Dating After 40: A Handbook for Men

You know I love the field. Sometimes I agree with him, sometimes I don't, but he usually never fails to make me think. On Valentine's Day, he posted Mrs. field's 10 rules of dating. In keeping with my experience of the field, some hit home, some missed the mark, and several just made me chuckle. So in Daktari's world of post-40 dating, I'd like to give the guys some advice. Oh, and this might come in handy for your fellows under 40, too.

Let's just say that I agree with Ms. field on two of her rules and will simply repeat them here verbatim.

1. Do not expect your date to pay a dime on your first five dates. After five, the conventional wisdom is that you will know each other well enough for her to offer to pick up a tip, pay the cab fare, or the cost of two movie tickets. And make sure you know what type of food she likes before you make those reservations. Might not be cool to take her to a sea food restaurant if she is allergic to sea food.

11. On your first date, remember, only a hug goodnight. No more. Brothers, I know it can be hard sometimes, but believe me, if your date went well, there will be lots more to come later. A sister knows the moment she lays eyes on you if she is going to give you some. It might take awhile, or not so long, but if she is going to give you some only you can ruin it for yourself.

On #1. I went on a date last Saturday. He picked me up and informed me he was hungry, why didn't we get a bite. He had no idea what he wanted to eat (strike 1), but he had a taste for pizza. Ok, I'm lactose intolerant and the last thing I want is to be unable to avoid cheese on a date. Can you say "bathroom disaster"? I was in an unfamiliar town and didn't know what they had in the way of restaurants so was unable to offer any meaningful suggestions. I suggested a fish restaurant only to learn that he doesn't eat fish. Not now. Not ever. He's never tried more than 3 kinds of fish in his life but all fish tastes "fishy". Well, d'uh. So we passed a Culver's (which is sort of upscale fast food) and I suggested we go in. And really, despite Ms. field saying no fast food on dates, I was okay with it. So in we go. As a courtesy, I offered to buy lunch. He accepted. In fact, he said, "I guess I can be submissive and let you buy me lunch." Ugh.

Ummmm. Helloooooooooooooo. Who asked who out here? So yeah, I'm sitting through the entire lunch thinking this guy is 1) a cheapskate mo fo, 2) a bucked tooth yokel, and 3) a submissive user. He's sitting through the entire lunch telling me how I spoil him. Trust me, baby. I know how to spoil a man, and lunch at Culver's ain't it. Let's just suffice it to say that Mr. Saturday Night is unlikely to earn that spoiling given his ineptitude at dating.

Ok, I can hear you now. "D. Seriously. If you didn't want to pay for lunch, why did you offer?" Don't look at me that way. You KNOW you have offered to do things that you never expected someone to actually take you up on. But I will give you two good reasons for why I did.

First, when it comes to moving a relationship from that "I have to watch my every move so as not to screw this thing up" phase (or as I like to call it the "I really want to impress this woman so she will lower her standards enough to sleep with me" phase), to the "I can relax and be myself around her" phase (alternatively, the "I can burp, fart, and scratch in front of this chick! How great is that? phase), men are notorious for preternaturally pushing the relationship into the second and seeking to shorten the first. You can't blame a woman for wanting to prolong Phase One before settling into Phase Two for the long-haul. When a woman offers to do something clearly in Phase Two during a time when she should expect to be in Phase One, it's a test fellas. It is the quickest way to get a feel for a man's plan for the future with you. Accept too early and it is clear he doesn't expect to have to spoil you for long. In fact, he's done already. What sort of impression do you think that Mr. Saturday Night made in accepting my offer?

Two. Any man who is willing to let a woman buy the meal before he has sealed the deal is also likely to come to expect things that should only be seen as extreme and generous gifts. I married a man who refused to keep a steady job and expected me to work, support his way of life, and not mention how tired I was of his lazy, ignorant ass. Trust me. I ain't going there again. I'm no man's sugar mama.

Oh, and then there's Three. You asked me on a date, you pay for the date. All of it. In it's entirety. End of discussion. And speaking of preternaturally jumping into Phase Two, Mr. Saturday Night actually talked with pride of his farts.

D-rule #3. Do not speak of your farts. Not in the beginning of the relationship. Not in the middle of the relationship. Not in the end of the relationship. Your farts are your business and the only thing you need to know about farts and your girlfriend/spouse is that if humanly possible, never the two should meet. Oh, a girl can handle the occassion slip up, but if you think that farting and holding her head under the covers is big fun, you should be dropped off on a deserted island and left there. If you think it is simply hilarious to let go of a SBD in the car in the winter and say nothing until the smell has permeated everyone's clothing, at the very least, should earn you a breakup/divorce. And ladies? Given a sympathetic jury pool, this behavior might even get you off for homicide. You know. If you have a working knowledge of the scoring of "fart contests", stop dating now. Don't even consider passing your genes on to another generation. You are an evolutionary dead end.

While I think this should be sufficient knowledge to understand why I will not see Mr. Saturday Night again, let us continue.

D-rule #4. Have a plan. Dates are not times to start driving around and thinking about what you want to do. Mr. Saturday Night pulled up next to a movie marquee and asked if I was interested in any of the movies. I was interested in one, which he had already seen. He was interested in another, but informed me that it would be available for illegal download soon, so he didn't want to pay to see it. Cheapskate mo-fo bucked-tooth yokel. Dayum.

D-rule #5. Do not volunteer information or perform actions that makes you look closed-minded, ridiculously childlike, or unworldly. While pride of your region is one thing, "I'm proud to say, I have never been outside of Missouri" is quite another. Think before you say something like, "I don't eat fish. It tastes fishy." Don't stick out your tongue and make "blech" noises when someone says something you don't like. Don't roll your eyes.

D-rule #5. Manners and courtesy matter. Don't let your date, who just bought you lunch that she shouldn't have paid for get up and refill her soda glass and yours, you cheapskate mo-fo, bucked tooth yokel.

D-rule #6. When the time comes for a little loving, adhere to the Boy Scout mantra. Be prepared. You should a) have condoms, b) be experienced in their use and operation, c) offer to use them without making her ask. No matter how sexy you find it, you should always, always, always roll your own (or more appropriately, unroll your own) the first five or ten times. Nuff said?

D-rule #7. When it comes to sex, realize that the first time isn't going to be great. You are nervous. She is nervous. You just want to get some. She has a world of body-image baggage that she has to unload right in front of you. She is waaaaaaaaaaay too worried about how her ass looks from that angle to worry about what feels good. Listen to me very carefully now felllas. If you are faced with a naked woman for the first time--and you want there to be a second and third time--what you do at this point is critical for the future of the relationship. Tell her she's beautiful. I don't care how hot you are or how steamy it is between you, at that moment, you can earn a lifetime of brownie points just by saying something incredibly nice. Nice is a sincere comment that she can repeat to all her girlfriends on the phone tomorrow. You want to be this guy:

"We took off our clothes and he looked at me so lovingly, then hugged me so tight and said "You are absolutely stunning. I'm the luckiest man alive." Girl, I thought I'd die right there in his arms."

You don't want to be this guy:

"Girl, he slipped my shirt over my head and grabbed both the girls, made a loud honking noise, and said "I hit the jackpot!"

And finally, gentlemen, don't be mad if it doesn't happen for her. We girls are as tired of faking orgasms as you are of learning many months later that we did. Oh, she didn't fake it with YOU. Un huh. You just keep thinking that, cowboy. Sometimes it takes a while to learn a woman's body. If you are in the right zip code, we're likely to give you another chance at hitting the lottery. But the "I'm not going to stop until you are satisfied" may sound charming and courteous in your head, we hear "I'm too big of a man to deal with failure so I'm not going to stop until you either have an orgasm or the ego-stroking apperance of an orgasm." And gentlemen, I can assure you, you are going to get the latter before the former.

D-rule #7. How you end the date is probably the most important part of all. Walk her to the door. At the very least, don't drive off until she's inside. Or in my case, don't drop me off at my car and drive away before I'm inside. Bucked tooth yokel whose mama didn't teach him common decency. In fact, you should offer to start my car and warm it up for me while we chat inside your already warm car. It's 5 minutes and it's an investment that goes a long way.

Sigh.

And the final rule for the night.

D-rule #8. If something goes wrong on your date for your date, don't take two steps back and act like "This ain't my problem, you deal with it." Unless of course, you don't give a flying fig whether you ever speak to this woman again, let alone see her again with the intention of dating. True first date story. A friend of mine got food poisoning on her first date and as they walked home from the restaurant, she began to throw up. The guy held her hair while she vomited in the bushes. They are married now. Sometimes, the date goes horribly, horribly wrong for one or both of you. Credit card is rejected. (Good luck getting a second date with that one, fellas. Might I suggest you always carry cash?) Movie is sold out. (Don't cuss and act like a child who can't get his way when you can't see Batman and have to see Marley and Me.) Myriad things can and will go wrong. Just make sure you handle them well and with regard for your date.

So I gather you got that Mr. Saturday Night is not my dream date. I'm not sure I'm not sure I'm up for teaching a nearly 50-year old man common courtesy and manners. I thought these rules went without saying, but since I had to say them...apparently not.

Why Being Single Sucks

Liv wrote a lovely post about camping. She took it down or the post is otherwise gone AWOL, so I can't link to it, but it did show up in my reader. It was a great post. She should repost it IMO.

Anyhoo, there was a pic in there of her camp mates. Boy-girl, boy-girl, boy-girl. Even if boy-girl aren't exactly the sort of key-and-lock boy-girl parts type relationship, I did notice it. And I thought how I was talking about going on that trip. It'd've been boy-girl, boy-girl, boy-girl, girl. And being that last girl is sometimes just ugh.

Here's the thing about being single. You notice things like everyone else on a trip having a partner. Take camping. Now the obvious lack of a partner can be alleviated somewhat when one has dog in tow, especially if that dog is particularly popular, but when one has old dogs that must stay home, they do the single person no good. And so there is the pitching of the tent alone. And the organizing of dinner alone. And the single camp chair. When it's daylight it is hardly noticeable. And then there's the whole thing at the end of the night just before tent-time when the talk dies down and the couples move their camp chairs a little closer and then all toddle off to their tents with their partners, hand in hand.

About then, I'm usually opening another beer and trying to act like I'm intensely interested in the state of the fire. There's a lot of "no, no, you go on, I'll take care of this" kind of thing. It's been this way a long time. I have been single a long time now. I keep meeting people who don't share my interests. And I refuse to stop doing the things I enjoy just because I'm single, but I am tired of camping alone.

I had a date with Curtis on Saturday. Yes, I agreed to see him after all that pseudonym business. He likes riding go-carts and bowling. His idea of a great vacation is puttering around on a cruise ship, only stepping off to explore one sandy beach after another. I think my opinion of sand has been well documented. He hasn't been fishing since he was a kid. He's never been camping as an adult.

*deep sigh*

I am really tired of camping alone.

Today we are going to play "I Don't F***king Believe It"

I was supposed to have a date last Saturday. It was postponed. I'm actually thankful that it was. Curtis, the gentleman that I canvassed with on the Obama campaign, called me several times, certainly expressing sufficient interest. He sent several emails. Turns out he is living with a woman that "used" to be his girlfriend. Wait! Wait! She is dating someone else. He's met her boyfriend. They just haven't sold the property they own together. He wasn't much motivated to move out on his own and then "poof" he met me.

He can only check his email once every couple of days. He doesn't have an internet connection at home. Hmmmm.

As we were only a first name basis while canvassing, I asked for his last name during the course of our phone conversation. He said his name was Mayfield. I laughed. Curtis Mayfield. I asked him if he was Superfly. Today, when he called with a new cell phone number (??!!!??), he admitted that his name wasn't Mayfield. That was a big joke (at my expense apparently). He signed his text message: Charlie Brown--his nickname apparently. But here's the kicker, when I asked him what his real name is he said he would tell me on Saturday when we met for our date. He wanted to tell me while he was looking in my eyes.

Ummmm. First. That just sounds creepy. Second. Do I have MORON tattooed on my forehead? Thinks I'm going to meet someone who can't even tell me his f***king name?

Step up to the wheel, Curtis....if that is your real name, and take a spin because I DON'T F**king believe it. Let me explain how this looks to the average woman my age who has been around long enough to see it all.

1. You are either married or living with someone and shopping around. You may or may not be willing to leave the wife/girlfriend, it probably depends on how much money she makes and how often she is willing to put out.
2. The new phone is the price of having an affair and keeping said wife/girlfriend in the dark.
3. You can't check your email at home because the computer keeps a record of your internet history and I'll bet your wife/girlfriend isn't stupid. I bet you learned this lesson the hard way.
   
4. The lack of a last name is to either prevent the other woman (me) from doing a background check on you (and oh yes, Curtis, we do background checks), or to prevent us from calling up the wife and innocently asking to speak with you. My, wouldn't that be inconvenient for you.

Is it possible I am wrong? Yes. Is it probable? Not likely. Honestly, sometimes I could just cry.

I know a little about love

Tonight, I want to talk about love. You might not think it to talk to me, hell, you might not think it even if you knew me well, but I miss being in love. For all my bitching about marriage and the utter and absolute failure that mine turned out to be, being in love is...wonderful.

And the fact of the matter is love isn't hard, relationships are. I am the first to admit that half of the problem in my marriage was me, but there seems to be something larger going on here. When it comes to love, my siblings and I suffer from poor mate selection. Three of us are divorced, the fourth getting divorced after having stayed together just for the kids. (Trust me. The kids would have been better off if those two had gotten away from each other years ago.) One brother married a mental ward nurse who stole psychotropic drugs from her patients. My sister married a philandering counterfeiter. I married a pot-smoking, chronically unemployed man whose life ambition seemed to be getting on disability/unemployment without cause. My other brother married what I can only term as the biggest bitch on Earth, and I mean that in a respectful way, because she really had an aptitude for it. Although I have spent hour upon hour reflecting on this matter, I still have no explanation for this universal failure in my family. My parents seemed to have an incredibly life-affirming, strong, healthy, meaningful, and loving relationship. I'd have given anything to have met a man like my father. My sister and I joke that our man-pickers are broken.

The problem with marrying poorly is that you don't rebound like you did from the girlfriend-boyfriend relationships. It took me a full two years post-divorce before I could even think about dating again. But in that down-time, I did a lot of soul-searching and I learned a lot about myself, my desires, my sexual triggers, what I find attractive and what I do not. I don't know if it was the severity of the breakup that caused the intense reflection. When someone tries to kill you, isn't that natural? In any event, I've come to understand my faults, identify my idiosyncrasies, and also to know my own strengths and how I can use them to benefit a relationship. I have worked to tone down the more distasteful parts of my personality. Dare I say that I almost think I might have something valuable to offer someone in a relationship? I think I've achieved some measure of emotional maturity.

At the same time, my tastes have changed. I don't need a bad boy. I know what I find desirable and attractive and for once I can honestly say that if I find him, I doubt he will try to kill me this time. So here I am at 45 thinking maybe, just maybe, I'm ready to try again. So I put on my suit and dared anyone to say something about the way I look in it and I'm ready to dive in.

Unfortunately, someone drained the dating pool.

While small-town America was as good a place as any for undergoing this transformation, it isn't a great place to crawl out of your chrysalis. I've got these boss new wings and no one to flash them in front of. I have isolated myself in the middle of nowhere, over-educated myself, developed some pretty strong opinions, learned to stand on my own two feet, and realized that I don't NEED a man for anything. While that may be very empowering for me, it doesn't exactly put me high on the dating list for the pool of single 30- to 53-year olds in Poontwang, USA.

I'm reminded of those empty-nesters who say that now that they've learned all the lessons and gotten the kids out of the house, they finally feel prepared to raise a child. All that wealth of knowledge just...what? Wasted?

I try to be patient. I try to get out there, wherever there is. I've done the online dating thing. I've been willing to go on blind dates or be set up by friends. I seldom pass up an opportunity to meet new people, to mingle, to try. Nothing has been terribly successful. In the past 8 years, I haven't met one man truly interested in a serious, meaningful relationship. I've met an awfully lot of overgrown boys interested in recreating scenes from their favorite pornos. And ya know, I'm better than that. I just think that there is more to life than random sex or sex-buddies. I don't understand them....the players. They are just satisfied with the nothingness of meaningless sex. They don't even seem to be interested in love. I'm just left with the feeling that I could have done a better job myself, and I wouldn't have had to change the sheets. Love is such a wonderful feeling. Sometimes I wonder if I was ever in love at all. After a while, you being to doubt things.

There was a man once that I am sure I loved. I was young. He was forbidden. It was over really before it even started. It will be the greatest regret of my life if that small taste was all I ever get.

And if you wonder what prompted this, I'll tell ya. Take a look at this. I know at first it might not make sense, but it is relevant. He makes a statement about mid-way through this. Right about the point that he starts to get serious. He says, "I am an expert on my own story."

It's an excellent point. We are all experts on our own story. A little self-analysis, a little introspection, even if we don't find the ultimate answer, is seldom a bad thing. If it weren't for self-introspection, I'd still be drunk dialing old boyfriends. And usually our behavior and our outlook are more important than our achievements and whatever glory and reward we seek. Whatever I have learned about love....whatever I have learned about being a good person in this world....I have learned from examining my own story and making sure it was leading down the road I wanted. Making adjustments, constant vigilance. And we don't have to be embarrassed about sharing these things. Craig Ferguson can do it on national television. I can do it in a blog. I had a professor give an extremely moving life lesson to a classroom that expected a lecture on Hamlet. We needn't hide behind some veil that makes us pretend not to be human. We fuck up. We learn from it. We move forward.

I did a terrible disservice to a man when I agreed to marry him. I should have known better. Now I do. I want to love again. There, I said it. And I feel better for it.