Dating-over-40 advice by the Dating Goddess™
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!
DG reader Toni asks:
I just had a second date with a man who, during the show, put his hand on my leg. I removed it. To me that is way more intimate than holding hands or a hug is — the kind of intimate “owning” thing that a serious other does — not someone I don’t know at all.
This has happened to me on the first date! On one level, you could be flattered that he felt so comfortable with and attracted to you he behaved as if you’ve been dating longer. Or you could be incensed that he was so presumptuous and ungentlemanly that he would think this was okay.
Yes, most of us would be in the second camp.
Nearly eighteen months ago a man sent me an email on a dating site where I wasn’t a member. Although he was in the right geographic, age and height range, his pictures showed an unsmiling, sunglasses-wearing, goatee-sporting man in a sports-team T-shirt holding up a newspaper with an unreadable headline. Huh? This is the best picture the man thought represented him to his future match?
Since I wasn’t a member of the site, I couldn’t read his email, but was allowed to send a site-generated “No thank you” response.
A year later he showed up on another site where I could see he’d looked at my profile several times. After several months of seeing his picture appear in my “who’s seen you list” I became curious. He’d posted a few more pictures on this site and he looked less off-putting than he did in the one pic on the previous site.
When you talk to a potential suitor regularly for more than a few weeks before meeting, a false sense of intimacy can develop. In flirty or soul-baring emails and/or phone conversations, you can begin to feel a budding emotional connection to the other.
Then when you do meet, there is an odd closeness. You feel you know someone who you’ve not met — essentially a stranger. There is a tendency to fast-forward to physical affection that would have taken longer (usually) to develop if you’d had less pre-meeting phone time.
You may have developed a fondness for the person through what and how he shared. So when he takes your hand in his, it seems an abnormal mix of comfort and newness. You both are more comfortable touching during this first meeting than you would be on a first date with someone you hadn’t talked to a lot before meeting.
Unfortunately, I’ve found this unnatural familiarity leads to behaviors that assume privileges too soon. Strong relationships are forged over time, not jumped into quickly.
DG reader PC wrote:
I enjoy your columns on LifeTwo.com.
What do you do if it is obvious in the first 5 minutes that there is not a fit? Do you sludge through the evening or cut your losses early? I don’t mean to be cruel but sometimes it seems to be worse to lead the person on.
It took five months of occasional email exchanges to finally meet. It was worth the wait.
Why so long? He had been traveling the world for a non-profit project he founded. He was in the States infrequently during the past year, and even more rarely at his home in my area.
As part of getting to know each other, he sent me a link to his project’s Web site where I learned more about him. Armed with his unique full name, it was easy to Google him.
Through this sleuthing I uncovered that he had been not only a Marine fighter pilot — but also a Playgirl “Real Man of the Month!” Granted, that was nearly three decades ago. During our first phone conversation, I commented on his Web page. He said laughingly, “If you get me drunk enough I’ll tell you some stories that I couldn’t put on the page.”
“Will that include the Playgirl story?” I asked playfully.
[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.
When 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.
