The saga continues.
I’m getting divorced for the second time.
I live in a small townhouse.
And there’s lots ahead for me, including a shocking revelation from Randy’s ex-fiance.
About 8 months after Randy and I split, I got a job working full-time in country radio again.
Then, about a year after Randy and I split, I started thinking about dating again.
So I went back on Match.com. I think it was the 3rd or 4th time that I’d restarted a membership. I knew dating would be a process.
So I started, slowly. And as per usual, I met some nice men who just weren’t what I was looking for.
Then it turned into 2016. I had few dates here and there. One of them was with a guy I’ll call Joe.
He had a PhD and emails that were so witty, that I couldn’t wait to meet him. So we met for a first date.
During the conversation he joked about cheating on his first wife with her best friend. He thought he was funny and clever about the whole thing.
Uh. No.
And then I dated a state trooper. And he was nice enough. He was fun. But he really liked to work overtime. So we’d see each other on a Saturday night, but I wouldn’t hear from him again until a few hours before he wanted to see me a week later.
So we dated for a short time, then I told him I wanted a guy who was super interested in me and made plans with me ahead of time.
And that leads me to Phil.
I met Phil on Match. He wrote to me from a town a few hours away. We had great email chats and nice phone conversations.
After a few weeks of that, we made a date for him to come to my town for the weekend. So he booked a hotel room and a place for dinner.
I was really excited about the date, but when I finally met him, I wasn’t as excited.
Phil seemed nice, and even though I wasn’t all that attracted to him, I wanted to see what happened the next day.
And he was perfectly pleasant. He was a few years older than me, he seemed smart, and he had a great education and an interesting job. So we hung out with some of my friends the next day, and I tried to get excited about him. But I just wasn’t.
He went back home and sent a beautiful bouquet of flowers a few days later. But I knew I had to tell him I wasn’t feeling it.
So I did. And that was the end of Phil. Back to the drawing board.
Back to looking at the dating profiles on Match.
And I was feeling particularly frustrated by the prospects on Match until one day - WAAAAH!
The angels sang. Another great contender for my affection was right there on the screen.
He was my age, had kids, was physically fit, good looking, and you guessed it, he had a PhD. (I seem to like professors.)
Let’s call him Pete.
So I wrote to him and he wrote back.
I have to admit, I was pretty nervous before our first date as I waited in the lobby of a bar and grill.
Pete walked in and we sat down and started talking. Kinda awkward. Kinda nerdy.
But he seemed okay. I agreed to a second date.
We ended up dating for a few months. He often called me a “unicorn,” a woman who is so special they’re hard to find.
And he was pretty easy to get along with. He had some odd quirks: Every date we went on took place outside. Hiking, boating, a picnic. Sex on park tables after dark.
I longed to just sit and watch a movie and snuggle.
Then one time we went to a concert at a fair with one of my adult kids. And he just gave me the silent treatment. Was he mad that my daughter was with us? It was odd because we had done plenty of things with his kids. Every time I asked him a question I got a one-word answer.
If I said “Hey, want something to eat?” He’d say “No.” Want to get a drink? “No” “Do you care where we sit for the show?” No “Wanna go backstage and meet the singer?” “Whatever.” So the concert started. My daughter and I had a hoot of a time.
But there was Pete, standing with his arms crossed and a scowl on his face.
As you can imagine, the ride home was fun.
The next day we talked on the phone. He apologized for being so moody, but then whined “I didn’t know your daughter would be there.” It was odd. As I said, I was around his kids a lot and he didn’t see my kids often. So I’m not sure why he didn’t try to get to know my daughter the way I tried to get to know his four kids.
Anyway, he continued to be moody and just seemed very angry with life in general. So that was that. It was goodbye to Pete.
So some more time passed, and I was on a few dating sites, Match.com, Bumble, OK Cupid, and Plenty of Fish. Excuse me - Plenty of Shit.
I was feeling desperate.
It seemed like there were no good men out there.
But I was convinced I was a catch. And if that was true, I knew there had to be men out there who were also a catch.
So, I stayed on those dating sites, and one day I logged into Match, and as per usual, some men sent me winks.
If you don’t know what that is, it’s where a man sends a wink with the click of a button. It takes about as much forethought as sending a thumbs up to someone you’re texting.
And one of those winks was from some guy with a screen name I can’t remember.
And I swore I’d never respond to winks. I figured if someone had any interest in me at all, he’d read my bio and write a few lines in an email to show some interest.
I figured no guy worth a crap would just send a wink emoji. That was worse than a guy sending a message that just said “Hi.”
But like I said, I was desperate. So I decided to look at the bio of Mr. Wink. And it was good. The pics were pretty crappy, but he seemed to be a decent person. And guess what, he was a professor!
And it’s so funny, until I started writing about my dating life, I didn’t realize how many professors I’ve dated!
So like I said, Mr. Wink’s bio was appealing, so I wrote him a short note related to what he said in his bio.
And he wrote back.
We set a date to meet at a local restaurant. By that point, I wasn’t excited or not excited. I felt neutral.
By that point, I’d learned that what we think before a date and what we find on the date are two different things.
In the past, I’d read a bio and then create an entire persona for a person I’d never met. And then, of course, I’d be disappointed with the date. So I did my best to not read too much into anything I read online.
So I met this guy, let’s call him James, at a local place for dinner. And the dinner lasted 5 hours.
Needless to say, it went well. And sidebar, I also peed myself on this date.
Let’s just say I was convinced he’d stare at my ass when I got up and walked to the bathroom and I felt self-conscious. Let’s just say that after a beer, a Pepsi, and water, my poor bladder gave out when I finally decided to stand up and go to the bathroom 5 hours later. Anyway, the whole thing became a hilarious story - but a story for another time.
So James and I started dating. I met him three weeks after his divorce was final.
And things went really well. I thought it could really be the start of something great.
But after the initial infatuation and all that, things hit the fan, big time. I had PTSD from my second divorce, and of course, James had stuff that he brought to the relationship. So I was mentally dealing with things that happened to me in the past while dealing with stuff from his past.
And lemme tell ya, the first few years were rough. We had a lot to work out. I didn’t fully trust men. And I didn’t fully trust myself.
Stay tuned for the next blog. My PTSD threatens to derail my love life.
And I have yet to discover a secret about my second husband, thanks to his ex-fiance.