed me the importance of living life with my heart rather than just my brain, the need in all of us to follow passion wherever it takes us. It made me prouder than I’d ever been to hold a passport with the words UNITED STATES OF AMERICA etched in gold, ever more so each time I met an aid worker with a Southern drawl or a villager whose dreams were fueled by a place he’d never see, a land I was lucky enough to call home.

This was the honeymoon of a lifetime ... if you overlooked that whole runaway bride aspect.

There was one small problem. Herculean, as far as my mother was concerned. I’d spent two years traipsing around the world’s most romantic destinations — Rio and Prague, African safaris and exotic islands — meeting affable women at every port of call, with ample time to invest in friendship and conversation and love. Somehow I’d managed to take this dream setup, one so laden with options even Borat could have filled a black book full of numbers, and come back single.

“Man, you’re lucky,” said my friends, most of them married. “You had the whole world to choose from.”

“Are you kidding me?” I’d reply. “Have you been in the singles game in, say, the last decade? Don’t you know how impossible it is to fall in love in our own country, let alone connect with someone in a place where everything is foreign — language, culture, fashion don’ts, political insults, or even what to order from the menu?” How on earth do you meet someone? How, on this earth, do you fall in love? The questions rumbled around throughout the honeymoon with my brother, especially when we found ourselves in a romantic setting, at sunset, as real couples strode off for their sidewalk café dinners. I’d go to sleep in, say, Lake Como or Los Roques, look over at Kurt in the other bed, and think,

“What in God’s name am I doing here with you?”

As the honeymoon ended and I came back to California, I concluded love was unreachable for the masses, and especially for a sap who ate his wedding cake alone. Their love stories were just that, stories.

It’s not that I didn’t believe in love. I just didn’t believe in the odds. It’s like Powerball. We see people who win the mega-jackpots on television. They wear muumuus or cowboy hats. Played the same numbers for thirty-eight years. They hold five-foot checks and promise to buy houses for their children.

We see them, but we don’t know them. And we certainly aren’t one of them. I’d been afforded my single shot at love. I’d blown it. Just the way it is. I’d invested a decade. Not all investments pay off.

Truth is, I can’t say my life was completely devoid in this arena. Humans are a creative species. Bedouins can sense water under a sea of sand. Pacific Islanders know when storms are coming despite cloudless skies. So, too, with love. If one source dries up, we’ll find it elsewhere. The mind convinces itself time with friends and family will suffice. We get creative. We get pets.

Excerpted from “How the World Makes Love” by Franz Wisner. Copyright (c) 2009, reprinted with permission from St. Martin's Press.

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