boyfriends

In which I ponder….Lemonade

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So…it’s finally properly and completely over.

Although we’ve been separated over 5 years and divorced for almost exactly 1 year, I have only just today received our court stamped financial settlement.

I’m neither happy nor sad about it really. It’s good to know that I will no longer be lining the pockets of lawyers, and that I at last know what the future is likely to look like financially. I’m never going to be rich but I’m not going to be poor either, and that’s fine. I won’t have the sort of life I would have had if I had remained in the marriage, but for every material thing I’ll no longer have, I’ll have a ton of happiness to which I previously would not have had access.

There was no fighting about the settlement – I took what I was offered, and I didn’t ask for more. But I was careful to seek legal advice throughout the process so my decisions – although often against the advice of my lawyers – were well informed. The most important thing for me was to maintain my integrity and find a path through what was equitable and fair, and what was enough. In the end I went for enough, because what I was offered was enough. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life feeling that I was lucky that my ex husband was so successful. I want to spend the rest of my life knowing that I’ve worked hard and that with hard work comes rewards.

It would have been easy in some respects to fight – and certainly that was what my lawyers were hoping for, since it would have lined their pockets. But if you should ever find yourself in a similar position, make sure you consider whether the psychological and emotional toll of the process would be worth the potential financial gains. I was constantly aware of the incongruency of feeling envious about the fact that my ex appears to live in such comparative splendor given that I have spent my entire career working to improve the lives of the disadvantaged. Why should I be entitled to anything better than the actually very nice life I already have?

But envy is an insidious thing. It creeps up on you as you scroll through your social media feeds, watching your friends living the life you expected to have post childrearing – exotic travel, holiday property purchases, renovations, rediscovering romance with your loved one. It mixes up with anger and takes you back to a place you thought you had left. Then I realized that my envy was really just a disguise for the grief I was experiencing for the life I had lost, both present and future, that I thought was going to be mine and ended up being one of the casualties of divorce. And I was reminded, again, that nothing is guaranteed, nothing can be promised, and that you have to make your own luck.

Even without fighting though, I found the process draining and demeaning. In addition to my inner turmoil about the above, the system seems to consider that the material assets built up over the course of a 21 year relationship belong to your husband, who may, out of the goodness of his heart, decide to give you some. Then you are supposed to be grateful and consider yourself lucky.

I refuse to be grateful.

I am grateful for my beautiful children, and I am grateful that I have the means to support myself going forwards – but everything I have taken from my marriage is part of what I helped to build up and as such I have taken my share. I am not lucky that my ex husband is successful – we (he and I) are lucky that over the course of our relationship we jointly built up a life and careers from which we will both continue to benefit.

Now I can start the work of really planning how I will protect my financial interest going forwards – something that I should have been doing all along.

I already know that leaving my husband is the best thing I ever did for myself. I’ve never regretted it, although I’ve found it hard to process. But I will no longer torture myself over what was done, or not done, or could have been done. I will not wish for the life I would have had, or mourn the one I’d left. I will race forwards in life, reaching out for all the opportunities I would have missed, all the adventures I would not have had, all the lovers I would not have kissed.

And should I ever find myself in a similar position again – God forbid – I will simply channel Beyoncé…

“This is your final warning…

  You know I give you life

  If you try this shit again

  Gonna lose your wife”

 

 

In which I ponder…sex and thenearly fifties

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zac-efron-spray-down-baywatch-set-01

It is a sad fact, universally acknowledged, that my next significant birthday will launch me into a half century.

I can’t say that I am thrilled about that.

I approached my 40th birthday with some excitement. Life was going pretty well thank you very much, and I felt like reaching this milestone would finally allow me to join the ranks of the proper grown ups.

In the event, things worked out rather differently to how I had imagined. At the time I was writing a different blog, and I wrote about my fortieth birthday here. You can read it if you like…

Anyway, I’m feeling rather less positive about being 50. It’s as if in the decade between turning 40 and turning 50, I’ve rushed along developmentally, succeeded in becoming a grown up and then peaked too soon and joined the geriatrics. All in one very fast decade. When I went to renew my drivers license I was not allowed a 10 year one – because I am too old. Perhaps they think I will not make it through the next 10 years so there is no point in me wasting time and money on my drivers license. Or perhaps they think I will lose my marbles. Who knows. All I know is that it made me feel very, very old.

But the other thing that makes me feel very old – and very tired – is the idea that when I turn 50 I might (probably) still be single. Not that being single in itself is so bad, but because there is something – in my mind anyway – so deeply tragic about dating at that age that I’ve decided that when that time comes I shall retire gracefully and invest in some cats. And perhaps some knitting needles.

In the meantime though*, I continue to be a woman in her late 40s who often finds herself on dates with men who are around 50, many of whom are very interesting. I really don’t have anything against dating men in this age group except for one thing – they seem to have little or no understanding of female sexuality.

Take, for example, a recent unhappy experience, which sadly has not been unique – either to me, or to other single girlfriends.

I met a man on an online dating site. He was funny and we had some shared interests, so based on that I agreed to meet him on a Sunday afternoon in a café. We met and the conversation flowed freely over a pot of Earl Grey Tea. And then, after we’d finished our tea – just the one pot – he asked me whether I’d like to go round to his place – with an unmistakeable glint in his eye which sadly I’ve seen way too often.

Now, had George Clooney or Zac Efron** turned up that café, there is chance that I might have viewed an invitation to join one or other of them (or maybe both of them!) at their place with some excitement. I might even have suggested we give the Earl Grey a miss and get right to it.

As it was, the man sitting across the table from me looked like a fairly average 50 year old. Balding, a bit of a paunch and slightly suspect dress sense. None of this stopped him, of course, from being interesting, even potentially attractive, given the chance to get to know him. But the thing is this. When you are a balding, slightly overweight man who has reached his half century and is wearing a shirt that screams ‘I don’t have a partner and haven’t had for a while’, you are going to need to do more than provide me with a pot of Earl Grey Tea to facilitate the removal of my underwear.

The reality is that at our ages we can’t just rely on our physical presence and a cuppa to provide enough of a frisson to persuade someone to join us in the bedroom. Or at least men who meet me can’t, and I suspect I am not alone.

It’s not that men who are 50 are not attractive. It’s more that actually they have so much more to offer than they allow me to discover if they move straight from cups of tea to bedroom gymnastics. It’s going to be rare that you meet a man in my age group who – by virtue purely of their physicality – makes you stop in your tracks and try to drag them off to the nearest boudoir. But I’m sure that – or at least I hope that – there are men who are willing to let me get to know them, and are interested in getting to know me, so that we can both discover what else we have to offer beyond our now less than perfect bodies that might make us want to find out what’s beneath our clothes.

But that takes a bit of time, gentlemen, a bit more effort, and more than a pot of tea.

*because I’m not actually 50 until 2018, but I’m preparing myself psychologically

**my fantasy man. Inappropriately young, but such a fine specimen of a man I’m pretty certain no one is really immune to his charms. Not that I’m seeking someone who looks like that – chance would be a fine thing! That’s a picture of him up there, in case you don’t know who he is. You’re welcome.

In which I ponder…being present and finding what you’re looking for

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search

 

Anyone who is dating will know that the question we are asked most often is

“So…what are you looking for?”

In my naivety,  at the beginning of this journey, I thought people were asking me what sort of a man I was looking for – and frankly I had no idea. I’d chosen badly once, but I didn’t want to see all future men through that lens, because it seemed so negative. I found you frequently met people – men and women – who had a long list of things they knew they weren’t looking for, and they were nearly always all the things they had ended up hating about their previous partner.

I say ‘ended up’, as it’s a sad irony that often the very things that we once thought were appealing and attractive about people often end up being the things that in the end we can’t stand. For my own part, for example, I originally loved my ex husband’s lack of emotion, as I came from a family which could fairly be described as being emotionally labile. But after 21 years, I realized that this lack of emotion was not actually a cool, calm and stable disposition, but literally the absence of any sort of emotional landscape – and it’s very hard to have a meaningful and connected relationship with someone like that. Or at least it is for me.

Anyway – I digress.

Later, I came to realize that the ‘what are you looking for?’ enquiry was, in fact, code for ‘are you up for one night stands?’. I suppose it’s helpful to at least ask – and this often happens well before you’ve met I person – and it does mean that no one is wasting their time. But the last couple of times I’ve been asked it, it’s got me thinking.

Once upon a time – long, long ago (i.e the last time I was dating, over 20 years ago), this was not a question people asked. When you were dating, everyone knew what that was – you go out on dates with someone and you see how it goes. If it doesn’t go well, you stop dating and you find someone else to date. Repeat. Simples.

These days it all seems to have all become a bit unnecessarily complicated.

It seems to me that there are now two answers to ‘what are you looking for?’ and they both sit at extremes of the relationship spectrum. On the one end there is just looking for someone for tonight, thanks very much. And at the other end there is the search for ‘the one’ with whom I spend the rest of my life.

Now, it can’t just be me who is thinking that actually there is a lot of space between those two choices.

But more importantly, it occurs to me that whether we decide we are looking for something fleeting or something long term, every time we discard someone because they say they are looking for something different, we miss the opportunity to just let something grow. In the old days, occasionally one night stands led to long and happy marriages – probably because people weren’t obsessing about where this was all going. People didn’t go into relationships with an agenda – or at least I don’t think they did. And sometimes they would be taken by surprise and find themselves falling in love with someone at a time when it hadn’t occurred to them to be thinking about the long term. Certainly that happened to me – I was at University and couldn’t have been less interested in finding a husband, but I met a man and 3 years later we were married. And although it didn’t work out terribly well, we had 21 years and 2 beautiful children to show for it at the end.

But more importantly, while we are fixated on where the relationship might go, right from the beginning, we cannot claim to be being present. And by not being present, we risk enjoying the moments, which might be incremental and which, in fact, we do not know to where they might lead.

I’d like to advocate a dating movement. We could call it ‘Present Dating’. We just forget about our agenda, about finding what we’re looking for. How about we just enjoy the moments? We stop asking about what people are looking for, and we just go on dates and see how it goes. If it’s fun and you enjoy one another’s company, you carry on dating until you don’t feel like that anymore. And that could be tomorrow, next week, next year or never.

Just like the old days.

 

In which I ponder…chemistry

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Chemistry

Before I joined the single hoards, and probably before, I was a great believer in chemistry. You have to have it, I thought. Real love and real, lasting relationships have to start with that special something which hits you like a thunderbolt and tells you, amongst other things, that you need to get this person naked somewhere.

This, of course, entirely ignored the fact that I had married a man who I thought was an arrogant dickhead on our first meeting.

My ex-husband had been at the same school as my sister’s first husband and I met him at their engagement party. I had attended the event with a university friend who had – by really anyone’s standards – exceptionally large breasts. He had spent the evening talking to them and being a bit of an arse and I thought nothing much further of it until shortly before the wedding, when my sister told me he had requested to sit on the same table as me.

On reflection, this may have been in the hope that I would bring my generously endowed friend with me, but the rest, as they say, is history.

So anyway (and somewhat inexplicably), when I first started dating, I was definitely looking for that elusive frisson of excitement, but I can report – having thoroughly researched the strategy – that chemistry can lead you astray.

Or is it biology?

There is not a singleton amongst us who has not embarked on a highly unsuitable, and ultimately doomed relationship based on following what their body, rather than their brain, is telling them. And this is definitely not confined to men, who have been much maligned by the suggestion that thinking with their nether regions is a problem exclusively theirs. The only difference between men and women in terms of letting their carnal desires get the better of them is that women simultaneously also think that these feelings might end with a happy ever after (as opposed to a happy ending…), whereas men are not thinking beyond getting your knickers off, and would probably lose all feeling below the waist if they knew you were hearing the distant sound of wedding bells.

These days, I am prepared to see if those feelings develop over time, even if they are not there on the first couple of dates. My only proviso is that when I look at my date, if I’m thinking that I definitely never want to see him without his shirt on (let alone anything else) there is not much point in going on. If you’re kind of repelled, I’m not sure you can move on from there.

It’s important though to ensure that your date is not aware that they are not doing it for you. I learnt this the hard way, by sending a text message to my date whilst he was in the loo which said that I didn’t find him at all attractive*. The message was meant for one of the Julies and it turns out that no amount of swearing, banging your phone on the table and suppressed shrieking will bring back a text message that is winging its way to the wrong – oh so very wrong – person. I’m sure the people on the next table thought I was having some sort of seizure. And I wasn’t far off to be honest. I briefly considered jumping in a cab and disappearing, but sadly I’m English and I felt that would compound my rudeness, so I stuck it out. He was really very charming about it (although he did later send me a text message asking me rather plaintively whether I liked him, which I thought was a bit awkward under the circumstances).

The example I generally use to other single friends to support my theory that chemistry can grow over time is that the best (physical) relationship I’ve been in post marriage was with someone I didn’t fancy on our first date. When he asked me for a second date, I put him off for a week or so because I thought I had a better prospect, but he turned out to be one I felt much more sure I didn’t ever need to see naked, so I met up with him again. And something happened – we made a connection we hadn’t made before and that was it. On the whole the episode goes in the ‘really not suitable, and definitely not a long term prospect’ bucket, but I let that relationship continue for some time past its sell by date mainly because I was afraid I would never have sex that good again**.

So my advice, not that I think anyone should ever take relationship advice from a nearly 50 year old spinster with a divorce behind her and 5 years of dating, is not to write your dates off too quickly. If you get on, have shared interests, and when you think about the possibility of seeing your date naked you don’t get a little bit of vomit in your mouth, carry on. You never know what might happen.

*in my own defence, I want you to know that this text message also contained a number of complimentary things about this man, but my point was that despite all these positives I still didn’t find him attractive. Which might be worse, I don’t know. Anyway, it wasn’t a horrible or bitchy message – as I’ve said, I’m English. I’m genetically pre-programmed to be nice…

**have I defeated my own message here?

In which I ponder…dating rules

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o-SOCIALLY-AWKWARD-DATING-facebook

Rejected

 

In many ways my experiences with dating have been largely positive.

I’m quite selective about who I will go out on a date with in the first place – not necessarily because I’m overly picky (nearly 50 year olds can’t afford to be super choosy…), but because my time is precious and I don’t want to waste an evening with someone who is a bit of a tosser when I could have spent that time with my children or a friend.

Then generally I won’t go on a date unless said date is prepared to give up his surname so that I can google him before I go. I’m surprised by the number of men who are not prepared – for ‘security reasons’ – to do this, or who are horrified if I reveal I’ve done it (although generally I don’t tell them).* But I don’t suppose any of the men I’ve dated ever find themselves considering whether or not they are organizing to meet up with a murderer or rapist. For the same reason I won’t allow anyone to pick me up from my house until I’ve got to know them well, and I also won’t get in a car with them to go to a second venue. Dating of the type which essentially involves meeting up with strangers is potentially dangerous – even sometimes lethal – for women, and so I take my safety very seriously. If this means I check online to see if you appear to be who you say you are then so be it, and if you are offended by it we probably just shouldn’t go on a date.

So, once I’m on a date, I already usually know that the guy is genuine, as far as I can tell not married, and we’ve done enough chatting to build a bit of a rapport. I’ve been on very few dates which were terrible, and even then they’ve made for amusing anecdotes. I met one guy in a pub and when I arrived he was clearly already drunk. For reasons I can’t now explain – but probably inexperience, as this was early on in my dating adventures – I didn’t immediately leave, agreeing to accompany him to dinner during which he loudly announced to me (and most of the restaurant) that he would like to lick my breasts.

I never expect not to have to pay my share of the bill, and in fact it’s fairly important to me that I do as I don’t want to be beholden in any way. There are still some men who think that if they’ve paid for everything you owe them something – and that something is generally sexual. However, if I sense that the guy is purely being gentlemanly, and our conversation has suggested that it wouldn’t be a financial burden on them to pay for it, I’ll back down and say thank you. I hate to think how poverty stricken I would be after 5 years or so of dating if I’d had to pay for me and my date every time, so I never expect it.

I’ve also learnt interesting things from my dates, even though many of them have come to nothing – things that I probably wouldn’t have learnt if I’d still been married. One date recently showed me a number of interesting works of art that are installed in new office buildings around Sydney and another pointed out the statue of a small cat at the State Library which I’d never noticed before and told me its story.**

I’ve been given wine recommendations which I’ve acted upon, and book recommendations which I’ve subsequently read. I’ve also had the opportunity to have some spirited debates about a range of issues with people who have views diametrically opposed to mine and most of my friends.

So – as I’ve said – generally my dating experiences have been positive. But I would, however, like to start a movement to agree some ground rules to which everyone adheres.

Ghosting

So if you’re not dating, you probably don’t know what this is (lucky you), but it’s when someone you’ve been either chatting with or have been on a date (or two) with suddenly disappears into radio silence. Now, when I’m only at the chatting stage and I haven’t met them in person as yet, I’m fine with this – in fact it’s a ploy I use myself. But I do object to it after a date – or worse – a few dates. I’ll give you an example of how this works. I recently got chatting with a guy on Tinder (yes, Tinder! Gasp! You can read more about my thoughts on Tinder here), and agreed to meet him for a drink. We met in a bar in Darlinghurst and got on famously – to the extent that we moved from drinks straight to dinner. He was formerly in the Navy, so interestingly well travelled, and was now working for the Fire Service of New South Wales in charge of all their mental health programs for staff about which he was clearly very expert and well informed. He also had a Masters in Indigenous Studies, had read many of the same books as me and is a bit of a leftie. Anyone who knows me well would recognize that this sort of man is likely to be of interest to me, so I had a great night.

He walked me to the station, and then when I was on my way home on the train, he sent me a text message to see if I wanted to catch up again for a walk and lunch on Sunday. I definitely did. We met as planned and had another great date – a walk in which we chatted easily, then oysters and champagne at Circular Quay, followed by an exhibition. He walked me to the station and on separating to go our own ways I told him I’d had a great time and would like to do it again, but my parents were arriving in a couple of days for a month and I wouldn’t be as available as usual. He said that was ok, and to just let him when I would next be free.

About a week later, I sent a text message saying I was free in a couple of nights, and would he like to catch up? He never replied. About 5 days later I gave in to the urge to send another message – just in case through some technological glitch he hadn’t received it. Again he didn’t reply, so I think we can surmise that I won’t be seeing him again.

Now, under these circumstances wouldn’t it be so much nicer – not to mention polite – to just send a quick text message in response to say ‘hey, it was great meeting you, but on reflection I can’t really see it going any further so I think I’ll move on’? The reality is that I left a 21 year marriage – I think I’m going to cope if after one or two dates someone tells me they are not interested…

The end of the affair

Ending a relationship, no matter how insignificant, is tricky and awkward for everyone involved, so my suggested rule about this is simple. If you’ve shared my bed, you need to tell me you’ve decided to call it a day non-electronically. So, as the natural progression from ‘if we’ve been on a couple of (non-carnal) dates, you need to at least send me a text to say thanks – but no thanks’, if our relationship has progressed to getting jiggy, you need to either phone me, or tell me in person. If it’s clearly not been super serious let’s not waste each other’s time by meeting in person to end it, but a phone chat seems appropriate. And if it’s been going on for quite a while, in person is definitely the way. A text message just won’t do in either circumstance.

And there you have it. A kind of manifesto for dating. Or is it a rule book? It’s all just about being polite and respectful really isn’t it? After all, dating is hard enough as it is – as my granny used to say…’let’s all be nice to one another’…old fashioned but useful advice I think.

*Just FYI guys – I can pretty much google you without your surname if you give up enough information…so you might as well tell me your surname. I often know who you are within about 10 mins of chatting, and well before I actually ask for your surname…

**The cat is Trim, Matthew Flinders faithful ship cat, who circumnavigated Australia then disappeared, and to whom Flinders wrote a touching epitaph which is on the memorial plaque near the statue. The café in the State Library is also named after the cat.

In which I ponder…being normal

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being-normal

I was recently having a conversation with my ex-husband in which he suggested that the ‘normal’ thing to do in my situation would have been to partner up with someone again by now.

This took place in the context of a discussion about our (as yet undecided) financial settlement, and as a contribution to that discourse especially I think it has little merit. The answer to my concerns about my financial security going forwards is never going to lie in becoming dependent, or even partially dependent, on the income of someone else. I’ve done that once, and to be honest it hasn’t worked out terribly well. If I had one piece of advice for any women embarking on a new romantic partnership, it would be to behave from a financial point of view always as though your loved one might be gone at any time, in the blink of an eye – along with his income, his pension and his superior economic power. No matter how confident you are that it will last, or that even if it didn’t, he would look after your interests financially. I hope that the generation my daughter is growing up in will learn this lesson from their mothers, who are nearly always left financially disadvantaged by having prioritized parenthood over earning and career.

However, I digress…

This talk of ‘normal’ got me thinking. And anyone who knows me, knows that thinking is something I do rather a lot of.

What is ‘normal’ anyway? Being single is becoming more and more common. Does that make it normal? The Australian Bureau of Statistics predicts that the number of single person households in Australia will increase by 4.3m in the next 25 years – an increase of 65% – and that 54% of those households will be single women. Not that abnormal then am I, statistically speaking?

But more than that, I don’t subscribe to the idea that my normality is based upon my relationships with other people, particularly since that can create a veneer of said ‘normality’ which, when you scratch just beneath the surface, reveals something not quite so normal at all. My own marriage was a good example of that.

The thing is that I suspect my ex husband – along with many other people – takes some of his personal validation from the fact that he looks so normal, with an apparently healthy relationship, good job, nice home. Other-esteeming, they call that. Some people are unbalanced by people who refuse to conform to these social norms, or won’t let them define them. To be fair, men haven’t exactly been beating down my door offering to relieve me of my financial burdens, but I’ve not been in any rush to settle down, and these days I wonder if I will. I have a level of freedom that I’ve previously never experienced, and I am defined by no one except myself. I like that. Anyone who joins my life is going to have to deal with that.

My sister once said to me

“The thing about you is that you’ve never needed anyone”

I think I’ve mentioned this before here – but I was quite offended at the time. Now I think I understand better what she meant and I realize that to a certain extent it’s true, and not necessarily a bad thing (although I’m pretty certain her intention was not to flatter).

I don’t need anyone. It’s true. But not needing people means that those I have in my life have been chosen – for themselves and not just because they are able to meet a need in me. In doing so, I give them the freedom to choose me, or not. I think that’s healthy. My people are there because I have an authentic, real connection with them, they know who I am without the veneer of ‘normality’ and we chose one another. And we continue to choose one another every day.

If that’s being abnormal, then so be it. Seriously – who cares?

 

 

In which I ponder…dating again

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comfort zone

I hadn’t been doing any dating really lately, since the demise of the last boyfriend.

He’s been making valiant efforts (largely ignored) to be friends, despite having been deleted from Facebook – which these days is the relationship equivalent of being sent to a Siberian gulag.

There was a chap I went for a drink with, and rather liked – but subsequently we happened upon one another in the street, me showerless after the gym and in the process of depositing a dog shit into one of those little poo-bags. I suspected that I would probably not be seeing him again after this, and I saw him early this morning actually, walking down the road holding hands with an attractive brunette, both of them with that particular spring in their step that is only really seen in people who have recently had sex with someone with whom they haven’t been having sex for the previous 20 years. Predictably, I was in gym clothes and I hadn’t had a shower. Didn’t have a steaming poo bag though. Yay for me.

Honorable mention goes to the very nice man who took me out for lobster and with whom I had drinks on one other occasion, but then disappeared off the face of the earth.

It’s hard not to wonder if you are utterly dreadful. Especially when your husband preferred virtually everyone – your friends, the wives of his friends, colleagues, on one occasion (or more accurately, on one occasion I know about) the sister of a colleague, plus various randoms – to you. But then when I consider this, I always end up in the same place – I am probably not utterly dreadful, and the level of dreadful I probably am, will eventually be beloved of someone, and if it’s not, then that’s ok too.

And then I met a man.

He got in touch with me through an online dating site, and he seemed nice. He’d done the Camino de Santiago, which is on my wish list. He was a teacher, and had used that to be able to teach history around the world – Argentina, Mexico, the Bahamas, Monaco, Sydney. Now he was doing his Masters in Archaeology and teaching part time. We were both going to be in Paddington around the same time, so we agreed to catch up for a glass of wine in a local pub.

It was a roaring success – we get on extremely well. And we’ve seen rather a lot of each other (and I don’t mean that in the biblical sense) in the weeks since.

He seems to be a proper man. Even a proper grown up man. Which is rare, in my experience. He does what he says he is going to do. He calls me darling and sweetheart in a way that doesn’t make me want to slap him. And most importantly,  he is not afraid that if he phones, makes plans more than 2 or 3 minutes in advance, or introduces me to people I will misinterpret his current enthusiasm for a proposal of marriage which will inevitably end in me stealing his house and his money. (I kid you not – anyone who is dating in my age group will be familiar with this scenario).

Which is all really, really good. Obviously.

But what is this small voice, quiet but persistent in the background, that is telling me that it’s too good to be true? That prevents me from responding to his endearments with my own?

I’ve tried very hard not to see men through the lens of my previous experiences. At the same time though, I’ve also tried very hard to reconnect with my gut instincts – which were largely destroyed by my marriage. When you’ve been in a relationship where, too often, something was telling you that something wasn’t right or didn’t add up, but your concerns were always attributed to you being mentally unstable, eventually you will both believe that you are indeed mentally unstable and that you cannot trust your instincts.

And now I don’t know if that small voice is my gut instinct, or fear.

I suspect it is fear. But then, on top of everything else, I’m afraid that it’s not. The reality is, though, that this really is a fear that I’m going to have to be prepared to face. What’s the alternative?

So here I am, dating again…

In which I ponder dating…

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Over the last few years of singledom, I have learnt a few things about dating. And the lesson that stands out most clearly is this:

There is no group of people less qualified and more willing to give advice on dating than those who have been partnered up for 20+ years. 

There. I said it.

Dating is very different to being in a long term relationship – which is of course a skill and an art in which they have considerable expertise.

Having said that though, I am no slouch when it comes to long term relationships. I might be single now, but I was with someone for 21 years. At one point I was even winning the sibling rivalry contest in my family for who could be married the longest. I still am actually, although I very much hope I am overtaken.

It’s been surprising to me how many people – particularly women – tell me that if something happened to their marriage, they wouldn’t ever bother partnering up again. They believe that my life is full of forbidden pleasures, fun and a level of self determination that they envy. I can almost see the grimaces on the faces of my single friends from here.

Well, the grass is always greener eh? Conversely though, the majority of single people I meet – male and female – would very much like to find that special someone. Personally, I would hope that in any future partnership I would have pleasures, fun and self determination anyway.

This yearning for someone was driven home a couple of weeks ago when I attended a Marianne Williamson workshop. I was surprised by how many audience member questions related to issues around finding the right partner for life. And it was no small workshop – a full house at a large auditorium. People just really want to be with someone – after all, no (wo)man is an island.

But married and partnered people give out such conflicting information and advice – largely because they are not single, have not been single for many, many years and have no idea how dating and being single has changed in the interim*.

Sometimes they tell you that you should not do anything – that someone will come along when you are least expecting it. Ok. Perhaps. But on the other hand they also tell you that you need to get out there and meet people.

But not in bars.

And not on the internet because there are only weirdos there**

Right. So perhaps I will bump into someone at the supermarket, or at work (in an organisation which overwhelmingly employs women. Yay for that, but not a good place to find a man – even if finding a man at work was something that I would ever, EVER do). I must get out there looking for someone, but trying not to look for them. Or something.

What most married/partnered people imagine is that one of your nice friends – and for that you could substitute ‘married/partnered’ friends, as they tend to view your other single friends with a little bit of suspicion – I mean what sort of things do single people get up to together for goodness sake?! – will introduce you to someone. But married/partnered people tend to know other married and partnered people. They know you – who is single. And often that is it.

Additionally you apparently shouldn’t want to find someone – because that could be needy and desperate. At the same time though, you should be clear about what you want – even perhaps make a list (seriously?!). And you shouldn’t compromise, whilst also being careful not to overestimate your worth in the dating market. As one friend said to me – ‘stop going for the attractive men. Just find someone kind’. Hmmm.

Well – ideally I’d like to find someone I was both attracted to and who is kind. And loads of other stuff, but I’m reluctant to make a list. I’m very conscious when dating that there is really no point in continuing if you know that you are never going to want to see that man naked. A lovely single friend sent me a text recently which said ‘is it wrong to date someone I know I’m never going to sleep with?’. My reply – ‘you know the answer to this question…’.

One thing I know is that being in the wrong relationship is way more painful than not being in one at all. It’s why I’m a bit picky. By the same token, being in the right relationship would win hands down over being alone.

For myself, I appreciate all the advice – which is well meant and full of love. But at the same time, I’m just doing my own thing, and I know it’s difficult to accept but I know more about it than they do. I’m mixing it up with the odd foray into internet dating, along with not dating at all, and going out and about with my usual business and leaving it all up to fate.

If no one comes along, that’s fine. I can do this life on my own and it can be wonderful and joyful and exciting. But maybe I’ll meet the perfect man for me and it will be all those things and more. Maybe I already have. You never know…

*To give you an indication, dear Reader, of the extent to which dating changed between 1990 – which was the last time I had been single – and 2011, let me tell you a story…I ventured onto RSVP for the first time and chatted with a lovely man for several days. He was a journalist, interesting, my age and seemed very normal. I eventually felt confident enough to give him my mobile number. And by return he sent me a photograph of his erect penis. Now to be fair, this has never happened again, and I’ve given my number to plenty of people since. But I’m pretty sure this would not have happened in 1990. Partially because smart phones were still just things in sci fi movies. But you know what I’m saying…

**My dad, on discovering that I was using an internet dating site, said incredulously – ‘What sort of weirdos are looking for someone on the internet?! Erm, this sort of weirdo Dad. This sort.

In which I wonder about the courage required for authenticity…

/ howtobemeagain / 2 Comments

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We are sitting in a local cafe having a late breakfast. Julie is staring at my face intently, in a way that suggests something beyond mere interest in what I’m saying. She suddenly interrupts.

“You shouldn’t wear that eyeshadow you know. You’re too old”

She pauses for a moment then says with conviction

“Yep. Nah. Doesn’t look good”

She should know. In a former life, she was a successful make up artist, working on Hollywood movies.

I laugh.

“Ok. What should I be wearing?”

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I am at the hairdressers. I am trying to persuade my hairdresser, who has been cutting my hair for so many years that we’ve become friends, that he should give me a fringe. He’s being a bit evasive but is pretty much saying no.

“I’m not doing that”, he says. “You’ll regret it.”

“I won’t”, I say. “Why won’t you do it?”

He sighs.

“Because you’ll look ugly”

“That’s a bit harsh!’ I say, then we both laugh. And I don’t have the fringe.

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We are on the phone. I am relating the latest drama with my boyfriend. I can hear that she is getting frustrated with me.

“I don’t know why you put up with this shit. While you put up with this sort of shit, you’re just inviting it in, and it’s why you have the same relationship over and over. Fuck Wendy. You need to get in your power. You’ve only got yourself to blame!”

She is nearly shouting.

A week or so later we are in the car on the way back from somewhere or other.

“I want to talk to you about the conversation we had the other day. I get where you’re coming from, but I’m not you, you know. I know I’m doing some of this stuff, but I’m on a journey, and I can only be as far along it as I am at each moment. And when I tell you about it, it’s not necessarily because I want advice or for you to solve it, but I’m kind of working through it in my own mind as I’m telling you…And you were shouting”

“Oh” she says. We are both laughing.

“Was I shouting? I won’t shout”

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Over the last few years, there have been some tough times. People who I thought would be in my life forever, have come and gone, and I’ve whittled down my group to a small core of people that I trust absolutely, after experiences that could have led me to distrust everyone, especially friends.

I was wondering what it is was that these people have in common – given that they are so very different, and that some live in the Northern and others in the Southern hemisphere, so few of them have met.

And I think it is authenticity.

I think I’m blessed to have friends who are courageous enough, and love me enough, to tell me the really hard stuff. And they’ve told me some really hard stuff – way harder than the shocking revelation that your eyeshadow is for youngsters, and you are no longer a youngster. This sort of honesty means that when they tell you the good stuff – you know it’s actually true.

I think women are particularly bad at this (and this is perhaps why I’ve always had lots of male friends). Friendships that are based on only saying what you think the other person wants to hear (‘no – you look great in that dress’, ‘of course it’s not you – it’s him, the bastard’ etc etc), lead to relationships that are not based in trust. And of course trust is the basis of everything.

But I also think I am fortunate to have gone far enough in my own journey to be able to hear the hard stuff, to extract out of it what is meaningful for me, what I think is my stuff to deal with and what is theirs, and then to move on forever learning. This also means that when paid a compliment by the same friends, the negative self talk that so often interrupts the pleasure of being told something nice about myself is quietened – because I know these friends don’t bother saying it if it’s not what they truly feel. And when people are speaking to you from a place of authenticity, you just know.

And it makes me wonder – what would life be like if we all told the truth a little more? Both to each other, to ourselves and about ourselves? Scary but a little bit wonderful I think.

In which I wonder about ‘being friends’

/ howtobemeagain / 4 Comments

My friends, I am single again. For those of you who never knew I had temporarily eschewed my single state, worry not – because I am again an ‘I’ rather than a ‘we’.

This relationship ended with what I like to call the classic ‘constructive dismissal’. This is where your boyfriend behaves in a way that indicates, quite clearly, that he is no longer that into you (doesn’t return your calls, takes a day to reply to polite text enquiries about his health or his weekend, when asked when he’s available to catch up for dinner/drinks/a quiet night in tells you only about all the busy busy stuff he has got on, and nothing about when he might be able to squeeze you in – you get the picture…) but because he lacks the balls to actually end it himself, waits until you can no longer take it and you end it for him.

I’ve been in this situation before – the most extreme version of which was my marriage, in which my husband’s persistent affairs demonstrated a pretty obvious ‘not that into you’ scenario which he was not brave enough to confront himself, and it was left to me to tell him to leave. In some senses, I suppose, this did give me a certain sense of empowerment (although it didn’t feel like it at the time), and I’m sure he was surprised that I let it all go on for so long before I gave him his marching orders (I know I am, looking back with the benefit of hindsight).

After the end of our marriage, it was my ex-husband’s fervent wish that we would be friends. At first I tried very hard at this, until I realised a couple of things. The first was that he had not been a very good friend to me over the years. A friend would not have treated me the way he had done, and there was really no evidence to suggest that he had anything to offer me in terms of friendship. Friendship with him seemed to be very one-sided, and mainly about me overlooking how badly he had hurt me, and continuing to care about his wellbeing and happiness.

The second thing I realised was that my being friends with my ex meant that I continued to provide him with the bit of our marriage that he had most valued – possibly the only bit that he had valued – someone in the background who provided stability, and made him look functional. So he would come to my house and hang out, get a meal cooked for him, have me check he was all ok, spend an hour or so with his children, and then bugger off to his latest girlfriend’s house – which was pretty much what he had done throughout our marriage.

And so I put a stop to it. I told him that we were not friends and we would not be – because he had no idea how to be someone’s friend.

But now I find myself having ended a relationship again and the man in question wanting us to be friends. It’s given rise to a lot of old feelings that are not his fault, but have left me pondering why this makes me so sad.

I think the thing is that what I want from a man – first and foremost – is someone who will treat me at the very least as well as they would treat a friend. When I’m in a relationship, they are getting something deeper, more valuable, more precious than just my friendship. Why then treat me with more respect and care when I am not a girlfriend than when I am?

I think often these friendships serve mainly to help people feel better about the way they have behaved in a relationship, and I’m not sure what is in that for me. In addition to that, I’ve been (unsuccessfully) dating for nearly 5 years. I’m not sure I want to repopulate my friendship group with men with whom I’ve had a relationship. Although – to be fair – I have made a few friends out of men I dated. But those men were good friends to me during the relationship, and the transition into that new status was painless for both of us.

Then, of course, the ‘friend’ thing tends to get complicated when new people appear on the scene. A friendship is not meaningful if you are dropped when they find a new woman, and many women don’t react well to ex girlfriends pursuing even platonic relationships with their new beau. In my age group, we are all, after all, often already dealing with the ex wife. I have a dear friend, who used to be a boyfriend, whose girlfriend ended her relationship with him when I appeared (invited, obviously…) at his birthday party. When I spoke to him about it, he said that any girlfriends would need to accept his friends, whoever they are.

That is, of course, how real friendship plays out over time, no matter how it started. So if your boyfriend has failed to be a good friend to you whilst you were his girlfriend, what evidence is there to suggest that he would be any better at it when you are not?

Only time will tell, I suppose…