Surviving the Big D: Dating

They say the only way to get over someone is to get involved with someone else.  Yes, okay maybe when my head is screwed on straight and I know what end is up, then ask yourself “What do I want/don’t want in a relationship this time?”  Usually the ink is dry by now or at least in the process of.  Many potential ‘dates’ do not want to get involved with you seriously (for more than just a date-date) if they think there’s a slight chance you could get back with the ex if all the T’s aren’t crossed and papers aren’t filed.  There should be no loose ends when you get back into the dating world.  You should not be dependent on the ex for anything – cut all ties and most of all you should be over him/her.  “Getting back together” at this point is not an option – no matter how much your family liked him/her.

Now I’m not against dating right away, you can venture out with your friends and meet people.  The rules haven’t changed (just technology), but they will seem foreign to you, again it’s just like riding a bike.  You did it before, you can do it again.  This time there’s the online dating universe which you really have to weed through, it’s also best to do it with a good friend as a screener.  This way if someone is really trying to scam you by posting their picture from 10 years ago and your friend happens to meet them before you at least you have a warning.  Yes that actually happened (I may have written something similar in the “Starting Fires” blog with my Shrek reference and continued into “Another Saturday Morning Cartoon”).  Dive right in, fill your calendar, practice, learn and you will find someone.  You may even find someone while you are waiting for someone else to show up at the restaurant.  You can’t think of the dating world right out of a divorce as hoping to find Mr./Mrs. Right Again right away, it’s not realistic.  It should be the furthest thing from your mind until your head is screwed on straight and you have direction in your life.  I’ve known too many people who jump right to #2, or #3 right out of a divorce, amazing how many have gotten remarried within a year or 2 of a divorce and some divorced again. I’m not saying they didn’t find Mr./Mrs. Right Again but you do need to figure things out for yourself..at least I did. 

I dove into the online dating scene after my divorce on three different sites, when one wasn’t working for me, I signed up for another one.  Dates that never got past the 2^nd date-no sparks.  Dates that didn’t last 2 months.  Dates that got weird – doesn’t matter which site you use, they are almost all the same.  You do have to kiss a lot of frogs (again) and yes they are all out there, I’m sure a few of those ‘winners’ made it on the blog at one point.  Once you’re out in the scene and things aren’t going as planned notice your dating patterns – are you still attracting the wrong guys?  Are you sending out the wrong signals? Are you wearing the wrong clothes (i.e. too conservative/too much cleavage)?  Chances are it could be you.  If you keep buying the same cereal you’ll never discover the next one on the shelf.  Learn from your mistakes, write down your requirements.  Did you have a bad divorce? What do you want now?  (You can refer back to the beginning of the ‘Surviving’ series and read the “Requirements” for hints.)  You weren’t put here on this earth to settle if it doesn’t make you happy.

Those dating stories that you bring back to your friends (single/married etc) are the ones you share over drinks and laugh about.  We all have learned from each other’s mistakes in the dating world, there are plenty of books and online blogs out there to help you too.  I’m a total advocate that if you meet Mr. M and he asks you out there’s no reason why you can’t accept a date for the next night with Mr. Y.  Right? Why not?  You are weeding through what’s out there, even if it’s online dating or getting fixed up by friends until you meet one who you only want to spend your days and nights with.  If you’ve been out there recently with single friends there are slim pickins to what you find out at a bar (at our age) so you have to find other means.  So date online, fill your calendar with every flavor possible, go to dinner, have coffee, meet people, let your friends fix you up, take notes from Steve Harvey (yes the grocery store after 8 pm does have single men food shopping on certain days of the week) - when you’re ready for Mr./Mrs. Right Again it will happen.

I can’t pinpoint the exact point when my head was screwed on straight to get back out there, but it all fell into place as it should have (after the ink was dry and the T’s finally crossed) and my heart is where it belongs. ;-) 

The 'Cost' of Friendship

Throughout the years I’ve lost friends, or they wrote me off because our lives were not going in the same direction and vice versa.  Many of my good friends got married, had children and I too was married at one point without kids, now divorced without kids.  How were we going to get along? Very easy, how did we become friends in the first place?  Yes this is something the girls talk about when we’re together, the married, the single, the divorced, separated ones we talk about it.  We talk about the friends we have lost because they refuse to leave their town to go out and have a good time.  We talk about the friends we have lost because we’re the only ones not talking about our children at their bbq.  We talk about the friends we all can’t hang out with at the same time because someone doesn’t like the other one or whatever gripe it may be.  We talk about them because we can’t figure out why they wouldn’t want to go out with their friends.  But we get together to talk, to chat, to catch up.   Yet I find it funny that once their children get older, they all of a sudden have time for you, years have passed by and they think its okay now to catch up.  I’m still not sure how I feel about that because so much time has gone by and no effort was ever made on their part (no Christmas cards, no text conversations, no emails).  If they truly wanted to catch up, there’s 9 digits to dial, an email or a text to send, a halfway between houses to meet up where the husband watches the child for a few hours.  It all comes down to how important is that friendship.  I’m not saying that all parents are like this, just using it as an example.

I too have had a schedule full of softball games or other hobbies I am interested in, and I may live an hour from most of my friends, but at least I put it out there, even if that means meeting up after work.  For example, three weeks ago, because I know scheduling things with friends with children have to be done ahead of time, I text a good friend of mine about today for lunch.  I heard nothing back.  I’ve extended the same olive branch in a few Christmas cards to others with no response either.  Nice huh?  When do I stop putting in the effort?

I can say the same for some of my single/separated/divorced friends (with and without kids).  Try a month in advance, a few weeks to days in advance to plan something, come up with a date that’s set in stone, find a place to go, then day of I get the cancellation.  Yes this can happen to anyone and everyone who has heard all the excuses in the book.  Yes you can try to appease the situation and hope for next time, but when next time this happens again, then again and again ‘when do I stop putting in the effort?’ At what point do I end the friendship?

I’ve made efforts to drive to my friends’ houses, meet them halfway, but some of them (not all) won’t pay it back.  I shouldn’t always have to be driving to your house to go out or better yet, pick the place to go out by you when I don’t even live there.  I shouldn’t have to pick you up and drop you off when you don’t make the effort to do the same.  There are no excuses and I’ve realized that real friends compromise and make the effort no matter where you are in life, what state you’re in, how far you have to drive, even if it means rescheduling until you meet up.  Chances are if you get a ‘reschedule’ request, most of the time you end up going out anyway and making new friends (maybe next time I’ll send the ‘rescheduler’ a bill).

Aging Like Fine Wine (minus the plaid skirts)

I spent most of the car ride to my 20 year high school reunion trying to figure out how to answer the “so where’s your husband?” question.   Numerous responses came to mind such as “He’s in my dream house” (at the time of purchase it indeed was a dream house), “I left him home but my escort cancelled”, “I don’t have one anymore”, “He fell off a boat”.  Only to be asked one question by a classmate married with children, “So what’s your story, single, married, etc?” With my response being “Divorced” and his immediately being, “That bastard” which is much better than the typical “Oh I’m so sorry to hear that”.  It was a funny, classic moment and definitely uplifting since it was coming from someone not even knowing anything about me in the last 20 years. 

Amongst friends new and old, and old acquaintances being brought up to speed the night could have been without the breeze (and smell) of low tide and burnt popcorn.  Kudos to the bartender for remembering (and properly pouring) my drinks for the evening. 

And thanks to my fans, my new fans who I had no idea you were reading this, it means a lot so please comment often!  I will try to keep it ‘honest and raw’ for ‘Hello my name is ____ husband’ who wants to one day make the blog. Well then I guess I’ll coordinate an outing with your wife and we’ll all go out and I’ll bring my notebook.  I wasn’t expecting to write anything after Saturday, yet wanted to extend my utmost thanks to my followers who like to ‘keep it real’ and ‘honest’.  Sometimes the truth hurts and sometimes its worth a laugh, if only I wasn’t so in deep with poetry 20 years ago imagine the stories I would have told back then!  

Party of 5

It’s amazing what can fit in my car for a weekend in AC, its also amazing how I can overpack. I’m usually so organized, picking outfits out that mix and match, along with shoes, but this time I brought way too much for the Annual Girls Weekend.  That’s just what is was and has been for the last 4 years, the annual girls trip for married, single, divorced, separated ladies.  Cheap therapy with your gal pals that is not limited to dropping a few $20s in a slot machine and sucking down a few cranberry and vodkas while discussions of children, hoo-hahs and men are not hushed.  Always that time of year to look forward to, I don’t know why any girls weekend or girls night is frowned upon.  Well, those of you that do, shame on you.  You have no idea what quality time with your gals away from your family or ‘kid free’ as an Angel put it, will do for your health.  It’s that break you look forward to, that reconnecting with your friends once a year to make new memories, play catch up, share photos, drink Starbucks and most of all have fun.  With that said on to our next adventure.

Within the first few minutes of dropping the bags in the room and venturing out to find food we were approached by a tall ‘Irish’ Bostonian (with an Irish accent) who couldn’t have been more than 25 and been my brother.  He of course, targeted me, the one who looks the most Irish out of the group.  Claiming he was with a group of 14 guys, all of which were ‘crashing in the room’ he tried desperately to find out where we were going that night.  The guy did not waste time, he even had a ‘young lad’ with him.  Being the smart ones we are, we deflected the question and he went on to ask if we were all single, trying to get our ‘lucky charms’.  Of course we answered honestly but he insisted he obtain one of our numbers.  So I not-so-kindly started to walk away and said “We’ll see you later” which in fact we did not.

We move on to bar hop, to celebrate a birthday, which if you are celebrating a birthday make sure the bartender knows.  You get better service that way, and if he’s cute he’ll pay attention.  The sports bar we ended up in had a huge cast of characters including firemen who didn’t have a calendar and Frodo who was their mascot.   Through a few winks and smiles, and men that seemed to only wink at our birthday girl and not have anything else to say we moved on to a late night fix of pizza, cheesesteaks and a grilled cheese.  Unfortunately this place was nothing like our infamous 4 am ‘noodle bar’ and Senor Pizza wasn’t back until noon.  How can you have pizza on the menu if the gourmet pizza chef only works half the day?

Finding a spot for five of us on the beach amongst families and those with children, away from anything that resembled the French guy in a speedo was a little difficult, but not unattainable.  We just had to pick the right spot, to be able to see everything and not offend anyone because we do not have a filter – there is no censor as to most adult conversations anywhere in public.  We had our SPF, our magazines, and in full agreement that the word ‘selfie’ was entirely worn out by this time.  We just continued to take silly beach ‘selfies’ of ourselves in between flipping the pages of SHAPE magazine.   Now the Beach Bar was a minor let down, our favorite bartenders no longer were there to serve one of us that killer drink.  We’ve had numerous occasions of ‘one woman down’ after drinking here.  Meaning at least one of us didn’t survive making it back out of the room at night after drinking one of their mixed drinks. I was one of them one year, and vowed never to do that again.  I missed an entire evening!  I’m still trying to understand the wardrobe malfunctions I saw, along with the ‘wolverine’ look alikes that paraded around holding their plastic fishbowl drinks.  How could their friends let them leave the house like that?  That’s where I come in with a camera..yup, smile, or don’t smile, you made the blog or at least your sneakers did.  

The guy I really wanted the picture of was wearing a suntan of a wife-beater with a sailor hat on.  Still wondering about that one – did he lose a bet?  We drank, we danced, we had fun, we even met a Peyton Manning look-alike who left his bachelor party drunk in the room to have a drink with adults.  The Angels thank you Mr. Best Man for the shot.  That was the highlight at the bar, unless you take the suggestion from the bartender to ‘not order the dirty banana’ while watching the ‘situation’ look alike get tossed out.  Who gets tossed from the beach bar at 3 in the afternoon?  I seem to have a lot of questions on this trip…but at least we’re not ‘babysitting’ like previous years.

After getting all prettied up and looking fabulous we head to dinner where I seem to be the only one taking notes watching another table which seems to be a bachelorette party (who would have guessed) actually hold up their food (with their fingers) to take pictures of it.  Chicken must be made differently in their town I guess.    We score a limo ride for the price of a taxi to Harrah’s Pool, we were riding in style - see saying its ‘someone’s birthday’ can get you places.  This is where it got interesting.  We got a discount at the door because we were all over 30, the club where I’ll never pay money to get into again because their DJ was horrible.  We also learned never give a camera to anyone under 25 to take a group picture, because he got down on one knee and shot up at us.  Dumbass.  No one got free drinks that night, not even the birthday girl.  But this is just the beginning as we all split up in groups to scour the place.  Three of us found observing a table of two guys, one wearing a suit all by themselves sharing bottle service to be interesting.  Think Chris Farley and Channing Tatum sharing a bottle service table by themselves.  Um hum.   In looking for the other Angels we ventured to the rooftop, which was a smoking lounge with couches and places to sit.  We sat for a while only to be approached by a guy who wanted us to guess his nationality.  Really? Is that all you got? He was nicely dressed I’ll give him that, and when he asked if he could sit down, I smack myself now for allowing it as he tried to sit on my lap.  His stay was short lived since he was spitting on me as he spoke about being an Egyptian and living in the palace.  See we think quick, we go with a plan, and when he asked us for our names it went like this: “Valerie, Jane, and I’m Married, thanks but we have to go find our friends.” Yup…at least that part was the truth. 

From bad pickup lines such as ‘would you dance with those Chippendale Dancers?’ to horrible music this night couldn’t have gotten any worse for our eyes and ears.  We encountered at the next bar a girl bent over puking at her table with her friend holding her hair back,  someone else with her boyfriend wearing prison stripes that if she didn’t pull her skirt down a bit more we would be able to tell what brand of panties she was or wasn’t wearing.  Apparently we missed the memo that prison stripes were the rage now since I could count on both hands the amount of people wearing them, and that includes the amount of men in Salmon colored shirts, oh and don’t forget the guy wearing the pink pants.  Whether they wore them well is a different story.  And would someone please tell these girls to keep their shoes on when they use the public restroom?  How gross!  I wonder if the girl we saw in the lobby, who looked like she was tossed out of her room with her bag did.  She was sitting on the floor in the middle of the lobby, on her phone when we heard in a half-crying-upset voice , “You left me in the bathroom for 3 hours!”  HAHA!  I was amazed how many people asked us if she was okay out of concern, my response, “She’s not in our party, not our problem”. She clearly had a phone so she could find her way home or better yet, call her parents to come get her.  I guess if you were hitting on my boyfriend I would have left you there too.

Amongst the ridiculous amount of bachelorette parties that we passed and our  ‘Congratulations, don’t let her eat the cake’ remarks to the bachelor parties (although no one seems to understand that, but we warned them) we had fun laughing at all those women dressed up to the nines who can’t walk in their shoes.  Yes we’re laughing at you because we know better.   We also laugh at men who sit together (and take pictures of them), men who sit together with a chair in between  them (huh?),  men who look like Hermie the Dentist that order Bloody Mary’s at 4 in the afternoon.  

Last but not least I’d like to give a shout out to the girl, who I mistakenly assumed was a teenage boy, for checking us out and to “Jimmie Walker” who kept calling us beautiful.  Thank you!

Every year it gets better, every year we have fun, there’s always a new story, someone else missing a spot with SPF,  a new ‘idiot’ to make the blog and the hope that one of the angels would get inked to join the rest of us.  An annual trip that we all look forward to that just might be split in seasons…look out winter and next summers ‘party’ is already planned!

Surviving the Big D: The Bucket List

First things first, in order to start a new while I was waiting for the papers to be in stone I wrote a bucket list.  This bucket list is everything I ever wanted to do, places I wanted to see, when I was married (and prior to) but he didn’t want to do them with me or had already done them.  These are my hopes for the future that are somewhat attainable, things to plan ahead for.  My item of seeing a great white shark probably would never happen in a safe situation but it’s a clear reminder that is something I’d like to see one day (out in the wild, in a safe environment, but not at a zoo).  Once the list was completed and typed out legibly I hung it on my refrigerator.  It served as a constant reminder that this is who I am/was/am going to find again and these are the things I will accomplish.  If you decide to do this for yourself you can start anywhere and check them off as they are completed.  Living close to NYC for most of my life off the NJ Turnpike I had never been to the top of the Empire State Building, so when my friend and I were sent to the city for IT training, she went with me to cross that one off the list.  Share it with your friends, they will want to help you and you will have fun doing so. I still have mine, there are a few yet to be crossed off such as a trip to Australia and Cooperstown, and buying a pair of black leather pants.

If I've learned anything from this is that if you are in a relationship you will do what it takes to make that other person happy, even if they've never been to the Empire State Building and you have.  Taking trips to learn things together, experience it all over again creates memories that will last a lifetime.  

A Relationship is not a 5 year goal

Recently I had a conversation with one of the “Angels” (are I refer to my girlfriends as “Angels” in reference to “Charlie’s Angels” since we all are one in the same) about relationships.  Remember in our 20’s we’d daydream that we’d be married by such and such age, have kids by such and such age, etc.  How it had to be planned just so, that we’d waste too much time if we waited til our 30’s to do anything because we’d be too old and tired to chase around our children.  Back then we were impatient, we had it all wrong.  Back then we were trying to play catch up with the rest of our friends, to comply with societies standards “must get married in 20s and have kids before 30”.  Back then getting married was every girls dream (with subconscious peer pressure applied).  Don’t misquote me because I would get married again, (the dress, the party, the bridal party, etc – I loved planning my wedding) but not to play catch up with the rest of my friends.  I don’t feel the pressure that I felt back then.  Now it’s different, maybe because I’ve ‘been there, done that’, the premise is different.  She mentioned how she spent an hour talking (not texting) with the guy she recently met and how different that was compared to others she met in the past (maybe the romantic gesture of a conversation via phone call is coming back after all these years).  That when they went out to dinner it felt as if they were the only people in the room.  She wants to get married, but its not #1 on her list, it’s not a 5 year goal.   We agreed that the pressure of getting married (aka finding the one) is different, its not about starting a family anymore, but being happy in one’s life, being with someone who makes you happy, who ‘gets you’, who you are in love with, having the independence to still have your own life (meaning go out with your friends whether single or married) and to come home to that person, wrap your arms around them, plant a huge kiss and say “I missed you”.  Sharing interests and learning new ones, spending a life together not a life dictated because its what your families would want, but what you as a couple want.  

Granted in our 30’s its a lot harder to find someone without an agenda, that fits our dummied down list of requirements, someone we can’t wait to see again.  Once you do, once you are comfortable with that relationship (ring or not), there shouldn’t be a ‘when are we getting married?” dark cloud hanging over that relationship imposed by anyone.  If you both put in the effort to be together, to make each other happy, fill each other’s lives with surprises, laughter, love and the occasional bad hair day then you don’t need a wedding ring to express that.  To roll over in the morning and see that groggy smile followed by a ‘good morning’ is all I need.  I don’t need society to imply rules on how I should go about my relationship as long as I am happy.