In sickness...

I had two recent ah-ahs about dating after 55.

Actually the first Ah-ah is not so recent, it has been an ever present reality since my boys were born. When my baby boys were sick, I mean really sick and they have been really sick, like hospital sick, undiagnosed sick, long recovery sick, out of country sick, physically-mentally-emotionally-soulfully and spiritually sick, for me time, other interests, my own well-being and all my focus was to to ensure the well-being of my boys. Nothing was more important that. Nothing.

There was a time when no one was diagnosing my eldest correctly and I obsessed on the 20 year old internet almost 24/7. When he had a surgery that did not go optimally if anyone had asked for a glass of water I am not sure I would have known what they were talking about. Years of one challenge after another to their well being and I have two beautiful adult men who I am very proud of.

And ...these over 6ft men are still my baby boys. One was recently hospitalized and needed emergency surgery. Time stopped. I was helpless. I disassociated from everything except obsessing about his well being. The only other important being in my life was my other son. I called him and talked for as long as he would have me.

This is not going to stop. They are my priority. Is it possible for me to have a romantic priority? I would like to think so. I want a romantic priority. I just don't know how to create it out of nothing. I could see falling for an old flame or someone I had history with. Can I create a new history without old memories, just the desire to create new one's, explore new horizons, new possibilities, new love. I would adore this! It's the who and the how I am in wonderment about.

Awhile ago a date asked me if my son was ill would I always go to him, I am sure I looked at him as if he was one of those brain eating giant squid (or something like that) they wrote about in Rolling Stone's article on Goldman Saks. Of course I would go!!!!

His response was that he would then never be a priority. What?? Is this sane or insane? Do I act, feel, think like other human beings. Have I been so otherwise occupied that I have missed a step in humanity's evolution. If I have I am not sorry. Just confused. Bewildered.

I am now so upset, I can't remember what the other Ah-ha was.

The "D" words

Thank you my dearest tribe of friends you have inspired me to continue.

When I was dating in my teens through my thirties I had several requirements for whom I was going to date and mate with, some I have just recently discovered that I had.

1. Intelligence beyond the norm. I grew up with a brilliant father with a photographic memory.
2. The ability to "read" people from all sorts of life and thus have friends from all walks of life like my father. One of my father's saying that I will always remember is that "Even hit men mow the little old ladies lawn down the block." Not the type of wisdom from Father Knows Best or Leave it to Beaver but that was the kind of Dad I had.
3. I definitely knew I needed someone on an evolving spiritual path. That came from me as I had visions, saw dead people, had poltergiest and saw auras up into my thirties. Something about having children changed all that for me. But discovering ways to experience the divine has always been a priority. so I needed a willing participant or an already on the path kind of guy.
4. Kindness was not a value I grew up with but it became a fundamental value that goes along with intelligence, tolerant and spiritual very nicely if you ask me.
5. Had to like what you smelled like of course!
6. And then would you make a good partner to have children with? My biological clock was almost like having Tourette's syndrome, it drove me crazy, I couldn't think without the whole hormonal body-emotions-mind-soul-spirit thing being an ever present entity, a separate personna that would never leave. In the end I chose well. A great father he is. But we are not together anymore. I take great responsibility for that. But I have learned many things about me and about men during and since that time.

So what is different now? Well scratch out #6 and add

1. I need someone who has been in therapy, a recovery program or just about every human potential experience possible because I have been there and done that. ALMOST my whole family have been active participants in these conversations. This is a new discovery. The recovery programs I have found are like these hidden jewels where you can explore what is between you and your Buddah nature for a dollar. And they exist all over the world hidden in plain sight as the TV show is called. For me self actualization is where it is at and it is entertainment.
2. It has to be ok with both of us that the first D", disability has touched me and will most likely touch you. Will you be not just ok with that but encouraging, accepting, supportive, gentle, thoughtful and kind. I now know what that feels like. Thank you E and S. So you can't fool me. I also know me and I can be that person, I have been that person for others including my beloved grandmother, who I guided through 15 years of Alzheimer's to death. I am a great companion-advocate-warrior-nurture person. AND last but not least
3. Will I want to look into your eyes and hold you when I am dying. Will I want to do the same for you. The latter is an easier question for me. Such is my nature. Yes, death is the second "D"word.

So how does one incorporate all this? I am looking for the last great love of my life so this has to be addressed or does it? I carry those thoughts with me every time I go out or meet someone new.

Do I need a lobotomy? More intense therapy? Drugs? What is the answer to this. #3 is now as important as #6 was when I was searching for the one to have children with. Since heaven won't help me you all have to be my heaven. I need your advice!!!!

And I know this is a heavy one but I had to get it out of the way, next will be the perfume thing, lighter I promise!

Why?

I am starting this blog because I, a fairly attractive yet aging woman, find dating after 55 totally and completely confusing if not somewhat ridiculous.

What I really want is to miraculously discover a few men I feel totally comfortable with, that I can laugh and cry with, discuss life and children and pets with, and then without any guilt about not choosing the others, choose the one I find most attractive and He would of course find me to be mutually endearing and that would be that. I know this is not reality.

I have a feeling, but no certainty (I was able to get the name of this blog with no problem after all), that I am not alone in finding that dating is even more challenging now than it was in high school.

Oh my god oh my god oh my god. I said it.

The chemistry is different. Life patterns, rituals, annoying habits have been set. Children have been had or not had. Few women unless they are crazy or blessed, want or can have babies after 55. Men can produce a child almost up until the day they die. For women after 55 evolution has done it's work. Does this mean, evolutionarily speaking of course, that Mother Nature doesn't care if women over 55 all jumped off a cliff? I really mean it.

Of course we can all continue to be great mothers, achievers, creators of legacies but does evolution care? And why does that matter? Attractors. What becomes the attractors for women over 55 who want to be in a romantic relationship? What are the attractors for men over 65?

Why do I say over 65 for men? Because most men I know under 65 still think that young women find them attractive. For most men this is an illusion created by cars and bank accounts, but it continues nevertheless, until after 65 when there is no escaping the reality of why Bambi is still in the house.

Most of us female over 55'ers can no longer be trophy wives unless we are Lauren Hutton, multi-millionaires or have had so much surgery that it's a bit creepy.

Really, what are the attractors for us female elders, ancient of dayers (I refuse the word crone! Who the hell came up with that anyway? You might as well say old witch. I would prefer that.)

There are plenty of Discovery channel shows on what the attractors are for young ovulating women. We now know that women go from disliking the scent of men to craving the scent of men when they are ovulating. Interesting? No? Yes? I think yes. We now know that the perfume industry was created so women would like the smell of men 7 days a week. Now I guess the first thing I have to do is go find a male perfume I like and give it potential dates and see if I am driven to a frenzy. If I give the scent to men I really don't care about will I do really stupid things? Interesting social experiment here.

Men evidently always like the scent of women who have the strongest immune systems unlike there own. There is then a rather large crowd for them to choose from.

Anyway I have been wondering if I put my feelings and thoughts out there would I;

1. Find my feelings and thoughts totally confirmed which would convince me to refrain from dating forever

2. Find that I was totally out of sync and therefore so embarrassed that I would be self-exiled from dating forever or

3. Find souls of similar ilk and we could put our toes gently back into the proverbial dating seas together.

Technical blog details:

I am putting my blog in bold because my eyesight is just what half of the "THEYS" said would happen to eyes over 55. "THEY" said that my eyes would have problems like they would need special bifocal glasses, or surgery or new and improved bifocal contact lenses, which don't really work but vanity requires that I use them. THEY were right.

Of course the other half of the "THEYS" kept repeating like a mantra for 42 years that if you were nearsighted your eyes would get better as you got older. Totally and completely WRONG. Probably said at first to make a child who needed glasses since the second grade feel better about the whole crummy deal. But "THEY" just kept saying it and saying it until I was about fifty when "they" started telling me that everything that the other "THEYS" had been telling me was all wrong. I felt totally and completely ripped off! I had been waiting 42 years for that magical moment when my eyes would be fine and I could look at those with the magnifying glasses from Walgreens with fake pity. DAMN!!!!

So bold it is unless a bunch of you tell me bold is over done, obnoxious and actually harder to read.

Dating;

So back to the concept of dating when you have been receiving the AARP magazine for more than half a decade....AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! I can't stand that I can say that! Really I can't. I can't breathe, I have to go lay down....later.....

Many deep sighs and connected breaths have been required to continue this conversation.

I actually have found that breathing into a paper bag for ten minutes really helps but I since I don't have one handy, I also find pulling the quilt over my head and disappearing for half an hour or so, as if I am some sort of subterranean creature, does the same trick.

O.K. so back at it, yes back to the subject at hand but first another logistical detail (am I avoiding something...? Not sure...) anyway I am going to divide thought groups into topics that might or might not be revisited later.

For example;

Does no biological clock vibes mean Mother Nature doesn't want you to date anymore?

Not sure.

I find dating without that biological clock that would drive me to blindly seek out and discover the strongest- bestest- alpha male available, kind of disconcerting. There is a big WHY am I doing this that still needs to be discovered.

I have a small group of wonderful men friends, most of whom I have already had a romantic relationship with and the issues that broke us up then, for the most part, still exist now. Surprise? Not. So who wants to go back there? Been there done that, so then now what?

Some why I don't date thoughts and feelings (more later);

Can't do guilt

I really don't want to "HAVE" to do things with someone just because I am dating them. If I really don't want to go to that art show or garden in the back yard and that is what they really, really feel like doing but I don't, what I really, really don't want to do is feel GUILTY that I don't want to, won't do or go or what have you. I am so over feeling guilty about anything. My 1/4 Jewish genes are screaming in protest but so be it. Shalom and shut up!

Can't do the B word

And then of course there is this tiny little detail about me which is that I am not a breakfast person. A cup of coffee or three or a pot of tea does me just fine. Occasionally I will throw berries and a piece of toast into the mix. That is is it though. Men tend to like breakfast for some reason that has always escaped me. Even my sons liked breakfast. They did not get the breakfast gene from me.

Cooking in general

I feel like I have cooked enough this lifetime to only want to either do it on special occasions ( which might just be on an odd Thursday, or for an un-Birthday or because I feel like it) or because someone is sick and needs something in particular (in which case I will over do it). So what do I say to the hearty "let's fix breakfast!" types?

My sociable hermit self revealed

And then oh-my-god-oh my-god!! what do I do with this person that I like enough to go to dinner with, spend a few months of going to movies, walks on trails in the woods with, gone to an art opening, maybe brought to dinner with my friends and then finally I have him in my bed but I definitely don't want him around the next day, even though I will want to see him later in the week (not that I have such a person at the moment)?

Sidebar Notes

( I promise I won't say anything about the father of my children or any male friend that I still talk to once a year)

The last man I dated, one of those mathematical genius types that happened to be really quite good looking, had panic attacks after a night of great sex. Issues of commitment, changing, creativity, self awareness, attachment and hurting those he loved all rushed over his psyche like people in Grand Central Station around 5 p.m. That was usually fine with me as he had to leave before breakfast and collect himself for a few days. Unfortunately for other reasons it just didn't work out. How likely am I to find another one of those?

These and a blogs worth of other thoughts are a few of the challenges that keep me from wanting to date at all. And yet I find myself inexorably, like salmon or something, thinking once again that it might be nice to have someone to cuddle up with, watch a movie and talk about the order of things. And yes of course there is the sex thing.

Other topics to include, online dating, better off alone, better off not alone, 100 good reasons to not be in a romantic relationship (not a problem), 100 reasons to be in a romantic relationship (problem), Dealing with the regrets of dreams un-manifested, roads not taken, the death do you part thing that now has some reality to it, and other things as they come up.

Do you have other topics? Thoughts? Opinions?