Hindsight: 20/20 or Better?

Dear Neighbors:

Yes, I will be following up the Disney post. I'm just keeping an eye out for process servers with cease & desist orders. So far, I don't see any. Whew. My disclaimer must have worked!  :)

The great thing about being in the electronic age is that I have friends of all ages. Somehow, when I'm not face-to-face with people, age no longer matters. I have friends who are ten years older than me and 22 years younger. After sending an e-mail to one of those younger friends this morning and making plans to see another one later today, I thought about what I was like that those ages. 

When I was 18, I hadn't yet had a boyfriend, a date, a first kiss or even some heavy hand-holding. Seriously. Wallflower. Wallflower. Wallflower. When I was 27, not much changed. Now I'm 40, coming up on 41, and I think I've had less romantic experience with the opposite sex than most people half my age. I always wished that someone would give me the advice that would finally clinch things for me, but no one did. My friends (not including my current friends) never told me that any guy would be lucky to have me or that I should take some chances in regard to love. In fact, they usually discouraged me from any contact with men whatsoever. I took that to mean that no one was ever going to love me and that I would just embarrass myself if I tried. So I didn't. And look where I am now, right?

I owe it to all my younger readers to give you some advice on how to not end up like me. There's nothing wrong with being single, but being alone and feeling unloved is not good for anyone's well-being. And sex, well...sex is important. Raise your hand if you're in a bad mood the next day. Anyone? I'll wait...

Doro's Guide to Finding Love Before It's Too Late:

1. Don't ever assume that the object of your desire won't reciprocate your feelings.

That's not to say that everyone we fancy will fancy us right back. It doesn't work that way, obviously. But there have been many times over the years that I wanted to reach out and see what might happen and I didn't. I walked away when I should have stayed and I made a joke when I should have been serious. Only to find out years later that the guy I had my eye on at the time was just waiting for some signal from me that it was acceptable to approach. Other men have said years and years later that he would have been open to getting to know me if he'd known I was interested. I hate cliches like I hate my current caffeine-withdrawl headache, but if there's one I can get on board with, it's that you only regret the things you didn't do. And there are far too many things in the area of romance that I haven't done. But it's never too late to change, right? So get out there and take a chance. My chance-taking has panned out yet, but I haven't been at it very long. :)

2. If it's love you're seeking, stop settling for friendship. In other words, stay the hell out of the Friend Zone. Don't buy any real estate, and don't run for mayor.

This is coming from the current mayor of the friend zone. Somehow I have been beleaguered by friends with bad advice, and one such piece of advice was that it's important to be friends first. I have news for you: it isn't. In fact, friendship is the most common deterrent to finding love. Once you have a friendship, a boundary falls down that makes it difficult, though not impossible, to change the relationship into something else. You have to ask for what you want up front, and if you don't, you're not allowed to change your order later. This ties into my last piece of advice. If you want love, pursue it wholeheartedly (pun very much intended); don't approach the opposite sex as a friend. It seems an easy way to fly under the radar and get to know someone before you get your heart involved, but you're really giving that person the signal that you're not interested. After a while of being The Friend, you become Everyone's Friend. As I'm sure you know, Everyone's Friend is No One's Lover.

3. Be honest about your feelings, even when you think they might ruin everything. 

I'm sure I'm not the only woman to downplay my feelings for someone I'm dating so as not to scare him off. Not saying what I wanted to say didn't scare him off, but it doesn't encourage anyone to stick around, either. Why are we always so afraid to be ourselves and shout to the world how we feel? It's crazy, at least in my opinion. I know that a few relationships might have gone further if I had just said, "Don't leave" instead of, "I'll see you later" and "I'm crazy about you" instead of "I had a good time. Thanks." In the words of Madonna, express yourself. If the one you love runs away, he or she was never yours in the first place. 

4. Don't allow yourself to be kept in a holding pattern for too long and don't do anything drastic to change the stakes. 

When the person you're dating doesn't want to move things forward, there's a reason for it. Find out what those reasons are.  I used to work with someone who had been with her boyfriend for nearly ten years and was understandably frustrated over the lack of any real commitment. She was nearing 40 and feared that her childbearing days would be over before he would ever make a decision and she didn't want to have to start over. He gave her all sorts of excuses (such as "I don't want to ruin what we have" and "Why do we need a piece of paper to tell us how we feel?") for not making things permanent, but never any valid reasons (such as, "I can't marry a woman who ______"). The subsequent pregnancy may have been an accident, but a woman who has avoided pregnancy for over twenty years and is entering her least fertile years doesn't just turn up with child one day. In any case, they got married and had more children together. And then separated. And then got back together. They're still together and I hope it stays that way, but you never know. Older men have many more options than do older women. Now she's 51 and ignores his roving eye because who is going to want a 51 year old woman with 3 young children, right?  For the record, living together isn't a commitment when you want marriage; an engagement isn't a commitment if you haven't set a date. These are good methods to keep you in a holding pattern, however. Not committing to you is a decision in itself. 

5. Don't give up.

You're going to have some idiot coupled friends who will tell you that you'll find love when you least expect it and that you won't find anyone until you stop looking. Ignore them. They're stupid. Those are the friends who want you to remain single so that they'll have some fun friends along with, well, their married friends. Keep looking. Keep dating. Don't take time off to regroup because, as I can tell you from experience, it's so hard to get back to it again. Dating takes practice just like anything else. Some people find love without having to date for it. They meet someone and that's it. They're set up with someone special and they don't need to look any further. Others of us don't have that luxury -- we have to work for it. So keep working at it. Keep bugging your friends to introduce you to someone. A potential love interest with references is much more likely to work out than a blind date. Don't let anyone tell you that you're not good enough to find someone or that you need to change something about you before you'll find anyone (unless you're abusive, a cheater or a drug addict). 

Embracing the Now,

D