Don't Buy the Lie!

If you’ve been divorced (or never married) and are in midlife, male or female, you’ve heard time and time again that you shouldn’t NEED someone in your life.  You are ENOUGH by yourself.  You need to LOVE being single.  You have read articles and list after list of all the reasons why you should be so blessed to be all YOU need in your life! 

No one needs these lists for being coupled.  You don’t have to be told by a thousand experts why you are lucky to be in a healthy, loving relationship.  You don’t have to be told because already know!  No one has to remind you why companionship, affection, acceptance and comfort is good…our whole being…mind, soul, heart and body knows it’s good.    

So why do people work so hard to convince us that being single is the ultimate, and only after you find yourself incidentally single?  Doesn’t society tell us from day one that the ultimate goal is to be married with a white picket fence and 2.2 perfect children, a well-paying job, new cars, enviable vacations and plenty of fabulous friends? 

But the second we find ourselves uncoupled, well, we have to hear endless people, including all the “experts” tell us why we are lucky. Then almost in the same breath, those who care for us pummel us with questions about our status…are you dating?  Are you dating anyone special?  Then when you answer no, you see their disappointed faces and either you tell them some line about why you aren’t looking (even if you are) or they tell you how the world is your oyster and you should be loving it.

It can’t be both ways, folks! 

Now granted, if you’ve been through a midlife divorce, you have undoubtedly had people come out of the woodwork to tell you how much they dislike being married.  Or you can now use your post-divorce-spidey-sense to see that many people really aren’t happy with their relationships despite how happy they make it look on facebook. 

Honestly, it’s the ‘experts’ (who by and large, aren’t even single) that go on and on about how we need to be content with our singleness.  Even in my church-going days, the married women would say…”Once you are content being single is when your husband will come along.”  Really?  No!  This is why the second any of us, male or female, meet someone we have a spark and connection with we turn into mushy teenagers at the speed of lightning! 

We are also urged to appear fierce in our singleness, neglect vulnerability and therefore feel we can’t openly express our very basic God-given need…which is relationship.  And heaven forbid we be real about this common need on a dating profile!  The person of the opposite sex has now been programmed to read that must be needy, clingy, desperate or looking for a sugar daddy if you mention your real desire to find someone.  Um…hello!  Aren’t we on dating websites to find love?  Let’s just agree to be real about THAT little known fact, which by the way, is backed by a two billion industry.  Yeah, those moguls are laughing all the way to the bank at the games we play and the lies we’ve bought into that prevent us from really finding love and keep us coming back for more…because they know unless we change our mindset, we will make the same mistakes time and again. 

Don’t get me wrong…I’m a pretty independent person.  I’m determined, driven when I want to be, intuitive and a great problem solver.  I’m also an introvert by nature (except in the bedroom), a fairly peaceful and quiet person (again, except in the bedroom)…and I NEED and crave alone time (except in the bedroom!)  There are things I enjoy about being single and being free of expectations someone else might put on me.  But what if it brings MORE joy to my life to be able to cook for someone else, to do something loving or sacrificial for the person I care about vs doing that same thing JUST for myself.   What if fulfilling those expectations for someone else, which is the ultimate expression of love, actually makes your life better?

I don’t need a man to complete me.  Nor would I want to be with a man who needed someone to complete him.  I’ve always liked the 1 x 1=1 thinking about couples versus the two halves make a whole.  But I do want to complement him and for him to complement me.  (That’s complement…as in add value to or enhance, but compliments are always great, too!)  I am looking for a man that makes me a better version of myself and I would like to feel I am the same for him.  This, of course, doesn’t mean when I am not dating someone I am a lesser person, either.

What’s wrong with admitting we would like someone to eat dinner with at the end of the day, discuss our happenings, world events and laugh at life’s little mishaps?  What’s wrong with wanting to wake up with someone who doesn’t look their best in the morning?  What’s wrong with knowing your coffee time would be just a little better if you were sitting snuggled close to someone on the couch?  Then there’s knowing that parties are harder to go to alone and having someone to just call or text during the day when it’s a particularly good one or even when it’s not so good, makes the day just a little bit better.  And of course, sex…don’t even TRY to pretend it’s better alone…as I always say…(okay, Marvin Gaye said it first) “Ain’t nothing like the real thing, baby!”  And those that would argue no-strings-attached sex is more desirable to sex with a loving partner who you can sexually engage any time you want, I say “Bollocks!”   

So I’m giving myself permission and I’d love for yourself permission, too…sure we can be complete, whole and emotionally stable singletons who aren’t desperate to be completed by some other person.  We can be strong, we can know what we want….and what we want is to find love!  It’s okay to admit it to yourself!  It’s okay to say it out loud!    It’s okay to put on your dating profile!  It’s okay to share with your date!  It’s okay to be who really are, to freely feel and express what you really need…that’s confidence, that’s independence, that’s damn sexy!  

An Ode to the Leg Man

Well, not an Ode exactly because I’m not a poet, we’ll just call it a tribute!   As you know, based on my “purely anecdotal research”, I believe there are broad-based personality traits that accompany a breast man, leg man and ass man.  You can read more about my theories here: http://datingaftervirginityanddivorce.blogspot.com/2013/09/what-kind-of-man-is-he.html

As I stated before, I really needed to have the opportunity to be with another leg man, preferably one who wasn’t British and I finally got my chance.  And you know what I figured out?  I’m a leg-man girl, I mean woman!  It’s not that I don’t completely enjoy being with the Alpha Ass-man, I do.  But if some cosmic force made me choose between a leg man, ass man or breast man for the rest of my life, there’s no question how it would play out.   I would scoff at the thought of being with a breast man the rest of my life…in fact, as much as I like sex, I might become celibate!   Choosing an ass man would be a great option, but from my own personal experience, they like the ‘quick and dirty’ and are more men of action than words which definitely have its place.  Undoubtedly,  I would proudly, excitedly and confidently choose the leg man! 

My recent leg man did amazing things to my body, from head to toe, from hip to hip, from ear to ear, my whole body.  He didn’t just check off the usual actions to get what he ultimately wants, but instead, lavished his touch all over me.   I felt worshipped, I felt all my body flaws were completely unnoticed, I felt beautiful and I felt the most relaxed I’d ever felt with someone the first time I’d been with them.  

I’ve often described that the feeling of being with a leg man is the same for me as that feeling after you’ve had a massage at a nice spa.   You know that calm, quiet, warm, relaxed feeling when the therapist leaves the room…that’s how I feel while I’m with a leg man.  A leg man knows how to seduce my mind far before he starts to seduce my body…and that my friends, is a REAL man!  The relaxation I find is not just from the way he touches me, or knows my mind, it’s also the joy of doing things I enjoy doing to him, getting to know his body, his turn-ons and the collaboration of our creativity in exploring each other.  

It’s like poetry in motion, a beautiful storm, a flight of freedom, a safe place to just BE.  It’s being touched mind and body by a leg man.

Throwing out "The Rules"

Anyone up for a bonfire?   Let's burn some rules, kick it old-school like in the 60s!  No, I’m not ready to get rid of the tools in my midlife dating toolbox, but I am embracing the need to get rid of "the rules". 

If you’ve been in the midlife dating game for very long and are a seeker of information like me, then you have read articles, maybe books too and searched online forums to find out what the hell we are all supposed to be doing.  Being that understanding the opposite sex is an age-old problem, even once you got past the whole “How do I get back out there?” question, you then have the “What did he really mean when he did or said X, Y and Z?”  Or for you male readers, “What is it she really wants from me?” 

In my online digging, I’ve unfortunately found that most advice is something that, at my inner core, goes totally against my gut.  I’m an open book, I mean, I’m the gal who will tell the lady checking me out at the register at Target anything about myself if its topical.  I am who I am, most of the time, or at least that is always my goal.  But since dating after divorce, I’ve found I occasionally have some insecurities that link me back to my days in college where I wonder incessantly what is really going on with my ‘crush’.  Of course, my goals were different then, but that may or may not matter in the grand scheme of things.  Lets be honest, no matter your age there’s nothing like the excitement of someone new to make you realize you can easily be turned into a horny and emotional teenager again.

Some of the icky things you will find if you go hunting are websites purely devoted to teaching men how to be pick-up artists and books telling women they will never get and keep a man if they aren’t a bitch to him, supposedly turning men into a mold-able pile of goo to do whatever you desire.   On top of that, there’s a whole system of who is the 1+ and the -1, which is a precarious balance of trying to make sure you are always the “One up” so you have the “one down” exactly where you want them.  Sweet Brown said it best, “Ain’t nobody got time for that!” 

I even was part of an online dating forum for mid-lifers that I stumbled upon when my short-but-too-serious-too-fast quasi-relationship started to end and I needed some male perspective.   Yes, I definitely found the advice there helpful as I began to really get some sea legs in the dating pond, but sometimes the advice was really bad.   Over time, though, I began to realize that the members there were a very specific and narrow-minded microcosm and being an open-minded gal,  I needed a much broader perspective.  There was a lot of talk about the above tactics, as well as, narrow thinking of who you had to be to attract the type of person you should be with.

The other night I was at a meetup group event.  The men and women ranged from late 20s to early 50s, most single, but a few married people too.  There was a subset of women huddling together throughout the night talking about their latest guy drama.  Ever the midlife-dating sociology student, the whole exchange intrigued me greatly.  If I had to wrap it all up, there were a few women who had given the man in question their “goodies” and then it all changed.  It didn’t matter how long they dated before the goodies were given, the results seemed to be the same …they weren’t texting, they weren’t calling so the women were doing what we do…over-analyzing every freaking possibility known to man.  When the men were brought into the conversation for advice, they said “sex is just sex to men” but there is something about the dynamics changing once that tension is relieved, the hunter has had his kill, (no matter how many more times he wants it again) that usher in a whole new set of complex rules!  

But what would happen if we threw all of those rules out?  What if we texted when we wanted to text (so long you aren’t texting at the rate of him needing to take out a restraining order)…or what if we said what we really felt or did what we really wanted?   Not in a selfish way, because when someone asked me for a definition about a month ago of both great love and amazing sex, I said “both are about constantly submitting to the other persons wants and needs.  If you are both doing this then you are both getting your own needs met as well.”

I guess we need to ask ourselves “Why date?  What is our goal?’  I would respond to that question different ways at different times over the past year and a half, as I’ve had different needs along the way.  However, my first answer is usually “I anticipate the joy of loving someone!”  And, I want to be loved too.  I’m pretty simple at the base as I care nothing about being wined and dined or traveling the world…I just want someone to sit with me on a quiet morning drinking coffee, to take a long walk with, share deep talks with, having rocking sex with, but mostly BE KNOWN.    

So why do we buy into all the trappings, ie rules of modern dating?  

   *You can’t say what you really feel until a certain amount of time has passed.  

     *You can’t be the first to text.  

        *You can’t ask a man out.  

           *You can’t let them meet your kids until one thing or the other happens.  

               *You can’t let them think you like them more than they like you.  

On and on and on the list goes, and that’s before you get to all of the rules surrounding proclamation of the “L word!”

Read this quote from the book, "If the Buddha Dated":

“Our longing is also our desire to be known completely.  Imagine having your beloved look tenderly into your eyes, knowing all your secrets, having seen you be crabby and sweet, selfish and generous, and still truly loving you.  Imagine being able to do the same.  That is the potential of a conscious relationship.”

Wow!  Who doesn’t want that? 

So friends, anyone want to join me in a bonfire?  I’m making a conscious effort to throw all of “the rules”…It's a good thing my trash runs in a few hours because I'm pretty sure bonfires at my apartment building are against "the rules"!