Had a mental breakdown posting on Facebook the other day. Something vague about being overload with decisions, the consequences of making a wrong choice and problems, one right after another… the venting of a single mom frustrated and stressed with bills, house repairs, car repairs, a bitter vengeful ex not paying child support…in addition to her confusing journey back into the dating world.
After 15 years of living and being loyal to the same guy, getting back into dating has taken some courage on my part. I keep asking my friends and family what the rules are these days about dating and I feel old for even asking. The irony about the feeling is that it’s the younger guys who are asking me out. Why? Do guys like older women? Are older women easier to take advantage of, especially recently divorced ones?
I’ve been told I don’t look my age, that I look a lot younger. I’ve also been told I’m a catch. Self-esteem still slightly shattered after the ex left me once again and for the last time to follow his dreams, I find it difficult to believe I’m a catch, but I’m working on it. And flattering as it all is, I worry a lot about going out with younger men. A part of me feels like a pedophile or that in some way going out with them is robbing them of precious time. Younger guys, men in their mid to late 20s are more often than not ready to settle down, get married and have children and I… I’m not ready to settle down yet. Going out with me would be a waste of time if that’s what they’re looking for.
I don’t knock the idea of settling down and getting married again in the far future, but in the near future life is about discovering me, who I am, what I want and having fun meeting new people. A small part of it is to also get into the minds of men, understand why they lie and cheat, what they want… I know not all men are liars and cheaters. Just don’t know how to tell them apart yet. Picking out the bad guys from the good ones is, to say the least, difficult.
Right now I don’t know that I am even ready to trust anyone with my heart again. After the bastard of an ex of mine stomped on mine, cut it to shreds and then poured buckets of lime and salt all over it, I’m a bit jaded. But thinking back, stepping outside the box, a bad guy is similar to a bad seed. Put a bad seed in a bowl of water and if it floats to the top its bad. It takes seconds to discover it is no good. Why stick it in the dirt and wait weeks to see if it will grow and fruit? It is a waste of time, space and hope.
A woman’s bowl is the heart. A woman’s gut is the water to float the bad seed in: Had I listened to my heart and followed my gut I would have known early on that my ex was a bad seed. Had I checked his credit report, taken his bounced checks more seriously, really took to heart that he spent the money for our wedding on his dreams instead, even if he knew my heart was set on a wedding, a simple inexpensive wedding in the backyard with my family and his. He didn’t even spend a dime to take me to a bed and breakfast for a thrifty honeymoon.
When he spent hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars from our low paying jobs on stupid electronics, gadgets, lottery tickets while we could sometimes barely make the rent….that was the biggest clue…I was blinded by his “love” I guess.
Had I been been more attentive to the fact that after several years in college he was barely a freshmen when we first married and that after 11 yrs of marriage he still didn’t graduate, but somehow still managed to incur more than $50,000 in student loans. Why do banks keep giving guys like him loans. They will never pay it back.
Had I paid more attention to the respect and love he lacked for his mother and how he always spoke ill of her. He’d say she was manipulative. This is the same man that would often come to her, big hazel puppy eyes, when he’d screw again financially and depend on her to rescue him with her hard earned money. She was manipulative no doubt, racist, deeply in denial (especially about his behavior) and a few other thing, but my dad always said a man that does not love his mother will not love his wife. My dad was right. I should have listened. Irony now, is that now that the ex is in debt beyond belief and still using his mom to dig him out of the hole he is in, he’s telling his girlfriends how manipulative his mom is, according to his most recent ex girlfriend, who contacted me after he cheated on her. He also telling them that I’m the one taking all his money. I wish that were true…but living on welfare and off my own hard earned income without child support…. Have bank statements to prove it.
Had I listened more to his stories/lies and how the timelines and details often contradicted each other I would have been able to catch his lies sooner. Had I…. I could go on, but had I stopped to think at all I heard and saw and felt before the marriage and during the marriage I would have noticed him floating to the top of the bowl from the very beginning. I would have saved myself years of pain and seeing sides of myself I hated. I turned into an ugly ugly person inside and out. The uglier I got the more depressed I got. The signs were always there I was just too young and to dumb to accept or believe or understand or I don’t know. I comfort myself with the knowledge that sometimes it takes mistakes to create miracles and my children, my miracles are worth all the pain and ugliness and loneliness I had to endure.
Now… now I have friends and family who joke about taking my new-found freedom and date and do it for the nooky/nookie… that this is what guys are after anyhow. Right?
I’m not going to lie, getting some nookie from beautiful young men has crossed my mind a gazillion times. I mean come on I’m in my 30s after all and they say a woman in her 30s is like a man in his late teens. Its true too! Sex is on my mind 24/7. I find I often have to hold back making sexual connotations about things I see, hear and think about. That’s what she said…. It’s hilarious and at the same time embarrassing. People are often shocked that I can be as “dirty” as I am. Guess my big brown puppy eyes give off the impression of sweetness and innocence. In a way this is true. I may be of a sexual mindset, raging hormones galore, but I don’t have it in me to use people just for sex (diff tween an 18yr old boy and a 30 something yr old woman) especially when I know the guys interested in me are looking for more than just my nookie.
Dating has recently become even more complicated when a good friend of mine (I consider him my best friend) and I have finally come to terms with how we feel about each other (stepped out of the denial box) despite the fact that we have both stated we are in no way ready to ruin our friendship or in any way settle down. We’ve agreed we have no issues dating other people. This is what we are telling each other anyways even after….
It becomes awkward when a friend of his (who has no idea about the situation, not even our friendship) invites me to the movies and then a bbq. The bbq is tonight… I’ve kindly asked him for a rain check again…he gave me a time and place incase I changed my mind. Tired of feeling lonely, but do I date a friend of a friend I like even though there is no chance of my friend and I being more than friends for more than just the reasons I explained above?
