Dating-over-40 advice by the Dating Goddess™
A DG reader shared that he learned his last girlfriend was currently married only after he proposed when she said she was pregnant.
It made me think of what else would be assuring to have someone prove before you got too involved. Of course, it would be considered rude to request the following — at least at the beginning — but it would certainly clarify any questions.
See what you’d add to this list:
I am a bit of a profession snob, tending to eschew men who I don’t feel have a similar job status. I’m not proud of it, but it’s true. I’ve tried dating blue collar men, and I’ve never found it worked well.
So you’ll be surprised to learn that I had a first date with someone on the other end of the career spectrum — a shepherd.
A reader wrote:
“I am overweight — not morbidly obese but overweight. I mention in my profile that I am a bit overweight. I have yet to progress from one initial email with anyone. I feel as if it is impossible to get a date with anyone when you are overweight — am I wrong? Should I not mention it and lie like everyone else? This is so frustrating.”
There are lulls in dating life when you have no active prospects. You’ve moved to the “friends” category anyone who’s contacted you in the past. No one interesting has appeared on the horizon.
For most daters, this is their most frequent experience, lingering, perhaps checking online sites for new arrivals. But either no one contacts us or returns our emails.
I’d read data that said 50% of men listed on dating sites never get one contact from women.
Yet my experience is that men rarely respond to my being the one who makes the initial contact, or for the few who do, it’s nearly all “thanks but no thanks.”
So I decided to set up an experiment. Granted, it’s not very scientific, as I only posted one profile and set of pictures. Had I been more scientific, I would have posted various ones to see if it was my looks or writing that was alluring or repelling.
For the last 3 months, I’ve regularly emailed men I thought had some chance of being a match. The results are dismal.
I like to think of myself as a generally positive person, but I have my pet peeves. Self-absorption is one of them, although I’m guessing I can act in ways that seem self-centered to others.
Over the last few years, I’ve noticed others acting in ways that seem narcissistic. The visitors to the church next to my house who park extending two feet into my driveway. The woman at exercise class who put her bag on top of mine along the wall, meaning I would have to move it when I needed to get my weights out, when there was plenty of other space available for her to put her bag.
However, it’s in the dating world that this self-focus can be glaring. In the span of a week, two men who have shown interest in me have committed what I consider egregious acts of selfish behaviors.
Have you ever daydreamed about an old sweetheart from decades ago? What’s he up to now? Is he single? What’s he look like? If you connected, would the spark still be there?
My cousin reconnected with his high school love during their 40th reunion. They had remained close after they broke up in high school, even being in the wedding party for each other’s first marriages! They had lost touch and hit it off again instantly at the reunion. Both were single again. She said she’d love to keep in touch, so he called the next week. The 10-hour drive didn’t keep them apart. He began to woo her and a year later, they were married.
A long-time reader asked me to address a sensitive, yet not uncommon midlife dating issue — middle-aged sex and erectile dysfunction.
He asks, “How do you handle an attempt at sex that doesn’t work? How do you decide if this is a man you want to continue to see or is this a red flag?”
Can we talk? We are adults so we’re going to use adult words.
Weeks ago my friend mentioned his brother was coming into town for a few days to celebrate my friend’s birthday. My pal said he’d like his brother to meet me. “You’ll like him” he declared. Since I like my pal a lot, I thought if his brother is like him, yes I would enjoy that.
The weeks passed without further mention of this – no invitation to join them on any outing; no set time to rendezvous.
Hi Dating Goddess,
I’m dating someone I’m very attracted to, and we have lots of good chemistry on a variety of levels. The only issue I feel the need to question is the way she kisses.
When I move in close to kiss her, she appears to retreat within herself and becomes passively accepting. She barely moves a muscle to kiss me back, so I feel like I’m kissing someone who is asleep. I’ve tried kissing her all kinds of ways — soft & hard, lips & tongue, dry & wet, shallow & deep, high & low, short & long, and yet she just doesn’t reciprocate. She’s otherwise a very sensitive and sensual person, and she says that connection and intimacy are important to her. She says she quite likes me and that she’s turned on when we kiss.
I had a therapist once who said this kind of behavior could be indicative of some kind of previous sexual abuse, so I wonder if that could be something. We haven’t been dating long, so it’s entirely possible she hasn’t told me of some traumatic experience in her past. Or maybe she’s just shy or just doesn’t like the way I kiss.
Equal participation and reciprocation is important to me in all areas of a relationship, and I feel that passive kissing is generally a bad sign that a person is not assertive enough to handle their side of the equation. It may be too early to have that discussion with her, but it’s the backdrop of why this is important to me.
I want to address this passive kissing before we go much further. I’m able to bring up “difficult” topics, I just don’t know how to approach this one. My first guess says be straight-forward and positive, “I enjoy kissing you, and I would love it if you kissed me back.” But that sounds kinda blunt.
Another approach is potentially invasive, “I notice that when I kiss you, you seem to freeze up. I’m wondering where you go when that happens and what your thoughts are.”
Any advice greatly appreciated, thanks!
William
A recent article shared conclusions from researchers at UC Berkeley’s School of Information. The paper “Self-presentation and Deception in Online Dating” found pretty much what we’ve known all along. For example:
