And That's Why You're Single |
| Personal Update – Sex Is Not An Accomplishment Posted: 13 Jan 2014 03:49 PM PST Popping in to give you an update on things. Therapy has been a godsend. I knew that I was pretty fragile after all that had gone on, but I wasn’t really aware of how much of that had bled into other aspects of my life. Especially dating. I did what I could to shake off a lot of what my sister’s kids had said to me, but that didn’t last for long. Hearing my nephew say that I was doing to die alone and that nobody would be at my funeral rolled around in my head for a long time.I’m hesitant to admit it, but it scared me. I don’t like to be ruled by that fear, but I’ll be damned if it didn’t take hold of me. It made me dig really deep and ask myself just how okay I was with being single. At 45, no less. Yeesh. I was reading this article over at xoJane and I think my comment summed up some of my feelings nicely. I mean, listen. Good for her that she walked away with a positive experience. I just get frustrated at the lack of representation that single women and men my age get. And I’m tired of the only “empowering” stories we hear about involves using sex as bait and , in return, all these women get is sex. There’s only so much you go girling that I can listen to. Getting laid while 40 or older or when you’re not slender is easy peasy. It really is. But I can assure you that a large segment of those people taking you for a ride would never date you. Not seriously, anyway. I can’t get past that. There’s so much more out there for us, but we never hear about it. Maybe because it’s harder to find and nobody likes hearing that. It is hard to date at our age. It requires so much more diligence and patience. We have to suck it up more often. There are more concessions to make. We don’t always get the untouched guy. And, as ugly as this sounds, we’ve been beaten down a bit. None of these are bad things. Once you accept certain realities then dating gets a lot easier. I just hate that the message we hear the most is that sex for women our age is some accomplishment. It’s not. It’s beyond easy to get. But finding someone honorable and real that you enjoy, that’s hard. It’s tough at any age really. Then a couple of months ago I had a guy tell me that he wasn’t sure he could date me because he was thrown by my “dating expert” persona. He referred to me as a professional dater, which in my mind is just a squeak away from being called an escort. His explanation was that he had recently dating a woman who wrote a blog and she swore up and down that she wouldn’t write about him. But , of course, she did. He felt betrayed and unsettled. I totally saw where he was coming from, but I could get past the “professional dater” comment. I’m sure to some guys, what I do implies that I date as part of my job. It seems like no matter what I do, no matter how discrete I am, somebody will find fault with it. But then, as I’ve said, every profession has a stereotype. But this is the second time in a few months where someone commented on the fact that my “expert” persona was a bit intimidating. Before, it was that I shared too much about my personal life. Now it’s that I just know too much. The man I dated before him would say things that made it clear that he had a difficult time separating the public persona from the private one. He’d make remarks about things I’d write and “joke” with me, but it was clear things I said made him wonder just how tolerant I was. When I told me therapist about him as well as someone else who has entered the picture, about all this, the subject of vulnerability came up. An experience with a guy a few years ago left me pretty badly burned. While I don’t regret for a moment being less forthcoming about my personal life here, I now realize that doing that has made me equally as closed off in private. Having that outlet to share and even crowd source was an expression of my vulnerability. It just made me vulnerable to the wrong people. And it wasn’t really an authentic vulnerability. It was a lot of bluster and bravado. When I confronted a guy for something that he did to me once, he said that he wasn’t trying to hurt me because, “he didn’t think he could.” That comment came up in therapy today and, combined with the guy from last fall/winter and his remarks about my intolerance, it’s clear that to many people I seem impenetrable. I even have friends who say things to me like, “I meant to call you back yesterday but I knew whatever it was was something you could handle.” Even my friend who blew me off right after my sister died said something similar. He said he thought I wouldn’t be mad because something had come up. And since we had always been so even keeled and never had drama he didn’t think blowing me off would bother me the way it did. Apparently, people think I’m made of Teflon. I suppose I did , too. Then everything with my family happened and I learned I wasn’t. And while I might be extraordinarily self-sufficient, there’s only so much I can take on on my own. So I’m working on unraveling all that. In other news, I’ve been talking with my sister and it looks like we might be investing in a property together later this year. I’m finally at a point where I could do that. The money obviously comes from my inheritance. But the stability comes from spending the last three years getting myself right and developing a better relationship with money. Having a father who was always there to help out is a wonderful thing. Unfortunately, it doesn’t teach you financial management or responsibility. I’m there now. I got my monthly credit report last week and learned my score is right where I wanted it to be. It’s a number I wrote on a sticky paper and tacked up on my bulletin board near my computer. I’ve been looking at apartments but everybody keeps telling me not to give up my rent stabilized place. But I need to make that money my father graciously gave me work for me, and since he bought and sold property his whole life, I think I’ll follow his lead. Oh, and I start a Fiction Writing class tomorrow. If I do ever write a book, it’s not going to be dating advice. The idea of having to write that makes my eyes bleed. But I would like to write something that lends a voice to women my age who are single and struggling to decide what it is they want. I’d also like to write about what it’s really like to try and date when you write a dating column. It ain’t all shoes, fancy clubs and Mr. Bigs.
|
| You are subscribed to email updates from And That's Why You're Single™ To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
No comments:
Post a Comment