Adventures in Delicious Dating After 40™

Category: Moving on graciously

  • Step up or step aside

    You have agreed to be exclusive with your beau. But he is not providing all he’s agreed to when you each articulated your needs to be exclusive. You’ve reminded him of the things you said you needed and he said he’d provide. He acknowledges he knows. He does not say he can’t give you these things or that they will take time. You’ve given him what he said he needs. But he isn’t consistent with coming through on what is important to you.

    So he has to step up.

    And if he won’t or can’t, he has to step aside.

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  • Should you take him back?

    DG reader AG writes:

    I recently dated a guy for a few months but then we had a falling out. We tried to discuss it by email and phone since we were both traveling and we couldn’t meet face-to-face. We set a time in a few days to meet to discuss if we should continue. I have mixed feelings, as I really like being with him and he has many, many characteristics I am looking for in a man. But he would go for a week with no contact which made me feel I wasn’t a priority in his life.

    How can I determine if I should take him back?

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  • What’s your relationship recovery time?

    “Recovery time” is however long it takes one to return to normal after an event. Whether it’s the time it takes an athlete’s body to return to normal heart rate or hydration after a grueling event, or someone’s return to health after a setback. Or how long it takes for someone to recover after a relationship’s ending.

    When I was first divorced I was told it would take 25% of the time I was married to recover and be ready for a serious relationship. I was married for nearly 20 years, so that meant it would take 5 years! I was incredulous. I didn’t want to wait five years to find my next LTR. But here it is at the five year mark and I feel I’m truly ready. I had too much healing and growing to do.

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  • He’s broken up with you — he just didn’t tell you

    My guy pals have told me that men are emotional cowards. They’d rather walk barefoot over broken glass than do something that would make a woman cry. Thus their preference for going poof rather than tell you they have changed their mind.

    A year ago I was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal for a story about how younger people learn their sweetie has broken up with them by their partner changing their Facebook relationship status to “single,” or by a text message. I thought that was immature. Midlife people didn’t do this kind of cowardly thing, did they?

    Today I learned that King Charming has broken up with me. Did he tell me? No. In fact, in an hour-long IM two days ago he said, “I did not contact you nor meet you with the intention of our sharing a short-lived transient relationship. I am one who likes things to last for a very long time…. Candid with you I will always try to be….”

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  • Extricating yourself from a dud date

    There are good dates, ambivalent dates, bad dates, and sometimes dates that are none of the above, just clearly not encounters with someone who is in any way a match. They can be painful when you, for manners sake, must stay longer than you would prefer.

    A while ago, after a few email and phone conversations with a man who made me laugh, I accepted his lunch invitation, even though I generally start with only coffee. I rued not sticking with this rule!

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  • “I’m a nerd!”

    [googmonify]8604416547:left:120:240[/googmonify]

    So said the professor with a Ph.D. and several masters degrees. My Google search revealed a page (not written by him) that called him “a famed professor” in his area of study. Other sites also lauded him. So I thought perhaps he was being modest when saying he was a nerd as he pursued me by sweet, thoughtful emails and phone calls.

    His initial email said he was from out of state — 2000 miles away — but was planning to relocate to my area. I am a sucker for a man with good writing skills, so I responded and soon a vigorous email and phone conversation was launched.

    UrkelWhen I met him a week after his first email, I saw that he was telling the truth. Can you imagine a 56-year-old Steve Urkel? I’m afraid the similarities were scary. Instead of hiked-up pants, he wore an ill-fitting patterned jacket with clashing shirt. His hunched shoulders suggested a form of osteoporosis or some other back malady. But as I stood straighter, so did he, so it seemed more habit than affliction.

    He had braces, which seemed to be helping pull in his buck teeth and closing the gap of several missing ones. This also explained, in part, his lisp. His amblyopia, or lazy eye, kept me guessing which eye to address.

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  • Prince Considerate breaks up — considerately

    After dinner and a nice stroll, we settled back in my house for a DVD. But before we could get started, he pulled me to his lap and put his arms around me.

    “This is a very hard thing, but I need to say it. I don’t know why, but I’m not finding myself falling in love with you.”

    He’d mentioned this a few weeks before, so it wasn’t news. We’d both felt similarly, but knew the other person had a lot of terrific characteristics so thought we should give it a bit more time.

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  • “The Bachelor” mirrors real life

    Before you say, “DG, are you crazy? The Bachelor is totally contrived,” hear me out. I’m not saying it’s not artificial, nor that much of it parallels real life. In fact, I admit to only watching 2 episodes this season, and none of any previous season.

    I mean having 25 women live in a mansion while competing for a man’s affection is strange, don’t you think? And I find it far fetched to believe some of these women developed such deep feelings for a man with whom they barely spent any one-on-one time. But I do believe some feelings could develop on both sides. However, I’ve always thought it ludicrous that the producers expect a couple to become engaged at the end of such a manufactured love test.

    Brad WomackSo when Brad Womack, the bachelor of this season, chose neither of the final two women last night, I wanted to cheer. Finally, someone who understands that it is folly to ask someone to marry you after knowing her so little time.

    However, I was as confused as the two women, because he repeatedly expressed how deep his feelings were for both women, and how he could see himself married to either. The episode contributed to our bafflement since it didn’t allow us to hear Brad’s justification — especially when we saw him buy an engagement ring and tell the audience he was sure of his decision.

    But it reminded me of the wail I hear from many women: “He said he really cared for me, he’d never met anyone like me, I made him very happy. He did all the right things to sweep me off my feet. I told him how much I cared for him and he never said he didn’t feel the same way. How could he lead me on like that, then go poof? I believed him, then he just disappeared. He played me!”

    In The Bachelor’s case, the producers want to entice us to tune in tonight to hear Brad’s side of the story. In real life, we rarely get that chance. Brad seems like the real deal — sensitive, vulnerable, respectful to these women. Was he lying when he told each one he felt deeply for her? I don’t think so. I think people can have deep feelings, but not yet feel in love.

    So was Brad right to not propose when he knew he wasn’t completely in love? Absolutely. My guess is he understood the seriousness of marriage and wanted to be absolutely clear he was making the right decision when he asked the woman he chose.

    Now might he be a perfectionist or commitment averse? Perhaps, but I didn’t hear anything that would make me believe that. Might some of the men who have left you in the dust have other issues? Of course.

    So we can’t say Brad is a clone of some of your past loves. But I think he is representative of guys who are genuine, honest and straightforward, yet they don’t behave as we want them to. We can call them names and say how much they’ve hurt us. And after we grieve and obsess over trying to figure out what happened, we can be grateful because we wouldn’t want to be with a man who wasn’t absolutely, positively sure he wanted to be with us. Otherwise, we’re just a place holder.

    Yes, I will be tuning in to hear Brad’s side so I can understand why he made the decision he did. And then we can see if his logic applies to other relationships, past and future.

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  • Where are you on the relationship recovery path?

    DG reader Devon wrote:

    All divorced people are in a different place along the post-divorce road. I met someone wonderful last summer, attraction, chemistry, great sex, good conversation and we had fun. It lasted 3 months, I was ready for a companion, he was still recovering from the break up of his family and the stress of a recent divorce. After 4 years of being single I have a different outlook and want something different than a newly divorced man. I wonder if anyone has put a name to the stages of recovery from divorce, there must be similar things people go through. I would guess we all go through a rediscovery of (good) sex.

    Some of the men I’ve dated might have been keepers if the timing had been better. Since the healing process is different for everyone the whole thing is rather unpredictable. Any thoughts?

    Good point, Devon. Yes, I think there are stages of recovery after a the end of an important relationship. However, it can be hard to identify where you are in your own recovery, let alone determine someone else’s. Here are some steps on the path.

    First, you need to grieve the loss of the relationship and your life with your ex. If you jump too soon into a new relationship, you aren’t fully available to be with a new person.

    The path includes admitting how you contributed — even a bit — to the decline of the relationship, even if he treated you hideously. If you don’t look at why you got into or stayed in a dysfunctional relationship, you’re doomed to repeat the same pattern until you identify your part and work to heal it.

    Once you are healed, you learn (if you hadn’t already) how to enjoy time by yourself without needing a man in your life. Once you are centered and happy, you can choose to open your heart to another and begin dating. If you start before this point, you will be frustrated and disappointed about the men who you attract to you. Even after this point, you may still attract men who are not good matches. But it’s all part of the process if you learn from it and don’t make judgments about “all men are jerks, cads, sex crazed, etc.”

    What are your thoughts on the relationship recovery path? Are there steps missing in the above? What would you add? How do you know where you are on the path — or how to tell where someone else is?

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  • Paranoid or observant?

    You’ve been dating around for a few years, having second dates or more with a dozen or so men. You have enough experience under your belt to notice that in the past there’s been a shift of behavior that has preceded a guy’s going poof or breaking up with you. There’s a change in something that he had done predictably. Maybe he usually makes contact at least once a day, or typically asks you out for the weekend by Thursday, or wants to have lunch during the week as well as Saturday night.

    Because of the behaviors of past guys, you’re on the lookout with the man you’ve been seeing for a few months. You’ve been blindsided in the past, but in retrospect the signs of a change were there, you just didn’t interpret them as pre-break-up or pre-poof signals.

    You’re watching for a shift in pattern that might reveal a change in his perspective about you. You are aware if he skips a day of contact, since he typically calls/IMs/texts each day. You contact him on those days, and he seems glad to hear from you (assuming you don’t yell at or guilt him). You try to not be overly sensitive, bordering on paranoid. But you notice when there’s a change in patterns.

    You wrestle with yourself to not make more out of it than that he was really busy or distracted by work/kids/life. But the question resurfaces, “Is this the beginning of the end?”

    Ideally, you let it be, noticing but not commenting unless it happens a handful of times. At times life gets overwhelming for most people, and as long as a missed day of contact doesn’t spread into 3 or 4 days, you’re probably fine. However, if the pattern of pulling away begins to repeat itself, don’t be surprised if he goes poof or you get one of those dreaded “it’s not working” emails.

    Even if you bring it up as gently as possible, with no blame or guilt, it’s a rare man who will admit he’s having second thoughts about your seeing each other. Some will try to cover it up, more from not wanting to hurt you or have a confrontation than from purposefully lying. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t bring it up — you should see what he says. But even if he comes back with, “I’ve just been crazy busy with work and the kids lately” he will know that you’ve noticed and it may help him feel okay about coming clean. It’s like when as a kid your mom found you doing something you shouldn’t have, at first you may fib to see if she will ignore it. But if you had any conscience and your mother was not crazy, you may have confessed to her after a while.

    And this knife cuts both ways. If you find yourself behaving differently toward him than in the past, perhaps your feelings have changed and you just haven’t articulated them yet. If you used to answer no matter when he called, and now you let it go to voice mail if you’re doing something else that may be a sign you’re less engaged. Or you used to invite him to dinner during the week and now you’d rather watch The Bachelor, notice if you’re feeling less interested in your time with him.

    So notice the shifts and see if they are signs you should pay attention to or just ignore. If you choose the latter, at least you won’t be completely blindsided when the “Have a nice life” email comes through.

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  • When should you disclose any, er, unusual preferences?

    kinkyI was once contacted by a man who said in his profile that he was “slightly kinky.” When I asked what he meant exactly, he said he’d explain in person. He was a perfect gentleman on the phone and in emails, so I thought it was worth a coffee meeting to find out. I’ve learned that one person’s kinky is another’s normal, so I decided not worry too much about it until he explained. During our coffee date, he elaborated that he was a cross dresser on occasion. Okey dokie.

    But another man didn’t even hint at his unconventional preferences until an email nearly a week after our first lunch. We’d had a dozen emails, phone conversations and IMs and nothing was even hinted at beforehand. I know people share his sexual practices, but I’ve not met anyone personally who told me they did. So I’m thinking that this man should have placed an ad on kinky.com or something similar, not YahooPersonals.

    However, an acquaintance who is a swinger into swapping, has an ad on YahooPersonals, as well as more provocative sites. He sent me his profile to read and he thought he was being explicit about his practices. He wrote that he was “adventurous” but he didn’t say “sexually adventurous.” He thought “adventurous” was enough. I thought it meant he liked to rock climb or participate in outdoor adventures. He said he told women from YP on their first coffee meeting that he attended swapping parties. I told him I’d feel duped if he waited until then to disclose such an important element of his life that would affect many women’s decision to meet him or not. I’d be irritated if I got dolled up and drove to a coffee meeting, then learned of his practice that I don’t support and wouldn’t date someone who did.

    I felt a bit hoodwinked myself by the man who didn’t share his out-of-the-ordinary practices. I’d spent some time getting to know him and was interested in a second date. But I don’t share a proclivity for the experiences he described. And I doubt I’d learn to like those kind of activities.

    When should one disclose such alternative tastes? I think you are beholden to at least hint at it in your profile or initial email, as the first man did. Did the second man think that I’d become so enamored with him that I’d ignore my own values? Did he think he’d scare off women if he shared earlier? He was just postponing the inevitable, but taking up someone’s time in the process.

    When do you think someone should disclose any practices that they know others may find off putting?

    Got a topic on dating after 40 you want Dating Goddess to address? Send your issue to Goddess@DatingGoddess.com.