What’s worse than being a thirty-something-year-old woman out in the dating world trying to find her perfect soul mate? Being a thirty-something-year-old woman out in the dating world trying to find her second perfect soul mate who doesn’t mind that she’s divorced, unemployed, and has two young kids that he’ll have to pretend to find charming and delightful. What could be worse than that? Oh, I’ve got something worse than that …
Let’s start with the dating scene. I’ve been out of it for a good twelve years, so when my single friends complained about the state of dating and relationships, I just thought they needed to quit whining and make some more effort. And maybe lose five pounds. And do something with that God-awful haircut they’ve had for the last fifteen years. But I digress. Smug in my perfect marriage, with my perfect husband and my perfect children, I was conceited enough to look down upon the lonely masses and breathe a sigh of relief that I was not one of them. And then it happened.
The D word. Divorce. My perfect husband came crashing down, ripping my perfect marriage down with him like some bad soap opera actor tearing down the lush silk dining room curtains in a drunken rage. But this was no soap opera. (I wish it was because then I could have shot him, suffered from amnesia, ran off to a deserted island, been pronounced dead in a shipwreck, and miraculously come back with a nice tight face lift and perky boobs … but I digress again!)
So what’s a girl to do? More importantly, what’s a divorced girl with two kids under ten to do? Two words for ya … online dating.
Now, I know, I know, you’ve all heard the horror stories about online dating: the men have comb-overs, are ugly, and sex freaks, the women are desperate, fifty pounds overweight, with names like Shirley Ann, who post pictures from ten years ago. (In case there are any Shirley Anns in the audience, I think that is a perfectly classy and beautiful name.) Well I am here to tell you these horror stories are wrong—wrong, I tell you! I met a wonderful, sexy, man from France who took me to expensive restaurants, appreciated fine wine, and could speak articulately about literature, world events, and global warming and the affect it’s having on innocent bunny rabbits. Then he dumped me and I quickly found out that those horror stories are all true—every last one of them!
So as not to send you screaming into the night, I’ll give a brief synopsis of what I’ve encountered in one (yes, just one) month of online dating. The first date after my heart was smashed by Frenchie was a tall cute Indian guy who is an engineer. So far so good. We got drinks, talked about business, and world events; nice guy. He could be the one. Second date: walk along the beach and more great conversation. About him. And his job. And how much money he made. And how he had enough money in his portfolio to retire today at thirty-six. Yeah, I thought all this was great and wonderful, but why didn’t he take me to lunch? Nothing fancy, just a burger, a nice salad. Know what I got? A cup of coffee. A freakin’ six-hour date and all I got was a cup of coffee! Oh, we did stop at McDonalds, but that was to get another cup of coffee … for him. Six sugars, six creams. No lie. Now I love lots of sugar and cream, but c’mon, be a man!
Second date: neurotic fifty-one-year-old Jewish ex-stockbroker. Great body, but kept talking about his ex wife’s shoe collection. Third date: divorced, thirty-eight-year-old lawyer. He kept talking about his ex-wife’s new boyfriend and how he wasn’t jealous. Fourth date: married swinger, another lawyer. No comment necessary. Fifth date: forty-eight-year-old (definitely lying about his age) entrepreneur who couldn’t keep his hands off of me thirty minutes into our date and kept telling me how black chicks were hot. (He was a white South Afrikan; must have been some residual apartheid guilt.)
