For those who have dated... how did you know when you were ready?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Macduff (Hal) on March 16, 2012 at 3:33pm

My BFF Helen told me about this so today, I was totally bored, disappointed over not feeling chemistry with last night's date, and having had a meltdown over Betty when I went to take a nap, I decided driving across town to take a photo to share here would be something to do. 

I guess it is one approach. Of course he got the tense of woman wrong, unless he wants more than one. 

Attachments:

• DSC_0136.JPG, 2.1 MB

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Jerry on March 16, 2012 at 4:12pm

Maybe he doesn't have a computer,so he is going about finding a woman the old fashioned way. Hope you are doing better after your ride. The warm weather should be here soon, it makes things slightly more bearable, at least it does for me. Although doing most things brings back memories of doing them with my wife Karen.Sometimes remembering makes me happy, other times it brings sadness.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Eileen on March 18, 2012 at 10:19am

Love this photo! Where was this taken?

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Macduff (Hal) on April 4, 2012 at 2:27pm

Those who don’t know me from previous posts see below.

I began online dating way too early. Between the six month and one year time I clearly wasn’t at all ready. I was looking for a clone of my wife. I met one woman who superficially reminded me of her but lucky for me she dumped me because, she said, she still was in love with a married man she’d been having an affair with for two or three years. After that I got online and had one or two dates a months. I barely remember the women. I was still actively grieving between the sixth and 12th month after my wife died. I cried just about every day, sometimes several times a day melting down totally. After a date I came home in despair and cried even more.

Between 12 and 18 months I had more frequent dates from several websites even though my profile all but dared women to take a chance on me as a still grieving widower. I was looking for the instant attraction my wife and I felt for each other 42 years ago when we were 26. It never happened.

Now it’s been two years and three months. I have revised my online profiles to be more upbeat and more women are responding and thus I am having almost one date a week. But still there’s been no spark, chemistry, attraction, or butterflies as Helenely calls the feeling. Some women seemed attracted to me but I didn’t feel that way towards them. In May an attractive woman my age (plastic surgery and breasts that defied gravity) fell for me hard and we had a two week affair and when I ended it she said I broke her heart. At least it proved to me I could function sexually and please a woman.

I know I want a woman to look physically as attractive as my wife did to me even when she was 65 before she got sick. Now when I date a woman who is in her 60’s she usually looks old, but more than that, I don’t see the sparkle in her eyes and the mischievous smile that so much attracted me to my wife, and that she had even as she was dying. I know at 68 I am old too, and should understand that when they look at me they probably don’t see Clint Eastwood. Probably more like Woody Allen. 

I went out with one woman last week who looked, dare I say, movie star beautiful in her website photos which she said were taken recently. No way! When we met she just looked tired and old. As it happened she didn’t feel any chemistry with me either. I was trying to figure out how to tell her I didn’t want to see her again when she emailed me telling me she didn’t want to see me. That was a relief. I just emailed her back that she was a sensitive and insightful woman and wished her the best of luck.

I try my best not to get my hopes up for any new date because I don’t want to be disappointed. I have two dates (or auditions) coming up. Both look "possible", but them most of them do.

I know the odds of clicking with anyone are slim even when you establish some basic compatibility from your website profiles.

As I look forward I can’t help but thinking that I may never find anyone and that I am going to spend the rest of my life without a partner. Every day is a challenge to get through unless I have a date, and then so far it has always ended in disappointment. I basically have no friends, and have no family. I am retired. Life is grinding loneliness and boredom. My mission is to find a woman and I have no interest in hobbies or activities except swimming and taking to dogs for walks on the beach.

I know it is probably different if you are much younger, or even just ten years younger, than me. However, at what point do those of us of a certain age just realize that all we will have as we live out our lives is our cherished memories of a long time marriage?

I am thinking that once this happens we will experience a brand new kind of grief which, it would make sense, would be prolonged and have its own kind of pain before we came to the acceptance that this is our lot in life. It took so long to accept that our spouses were really dead, gone forever. 

So now it seems like there is a new grief waiting for me: the grief of coming to accept the new sad reality of the rest of my life.

Where are the rest of you in this process?

Me: I was married for 40 years. My wife was diagnosed with cancer in Sept. 2009 and died in January, 2010, just four months later. 

Below: Today along the Cape Cod Canal. I noted several solitary men my age, often with little dogs, and wondered how many of them belonged to the widowers club.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Israel Girl (Chris) on April 10, 2012 at 12:12am

Thanks for sharing so much.  I appreciate your experiences, and would like to learn from them.  You said that you began dating before a year, and it was too early.  This is all so confusing, wanting to be ready to date and worrying about it being too soon.  I'm almost at the year mark, and I really want to date, but I'm not sure I'm ready for it.  Also not sure I should even be considering it with three teens in the house!  But the desire for someone special has awaken in me.  

The "crush" I told you about in March (at the work conference) turned out to be no real attraction once i got to know him a bit better.  But realizing that I actually wanted someone in my life was helpful.  The last day of the conference I got to spend some time with a widower friend and we have been writing back and forth.  I think I got too excited about it and maybe wrote too much, because he backed off this week.  Not really sure what happened.  But it does have me curious and thinking about whether I might have pushed to much, whether he is even ready for that much talking with a woman (he's just over 5 months out).

I gotta say, Hal, we seemed to be very compatible and I have so enjoyed his company!  The sudden backing off has made the feelings of loneliness, etc. come up even stronger again.  Although, that could be just the emotions from the one year anniversary coming up.  But I can't help but hope that the feelings are real, and that he could become someone very special in my life.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Jerry on April 10, 2012 at 7:07am

If you read my previous post on dating you will see I am dealing with dating issues. As far as a person backing off In a relationship, that is just what I m trying to do. When I first started seeing this lady we went out on a weekend and I would call her during the week . She then started texting me every morning and ask if I wanted to chat. I would call and we would talk. She would end the talk with "going to call me tonight" which I did. I have started to cut out the daily calls as much as possible. It seems she would want my life to revolve entirely around her, which is something I don't want.i guess the man you met has mixed feeling about dating, I know I sure do and it has been over two years that my wife is gone. At five months he may not be ready.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Macduff (Hal) on April 10, 2012 at 7:35am

It is obviously different for everyone, but for me the early dating was a desperate attempt to find a clone of Betty, and to ease my intense pain. It was obviously unfair to any woman I dated who really liked me. I was pretty hard to like then since I was so obviously depressed and unwilling and unable to see a woman without comparing her to Betty. 

Since I changed my profile, and on one website honed it down to very little, I have had a lot more women wanting to meet me. In fact, on the website with the least writing women are saying they want to meet me based on how kind and sensitive I look. Goes to show it isn''t just men influenced by appearance. I have to admit I put the following one on because everyone from Betty to my friends say the dogs are babe magnets.

Hey, if you got 'em, use 'em.

Back to you and what you seem to be going through. Not that this will be news to you, but you just suffered an excruciating loss. Even though the failure of a new relationship, for whatever reason, isn't even in the same ballpark. 

Even so, when a new relationship doesn't live up to hopes and expectations it is yet another loss.

Readiness for dating isn't either / or. You may be half ready, 75% ready, but I have come to realize that it is unlikely you will ever be 100% ready. No matter when you start your grief and all that comes with it will be something you will have to deal with.

Hal

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by twinsmum on April 13, 2012 at 3:09am

lol - love your humor Hal - oh and by the way CUTE dogs - although the one showing his teeth doesn't do him justice :)

 

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Macduff (Hal) on April 13, 2012 at 7:20am

Oh him, his hair is a bit windblown, but he does have a nice brushed lamb coat from Orvis.

An update on dating, which may help others struggling with one date after another like I am where these just isn't chemistry on first meeting. I met with a woman from online last night. For something like 10 days we exchanged long emails once a day so we both felt we be might be quite compatible. But when we met IT just wasn't there. It seemed like work to make conversation.

She asked me specific things about my life and I found myself telling oft told stories. I asked her about herself and I expect it was the same with her. There's something boring and forced about telling a story about yourself that you've told countless times.

Maybe it would be best to discuss the daily news or latest movie you've seen so at least you can talk about something new. I wonder if you'd learn even more about your feelings about each other that way.

The emails seemed so hopeful that I considered canceling another first date I have had set up for over two weeks. With her there been no follow-up email. 

Maybe it is better to wait until the first meeting before you have these extended email exchanges so expectations aren't built up in advance. Perhaps it is best to decide on whether t meet on what you feel you have in common on the dating site profiles.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Mariposa on April 15, 2012 at 4:31pm

Reading everyone's experiences is so reassuring. It has only been four months since my loss, yet my body yearns for what it has been missing, however, I am not ready for dating- the very thought just freaks me out.

My husband's supervisor invited me to go away to a Caribbean island less than one month after my husband's death and needless to say I declined. (Talk about INDECENT and TOO SOON.). A  guy who has been our neighbor for 17 years but divorced for the past 2 years made a pass at me 2 months after my husband's death, so I now avoid him.

I have to heal. It is the first time since I was 18 that I have not had him by my side and it is very different. I know that this is an opportunity for growth as an individual. It is a challenge to deal with the loneliness and I am cautious and very aware that loneliness could make a person just go for someone. I am making every effort to avoid that.

I do not know when I will be ready. I have no idea. I just know that I am not ready right now.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Macduff (Hal) on April 15, 2012 at 4:50pm

Mariposa, I am not sure I am ready after 27 months,although I am trying to meet women. It may not be fair to the women I meet up with via online - most of them seem to like me a lot. I do know I want to have a partner again but we end up on this website because we have taken our loss especially hard and need to share with others who feel the same way. We need to have our feelings affirmed so we don;t feel like we are alone, or worse, crazy.

I don't think either of us  (or any of us on this thread) will let loneliness lead us into a bad relationship. After all, we know from our marriages what a good, exceptionally good (for most on this site I bet) marriage is like. We won't settle for less.

While there are no hard and fast rules for dating I would say the first 6-12 months are way too early for most of us. Your late husband's supervisor asking you on a Caribbean trip, no doubt with sex in mind, was so far out of line I'd even like to track him down and (if I could get away with it) dump a load of pig manure on him. Your neighbor was just as bad. I guess I'd need two truckloads of pig manure. If you have ever been downwind (and I have when we lived in Michigan) from a pig farm you'll know why I choose that particular kind). 

We do grow as individuals through our intense grief. Some of us (and I include myself) brutally, unflinchingly, confront our aloneness for the first time in our lives.  But it is a kind of growth I could have done without. I liked letting part of my identity integrate with my wife and I don't think I was harmed by this - I can say without embarrassment (and remember I was a psychotherapist for my entire adult life)  that I was not completely self-actualized.

I was very emotionally dependent on my wife.

I needed her to make me feel whole. 

There, I've said it.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Jerry on April 15, 2012 at 5:54pm

   Hello Hal, I feel that after being with my wife for almost 40 years we did become almost one. Now that the best half of us is gone,I am an incomplete being. As I have mentined to you before I have been dating a widower,but I am not able to fall in love . Sometime she will say some thing like lets go to "our" favorite restaurant, it makes me cringe. Although I like her,I dont feel comfortable when she refers to us as a couple.  I know I am probably blowing a good thing if I lose this lady. My thereapist tells me he has dealt with more women that feel like I do,they want to date,have sex, but dont want a commitement becaus the dont want to be in the postion of a caregiver.I guess thats whats on people of a certain age minds, especially if the have went through this before. another thing that trouble me is doing things with this lady that I should have done with my wife, but we were to busy working and planning for our future. The one thing I must say about my lady friend is that she doesnt want or need anything from me.Sorry for th long rant,just having one of those kind of days.

• ▶ Reply

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• …
• 14
• 15
• 16
• 17
• 18
• …
• 25
• Next ›
• Page