This past week, Tuesday, March 30th, to be exact, marked the fifth anniversary of Paul’s and my first date. As I mentioned before, we met online on Match.com. He wrote to me first. We met at a coffee shop. He bought me a cup of  chai and I bought him peanut butter cookie and he wore this really dorky Hawaiian shirt, leather jacket and cowboy boots, which I believe he still has. We had a connection … and the rest is history.

We planned to mark the occasion by leaving the kids home alone and sneaking out after dinner to “reenact” our first date. But… that didn’t pan out. Instead I had a headache and homework to do and Paul, being the absolute doll that he is, sensed my bad mood and in his usual caring, loving way,  alleviated my stress by  offering  to pick up takeout. He came home with several dishes from my favorite local Asian restaurant and a bottle of Windy Oaks pinot noir, the winery where we got married. We stayed home and lit a fire.

While he was out picking up our dinner, I routed through some files and found copies of our original email exchanges I had printed out, which I read to him later when we were alone. It reminded me of why I fell in love with him, why I still love him and I shuddered at the thought that I almost never wrote back to him in the first place. Below is a quote in its entirety  of the very first email he  sent to me exactly as he wrote it.

“I read your profile iand see yours yours. Seems like parallel paths, but a few miles apart within Santa Cruz!”

That’s it folks. That’s all I got. Not only was it riddled with misspellings that made the statement  basically unintelligible, but THAT WAS ALL HE HAD TO SAY??? Where was the worship and adoration I was seeking? No, “You’re so beautiful and fascinating that I  cannot wait to meet you!” It is hard for me to imagine now, but I almost wrote him off for his bad grammar and lousy punctuation, which is ironic when I consider what a great writer Paul is. He proofreads all of my papers for school and his input makes them so much better. He is meticulous, neat and tidy in so many areas of his life (except that he often leaves his dirty socks and underwear on the bedroom floor) that it is hard for me to believe that I almost let him get away for the careless, inconsiderate slob I initially perceived him to be. This brings me to my point, ladies: Don’t let the good ones get away while you pine away for some idealized fantasy of some fairytale prince that you have built up in your mind as THE ONE.

I just finished reading a fantastic book that I believe  is perhaps the most seminal in depth study of male/female relationships that I cannot recommend it enough. It is called, Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough I know, the title puts you off a little bit. It is a little offensive. How dare anyone expect you to settle? Like it’s a dirty word. The author Laura Gottlieb makes a strong case for doing just that. Settling in this context is more about compromise and being realistic,  and ultimately  about acceptance.

Gottlieb learned this lesson the hard way and is trying to spare other women of committing the same mistakes. She says women today have a heightened sense of entitlement. They expect too much without really thinking about what they have to give to get. She quotes Dr. Michael Broder, a Philadelphia-based psychologist who specializes in relationships as saying, “For these women, not only is the imagined guy a fantasy, but so is the actual relationship. After all, there’s a limit to what a relationship can provide.  They are looking for a relationship from the perspective of what the guy can provide for them — a ‘me-me-me thing’ — instead of wanting something more reciprocal.” He went on to say that our mother’s generation was not like this. “They may have wished, but certainly didn’t expect, that their husbands would constantly want to please them, be attracted to them, entertain them, enjoy sharing all of their interests, and be the most charming person in the room. Instead they knew that marriage involved failing health, aging, boredom, periods of stress and disconnection, annoying habits, issues with children,  hardships and misunderstandings of all sorts.”

I know women like this and they are all alone. A few years ago I tried to introduce my never married 40ish friend to a really great guy I knew whom I described to her as, “Sweet, kind, really good looking, fun, active, smart, funny, has a good job and owns his own home.” Her response? How tall is he? She just couldn’t date him if he wasn’t at least five inches taller than she. He wasn’t. He’s now married to someone else and she’s still alone. I know another woman who will summarize her first date by telling you what he wore. She’ll describe his shirt, his shoes and the car he drove. There is never any mention of his character or  personality, how he treated her, what they talked about or how she felt when she was with him. She told me recently, “I just want a guy who’s crazy about me.” Oy.

Relationships are work. They take effort, investment, time and patience. NO ONE is perfect. We all have flaws. My 40ish friend was 30 pounds over weight when she made her  “I can’t date a short guy” proclamation.  Imagine if the tables were turned and he said, “Sorry, I can’t take a gal who’s chubby.” He’d be a cad. She, on the other hand, is selective. She won’t settle.

I didn’t settle either. I have my standards. My husband had to love kids and dogs. He had to be kind, loving, smart and funny. No bad tempers or substance abuse issues. I can still remember that first time I stood in Paul’s kitchen and he poured his heart out to me. He confessed that he really didn’t have much money. (As if I couldn’t guess. Financial hardship is often a by product of divorce.) I knew I loved him when I didn’t care. We could make a life together and we started planning that minute. Thank god I didn’t toss him aside when I got that first email.

When I found myself a single mom at 40 with two young daughters, (ages 6 and 9) after 12 years of marriage, to what turned out to be a gay guy, I have to confess that I found myself in a state of total dating anxiety. I hadn’t dated in 15 years and quite frankly I wasn’t sure I remembered how. I was insecure for sure and worried that men would no longer consider me attractive.  I had been a wall flower in high school and then went on to a college where the ratio of men to women was one to eight. And then there was the marriage to the gay guy, so you can see that not only were my dating skills rusty, they had sucked to begin with. Read the rest of this post on Momversation.

The Package Deal, by Izzy Rose is a wonderfully hilarious book I just discovered about a single gal with a great career living in San Francisco, who falls in love with a Southern gentleman (with two kids) and moves to Austin, Texas.  It is witting, insightful, humorous and above all– relatable. If you have ever asked yourself, “What have I gotten myself in to?” This book is for you.

People ask me all the time, “How soon do you introduce your kids to your dates?”  I can say from experience, “Not for a long time.” Kids do not need to see boyfriends and girlfriends coming and going. And no matter how much you think you are always going to stay close to the person you are dating, you won’t. Trust me.  Read the rest of this entry »

People, mostly women who write to me, ask me, “How did you know that Paul was the one for you? ” And more precisely, “How did you know that you could do it? That you could get married and blend your families?”  Good question. When I met Paul I was 43.  No spring chicken, (although I’d like to think that I still looked fabulous), and I had been around the block more than a few times. Let’s just say I had taken quite a few  laps. I knew what I wanted and figured when I found it I would know. And I did. There were a lot of little events that led up to the big one that told me, no, shouted to me, “Marry this man!”.  So let me recount the details. Read the rest of this entry »