sex

In which I ponder…time is a healer and other bullshit (Part One)

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There are a lot of myths out there about relationships, love, heartbreak and dating, and many of them are widely believed and quoted, but immensely unhelpful. I can’t claim to be an expert at relationships (although I was with someone for 21 years so that must count for something, surely?) but as it turns out, I am an expert in the other three, so as a public service I thought I’d give you my thoughts on some of the more popular bullshit that people will tell you. All based on my personal relationship experience, my study in psychotherapy and my own years of therapy.

(There are so many of these, I’m going to spread them over a few posts, so here’s your first installment)

Disclaimer 1: you may vociferously disagree with some, or all, of this, and that’s ok.

Disclaimer 2: just because I know this stuff doesn’t mean I do it all. But I feel like knowing it is two-thirds of the way there.

Myth 1: Time is a healer.

Nope.

Wouldn’t it be nice if, just by the steadfast passing of time, all your most painful psychological wounds could be healed? It’s a compelling and attractive idea, so it’s no wonder people will tell you this, but it’s also absolutely not true and if you believe in it you will be doing yourself a disservice.

The reality is that time is only a healer if you do the work of healing. This means really honest self examination, probably therapy and being willing to confront difficult feelings about yourself and your experiences. Of course, the passing of time does make things less raw, less of a continuous, preoccupying pain but that is not healing. That’s just memory fading, and life moving on. You’ll start to feel ok again. You’ll be telling yourself you got this, you’re moving on. Time is indeed a healer.

If you have a wound though, it’s still there.

The problem is that if you just let time pass, what you learn to do is to protect that wound. You keep it safe from ripping open, from becoming painful again. Instead of confronting and working through your pain, you stand in front of it in a constant state of high alert looking for anything that might be a threat.

At its worst, this behaviour will prevent you from getting into the sort of relationship you seek, as to potential partners your distance and unwillingness to leave your command post will look like a lack of interest and a problem with commitment. You’ll be left wondering why your relationships never work out. But eventually, you’ll start to feel more comfortable. You’ll probably get into a relationship again. You’ll look pretty functional just so long as not too much is at stake and you don’t – through the feelings you are developing – start to feel vulnerable. Relationships require both the willingness to be vulnerable and courageous – Brene Brown is great on this, so I won’t go on about it. But once you start to feel vulnerable you start getting nervous. You’ve got to protect that wound. You need to keep looking out for any signs of danger. And then when you perceive that a threat is there, you can’t help but to let fight or flight kick in. And that’s when it will all start to go terribly wrong.

The thing is that, when you are in flight or fight, the oldest, most prehistoric, most unregulated part of your brain kicks in. Your autonomic nervous system can’t tell the difference between an imminent attack by a sabre tooth tiger and the fact that your boyfriend didn’t notice you’ve had your nails done. Your heart races and you get that horrible feeling in the pit of your stomach. But most importantly your thoughts become scrambled and before you know it, you’ve persuaded yourself that he doesn’t love you, that you’re fundamentally unlovable and you’ve thrown in the towel. Despite any real evidence to the contrary. Self sabotage 101.

The good thing though, is that your wound is safe.

Or is it?

The only way to prevent all this is to be brave. Confront that fear, do the healing. See the therapist, read the books. It will take time. But at least at the end you might be healed.

Myth 2: No one can love you until you love yourself

Annoyingly true.

In the past I didn’t believe this and it annoyed the hell out of me when people said it. This was mainly because it seemed so difficult. How could I love myself when the people who should have loved me didn’t? Surely the answer to this was to get someone to love me, which would provide irrefutable proof of my lovableness? And then I’d be able to relax into loving myself.

Nooooooo…

The problem with not loving yourself, being unable to see your own strengths, your beauty, your worth and your contribution is that living with self loathing and a sense of being unlovable is a pretty bleak place to be. And so we look to others to reassure us that we are ok. We try all sorts of ways to feel loved and to feel validated. At its least concerning level, we diligently document our brilliant lives on Facebook or Instagram, carefully curating the posts so that our inner pain can never be discovered, and drop subtle hints about the more difficult things in the hope that someone will be interested enough to ask if we are ok. And then we stand back and watch the likes come in. The more likes we get the more liked we are, right?

At its worst, we get into a relationship with someone and then make them responsible for making us feel loved. But this is way too much of a responsibility for another person, even if they actually do love you. For one thing, if one partner has healthy self esteem, it creates an imbalance in terms of the focus of the relationship – because rather than loving one another equally, one person gets burdened with loving their partner enough to fill up the emptiness they feel about themselves.

But also, if you haven’t done the work and are still running to a script that tells you that you are unworthy and unlovable, loving you is going to end up like pouring love into a leaky bucket that will never be filled. Because that voice is really loud – loud enough to make sure that you never feel loved, no matter what – and you’ll be on the lookout for signs that support your world view. You’ll find yourself ignoring things that you should be noticing – the small acts of love that take place every day – and focusing on the bits and bobs that prove you are right to think that you’re unlovable. You will end up feeling resentful that your partner doesn’t love you enough and your partner will feel confused and exhausted. And they will also feel unloved, or at the very least, unsure – because your focus is not on loving them, but on ensuring that they love you.

And every time you feel unloved, that ancient bit of your brain is going to kick in again and you’ll start behaving like a crazy person.

Learning to love yourself is hard, and sometimes the relationship you’re in is part of why you don’t. But it’s more likely to be a bit more ingrained than that – in that you’ve ended up in a bad relationship because you never actually learnt to love yourself in the first place and you’ve accepted what you think you’re worth.

Again – the only way to avoid this is to do the work. Do the therapy. Practice self reflection. And be really honest with yourself about how you might have contributed to the things that go wrong in your relationships. This doesn’t mean you should take the blame – this just means being really clear about what was your shit and what was theirs and then focusing on working on yours only. Don’t worry about theirs. Don’t even bother telling them about it, tempting though it is*. That’s their journey.

And if you’re finding it hard, fake it until you make it. Shout down that voice in your head and tell yourself every day, every time you feel like you might be waivering, that you’re beautiful, you’re clever, you’re enough*. Or whatever it is that you need to hear. Eventually, if you work hard, you’ll believe it.

Myth 3: If it’s meant to be, it should be easy

Bullshit.

News flash people: relationships are hard.

When you are young, things seem so straightforward. Almost from birth we are sold the idea that we’ll meet someone, fall in love and live happily ever after. Simples. For some people this happens and that’s wonderful. I actually have quite a number of friends who met as young teens and here we all are in our 50th year, and they’re still together. I’m going to assume that they are happy – certainly they are happy enough to still be married.

However, I’m going to hazard a guess that, despite what their Facebook feed might suggest, most of those couples will have been through challenging times. They will have let one another down over the years or disappointed one another. They will have been bored and wondered where the excitement has all gone. They may have had moments when their head has been turned by someone else, and some of them may have acted upon those feelings.

But they are still together.

This won’t be because it was easy. It will be because they chose not to give up, and to ride the storms.

The reality is that all relationships are difficult – even the good ones. And when you enter into a relationship older I believe it gets harder. Maybe your previous partner left you for someone else. Maybe they treated you badly. Perhaps you had an affair which destroyed your marriage and left you deeply regretful. Whatever the reason, you will enter your next relationship with a certain amount of baggage.

Even if, as I’ve mentioned above, you’ve been doing the work, exercising your new found self knowledge in the context of a new relationship can be tricky. Perhaps you had trouble setting boundaries with your previous partner – but now you’re so keen not to make the same mistake, you’re laying down the law like a dictator with your new one. Or maybe your last partner told you that you didn’t help out enough around the house, so now you’re in a domestic frenzy almost permanently, but constantly looking for reassurance that your efforts have been noticed.

I think that the main thing you can do to make relationships easier is to acknowledge that they take time, and that it might take some years to get used to one another on a really deep level. And that there are going to be times when you feel like it would be better just to walk away.** I’m not talking about relationships that have just begun, of course. I’m talking about relationships where the limerence has gone, you’re committed and you’re into the day to day business of being together. But if you hang on in there, roll with the punches and learn together, maybe you’ll be able to laugh together in 20 years about what nightmares you both were at the beginning.

Myth 4: Closure

Again – bullshit.

People often talk about needing closure at the end of a relationship, and in my view, they end up torturing themselves looking for it.

This is because what they mean is that they want to try to understand not the things they did, but the things their partner did.

I’m here to tell you, that’s never going to happen. You are never really going to understand, and it’s not your business anyway.

It’s hard to enough to understand why we do the things we do ourselves, let alone start thinking we are going to be able to understand the internal machinations of other people. Even people we’ve loved.

The only thing you can do – and really the only useful thing you can do in terms of future relationships – is to work on why you did stuff. Because, unfortunately, no relationship really ever ends because one person was the embodiment of evil and the other was an angel. We all contribute to everything, and believe me, you will have done things. The things you did, don’t in any way condone or explain the behaviour of your partner – they are responsible for that – but you can learn from them. You may decide you would do some of the things you did again in similar circumstances, but you might think that there is also some stuff you can work on. I’d be surprised if you don’t.

So instead of closure, look for acceptance and then learning. Accept it’s over. Accept you’ll never know why your partner did this, or said that. And then learn from it all.

*I will admit to being particularly bad at this

**of course sometimes that might be true, and I’m not at all advocating staying in a relationship where you’re not happy. But make sure you definitely can’t be happy before you end it.

In which I ponder…being liberated

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This won’t come as much of a surprise to my married and partnered friends – but there are some very liberating aspects to being single.

The one that generally springs to mind is that I – in theory – could have sex with anyone*.

Obviously in practice this is neither as true nor as desirable as you’d think. Both George Clooney and David Beckham are sadly unavailable, for example. But also sex is not the thing that most single women miss most in the absence of a relationship. For example, I am more frequently vexed that there is no one to help with the garden and deal with the admin tasks relating to the car then I am about the absence of a willing and naked man in my bed – although if George Clooney turned up unexpectedly I probably wouldn’t get him to phone the RTA** to sort out my green slip.

All that being said though, I am, for example, in the enviable position of being able to buy whatever I want (so long as I have the money for it). Now I realize that for many people this is also true when in a relationship, but shopping for things other than food – and sometimes even for food – was often a bone of contention in my marriage, and over time I resorted to a variety of forms of subterfuge to disguise any shopping trips. I don’t think we were very unusual in this regard, and to be fair on my ex husband, I probably had more shoes than I needed. Or than anyone needed really. But who hasn’t swapped the fancy designer bag of clothes lovingly wrapped in tissue paper for a plain old carrier before they got home or said ‘what – this old thing? I’ve had it for ages!’. Or is that just me…

I can also just get a dog if I want one (a decision I regret regularly, even though I love the daft dog. Where’s a husband when you need one?!). I can move house whenever I want – and believe me, I have. I can have as many cushions as I like on my bed and no one complains. I have all of the wardrobe space to myself, and dinner no longer has to consist of meat, potatoes and two veg. If I want the light on to read, there is no one there to complain about it.

All awesome, I think you’ll agree.

But I’m learning that in fact, something which filled me with fear and dread in the early years of singledom is turning out to be one of the best rather than the worst things about being alone.

For the first few years after my ex husband and I separated, I didn’t go on any holidays, other than to visit family and friends in the UK. How could I go on holiday alone?? This is something that should be done with a family, or at the very least, a partner. Besides, I’d been on holiday alone once and it had been a disaster – years ago I’d taken myself off to Spain to ‘think’ after finding out about one of my husband’s affairs and I am here to tell you that ‘thinking’ is pretty much the worst thing you could do for yourself in this situation. I spent most of that week either crying alone or crying to my friends (at enormous expense) on my mobile phone. Crying in Spain alone is not preferable to crying at home with some friends who might distract you every now and again from your navel gazing. Crying alone in Spain means you have nothing else to do other than torture yourself about what ifs and might have beens and oh my gods…

Understandably I was not keen to repeat this experience. So I didn’t go away. I thought I would wait until I had a partner again.At the time it seemed like a good plan – after all, how hard could it be to meet someone? Soon I would be all loved up again like a normal person, and I’d have my holiday partner for life.

Five years on, I knew I was going to significantly reevaluate my plan. I still didn’t have a partner. And I still wasn’t going on holidays apart from with family or the kids. I could see that the children were not going to be wanting to go on holiday with me for much longer, so what was my plan? What if this is it – I’m on my own forever? Is my plan never to go on holiday? No weekends away? Am I never going to go to all those places I want to see – Sardinia, Corsica, Mykonos, Bora Bora, Vietnam and all the rest – because I don’t have a special someone to go with?

And I realised that if this was the plan, it sucked big time. And I also realised that the only person who would actually be preventing me from doing all these things was me.

So here I am, on one of many weekends away alone I’ve been on in the last year, and it’s fine. More than fine. It’s great. I can do what I want. Make my own plans and change them at will. Get up early or late. Eat three square meals a day or eat nothing.Spend ages staring at the same painting at a gallery or scoot through barely looking because I’ve already determined that I’m not keen on anything in it. The possibilities are endless and I feel not just liberated but finally as if I am fully in charge of my life.

And I haven’t cried once.

*although for some people that was the case actually when ‘happily’ married – and that, my friends, is why I am no longer married…

** the fact that it was only when I proof read this piece that I realised I had put NRMA here instead of RTA should give you some indication of how badly I need this help…

In which I ponder…ageing and ageism

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So I’m in Canberra at the Australian Association of Gerontology’s National Conference and I have to say that I’m feeling a bit bleak.

Not just because I’m in Canberra*, but also because I’m finding out a lot of very worrying information about myself.

Here I am, a mere 18 months or so off being 50 and feeling quite dynamic really. I feel like my career has taken off again over the last few years, that I still have a lot to give and that there is still a fair bit of progression/promotion left in me. I feel better about my body than I probably ever have. And I’m probably fitter than I was in my 30s. If you ignore a tendency to forget what I was talking about, I think my mind is generally as sharp as it’s ever been. It’s certainly more full of stuff anyway.

But apparently, things are not looking good for me. I can’t tell you the number of times over the last few days that I’ve checked in with a speaker to see what they mean by ‘older’ and been told 50. The Older Women’s Network starts at 45 for God’s sake! And suddenly I feel old and relegated to the scrap heap.

The news everyone has for me is not good either. I am apparently more likely to be discriminated against at work, passed over for promotion and unable to find employment after being retrenched. As a woman, if I am single, over 50 and living in rental accommodation (oops) I am at significantly higher risk of homelessness after I retire than other groups. Of course my disease risk is much higher too, and I’m more likely to be lonely and lack social connections, especially if I’m single – and the news there is not just the tragedy of being Billy No Mates but also the added bonus of a research study that has shown that weak social connections has the same impact on our health as smoking, and increases your risk of death by between 50% and 90%. Awesome.

There has been some good news though. Older people (in this particular study, they meant over 65s – yay!) are the biggest growth group in online dating and the evidence is that they are having lots of sex with multiple partners (again yay for ageing!). However the reason we know this is that there has been a 50% increase in the incidence of sexually transmitted infections in the age group (oh…). It seems this age group, who often have had only one sexual partner in their life prior to divorce or bereavement, missed out on sex ed and see condoms only as barrier protection against pregnancy and not against disease. Thankfully, there are people working on addressing this.

On the other hand though, another study that was presented found positive correlation between sexual activity and physical intimacy, and happiness in older people in Australia**, so despite having gonorrhea, all those over 65s are probably feeling pretty perky.

I don’t want to think that all the future holds for me is loneliness, unemployment, homelessness and a nasty case of syphilis. I think you’ll agree that would be disproportionate. It’s hard to believe that my career might already be over (one of the speakers talked about reaching the peak of your career around 50 and then opportunities diminishing. If that’s true, I’m in trouble), and although I’m currently in retirement from the dating scene, I do try to keep an optimistic outlook – either about eventually meeting someone, or having a great life on my own.

However, I am a bit concerned about how our demographic changes and the ‘grey tsunami’ that’s on its way will work against the backdrop of a society that so values youthfulness. Which is where the photo above of Cate Blanchett comes in. Cate was born within a year of me. In the photo above she has been clearly photo shopped so that there is not a wrinkle in sight. She is as lithe as a teenager. Now to be fair, even when she hasn’t been photo shopped she is exceptionally beautiful, but really that’s the point. Magazines exort us to look younger, they try to sell us clothes that are modeled by girls who are as young as our daughters, and promote images of older women that are unachievable and what’s more, dishonest.

And how does all that play out in real life, for the normal, single woman who is knocking 50? Well I was recently out for dinner with a male, single friend and we were discussing male attitudes to women’s bodies. I was initially reassured when he was telling me about how much he appreciated ‘real’ women’s bodies with curves and imperfections and the maturity that older women bring. But later when we were having a laugh and comparing online dating profiles, it turned out that the age range he had specified started at 27 and ended a year before my age. He’s 5 years older than me. So when it comes to it, they say – hey – I see your wisdom, your emotional maturity, and your valiant efforts to hold back time and be the best version of your 48 year old self that you can – and that’s great and everything. But I’ll trump that with some pert breasts, some shapely legs and a flat tummy unravaged by pregnancy and childbirth*** thank you very much.

Where will it all end? Who knows? Tomorrow I have Elder Abuse – what’s so special? Existing legal protections and Re-imagining Ageing to look forward to. I’ll let you know if there is any better news…

*by far the weirdest city on the planet (oh ok – Australia), but I have to say it’s growing on me. Everything is so new, and so planned, and so very neat. And there are nooks and crannies and gardens with lots of public art. So not so bad.

**Seriously. Surely no one was surprised by that?

***and the Peroni, KitKat and pack of Pringles from the mini bar I had while writing this

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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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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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….internet dating

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online-dating

Whenever I mention my intermittent use of the Tinder app, my married and partnered friends get a bit excited.

“Oooooo,’ they pant, ‘ isn’t that the site for – you know – hooking up?!’

Newsflash partnered people. They all are.

RSVP, the virtually Amish eHarmony, bars, restaurants, supermarkets, laundromats. All hook up sites should you wish to treat them as such. I know married people who have picked up other married people at black tie events when at least one spouse was present (but not as present – or should I say mindful – as perhaps they should have been)*. Sex is everywhere if you care to look for it.

Most of my single friends have experimented with most of the internet dating sites that are out there, including Tinder. When you narrow things down geographically, they all have virtually the same people on them anyway. On eHarmony you see guys who give the impression that only violins, candlelight and marriage will do, but on RSVP the same man might say he is looking for something fun but long term, and on Tinder he’ll just upload a picture of himself holding up a very large fish and message you saying ‘DTF?’**.

A good friend of mine recently published a book about his experiences using Tinder. You can buy it on Amazon but I should first warn you that it’s one of the most explicit books I’ve ever come across (and one that is extremely uncomfortable to read if you know the person involved). I should probably also reassure you all (hello Dad) that I’m not featured in the book as a love interest but my thoughts on internet dating are included.

I told Mike about my theory of dating in the 21st century, where technology has disrupted old rules and despite appearing to be more egalitarian than ever in terms of gender, dating is actually working way better for men than for women.

The thing is that 21st century dating is the least judgemental (amongst single people – I’ve talked about the partnered people view of the world and particularly single women before) it’s ever been. People are out there looking for love, but some of them are just looking to get their sexual needs met for the night, and that’s ok too, so long as everyone is honest about it, and playing safely. Yay for the liberation of women and for being liberal***.

The problem however – in my view – is this. I think men are evolutionarily predisposed to look for multiple sexual partners – so they can spread their seed and keep the place populated – that sort of thing. Women, on the other hand, are evolutionarily predisposed to seek security, safety and protection – despite the fact that the 21st century woman (including myself) generally doesn’t feel they need this. These days, this manifests itself as looking for someone who is willing to make a commitment and not likely to trade you in for the next vaguely attractive looking thing to pass their way.

For men and women in my age range – let’s call that from say…40 to 55 – internet dating, and apps like Tinder, mean that we don’t need to waste precious time hanging out in bars hoping that amongst our co-drinkers there is, miraculously, another single person who, even more miraculously, likes you. We can sit on our sofas browsing available men or women and flirting up a storm, even though we’ve got our pyjamas on and removed our make up and bras many hours ago.

Frankly, this is awesome. At the beginning of the dating journey, hanging out in bars is fun, but it doesn’t last long. The reality is that life is calling – full time work, children, and running a household alone are not compatible with this way of life for any length of time. It doesn’t take long to realize that the main attraction of something like Tinder is its efficiency.

But. And it’s a big but…my experience is that many men – in fact the majority of them, are ill equipped to deal with the sheer variety and apparent availability of women that the internet appears to provide***. There is the constant worry that someone better might be just around the corner. Technology has turned women into commodities, and whereas when they are younger men seem to be prepared to trade variety for family and children, once their marriage is over there is little incentive to do this again. Women, on the other hand, mainly continue to look for that commitment from one special person regardless of where they are in the lifespan.

Once upon a time, the way women wielded power over this tendency in men was to only offer sex after marriage. I’m not suggesting we do this (otherwise there is a good chance I’ll never get jiggy with anyone ever again), but it seems to me that the only way to put this particular Pandora back in the box is to all close our legs once again….

*we shall not say who this was…

**for those who are not familiar (hello again Dad) – “down to fuck?”

***I very much do not mean liberal in the political sense

****I’m talking in generalities here. No need for any of the very lovely men I know to get upset

And now for your viewing pleasure, I have uploaded screenshots of some of my more amusing interactions with men from dating websites/apps:

dating screenshot 1 revised

This one is all me being awesome at internet dating. Literally no idea why I’m single.

Dating screenshot 2 revised a

Gerry is just a tad needy don’t you think?

Dating screenshot 3 revised

Tim isn’t so much into outdoor pursuits. Unless they are of the carnal type I’d imagine.

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…