Searching for a Husband with an EU Passport

A testimony to love, friendship, and an unexpected turn of events throughout the past 24 hours

A book lay open on the child-sized bed of my grandparents’ New York City apartment.  A sticky-note with my mother’s writing read “rather appropriate for you.” I had no idea how these pages were of any relevance to me, as all I could see were naked women in obscure poses—this was one of my grandmother’s feminist art books after all. Then, in the right-hand bottom corner I noticed one of the works of art titled “Searching for a Husband with an EU Passport.”

It has been an ongoing joke now that if I am to “find someone” in Switzerland, he must be an EU citizen who happens to be living here, because receiving EU citizenship will do me much more good than becoming half Swiss. Or so my mother says. 

During that same New York City trip, I visited one of my dearest friends who later in an email told me to fall in love. “Say yes to everything, be adventurous, and fall in love,” she wrote.

Prior to this, another one of my close friends and I had walked the peaceful springtime streets of Hanover mulling over relationships, recent breakups of ones we knew, and the intricacies of post-graduation plans for those who planned on staying together. “Everyone is so sad right now,” she said. “All the pain involved in relationships—friendship is so undervalued.”  

Until yesterday, I hadn’t really given much thought to the difference between friendship and romance. It seemed so obvious—you are attracted to some, and not to others.  If you find someone cute, funny, handsome, great to be around, and you can’t seem to get enough of them, then you will most likely want to be their partner.

I’ve also been told several times that males are incapable of having female friends. (“Their heads are in the gutter and they are always looking for more”).

As it turns out, this is not always the case. Homemade dinners of roasted vegetable and mozzarella towers with wine, sunflowers, and a breeze coming from the balcony window, a weekend in the Alps, a swim in the Aare with an arm pulling me out just as I was about to float by the exit railing, concern for my bloody toes after (a novice mistake—I shouldn’t have let my feet touch the rocks as I reached out for the railing), late night movie watching, lots of laughs and many, many a language joke. No, this was neither the beginning of romance nor the tactful moves made by someone whose head was in the gutter.

So why do I cry then? Tears of foolishness perhaps, misreadings and misinterpretations, much lost in translation. But also rejection.

The truth is though, this is not a sad story. This is a moment of hallelujah, a statistic proved wrong. He didn’t have to bring me swimming, he didn’t have to show me his home, he didn’t have to find me a bike. But he did. And he didn’t want any more than to accompany me because otherwise I may do these things alone.

Friendship is so undervalued.

My same friend who told me to fall in love also told me that it’s love we are always looking for. No matter how casual, how spontaneous, how unemotional we think we are, we cannot hide what is at the end of our search. 

But why can this feeling also cause us the most pain?

And even after we are wounded, we keep searching again.

Friendship, however, is a much safer choice. It is not so often broken by a single conversation—or a single sentence, a word even. Friendship, they say, can be everlasting. It bends with the changes that life brings; it forgives unexpected events. It waits. Its pauses run on another form of time. Not a second of a human life has passed when great friends are reunited.

But friendship can also be ignored. When neglected for too long, its memories chip away and it becomes a patchy blur tucked away in the distance. When compared to love, friendship is the second-best choice—“just friends.” Friendship doesn’t consume you. It doesn’t distract you while you try to perform your everyday tasks, and it doesn’t make your heart beat faster. 

It’s love we are always looking for.

But it’s friendship I’ve been given to work with. I tell myself that’s okay, take another statistic and prove it wrong. Revalue the undervalued.

That EU passport can wait.