Friday, December 7, 2012

Feeling Lonely After Age 50 SUCKS!

After a convoluted and totally surprising series of events (well, totally surprising to ME), I found myself divorced and alone after being married for the better part of 23 years.

I hadn't been married to the same woman for all of that time, mind you, but for purposes of this post that's irrelevant. There is perhaps material enough on the topic of my marriages and dating relationships for another 200 or 300 posts, so just for today I'm going to spare you that dramedy and save those tales for perhaps a later time - maybe when we know each other a little better.

To compound the situation, I had decided that I was tired of what I was doing for a living, and since I was no longer married and have no children of my own (due to some other twists of fate regarding some medical issues with my first wife and subsequent long-term girlfriend), I decided to retire from my 30 plus year long, painfully predictable career as a life insurance marketer. It was a career that had always been very good to me from a financial perspective.

And I decided to 'retire' immediately after they told me I was 'laid off'.

Victim of the economy? HELL NO! I'm "R-E-T-I-R-E-D"!

And, just to top everything off, I was born and raised in many different parts of this great nation of ours, from one coast to the other, with 3 thousand miles in between, so I'm not what you would call "originally from around here".  The specific "here" mentioned is, again, irrelevant - I'm not really from around ANYwhere.

In fact, I lost touch with my school and college friends decades ago and my "blood family" is very small, living thousands of miles away from me. "Estranged" would be understating our physical and emotional distance.

I had always done my best to devote myself to wife and family (whichever wife and family I was with at any given time) and, quite predictably, much of that devotion had focused on making money and building a career, not on personal development or bonding with other guys (or gals) outside of the friends two married people always seem to be able to make "as a couple". And "she" got most of "those" in the divorce.

I didn't realize it at the time but most of what I thought were my friends were actually co-workers, colleagues, clients, or associates. People that I had met through my job. And once I left my job, my "friends" started to fall away.

Quickly.

I was very determined to start my life over doing something that I actually wanted to do, something fun this time, so I had no desire to "stop in" and "say hi" at the old office, and since I'm not selling or servicing any more clients had no reason to call me. I found that these "friendships" were built on a pretty narrow foundation, and since the soil they were grown in was no longer being tended to or fed on a daily basis, the relationships were becoming less and less relevant to all parties as every day passed.

So, I found myself over 50, no family whatsoever nearby to rely on, and in a geographic location that I didn't grow up in, don't particularly like, and surrounded by people with whom I felt I had little in common. Now, whether any of that is true or not is, again, irrelevant; it's HOW I FELT. And I've always been a firm believer that, at least in certain situations, perception IS reality.

To quote "The Clash": Should I Stay or Should I Go? (Loud guitars here: Dah, dah, dah-dah dah-dah-DUH!!!)

I promised I'd keep these blog posts short, so I just wanted to lay in a little history today and put down the ground work so that you would know that, basically, YUP! I've been lonely. And not so long ago, either! To 'qualify' myself, so to speak.

Tomorrow, I plan to write about what I've done to rebuild my life over the past two or three years, including joining the infamous on-line dating scene. But as I still feel I have a long way to go, I'd love to hear your comments and suggestions.

Also, I'd really like to thank reader clawdy2ette for posting her comments on my first entry, which really gave me the impetus to write about this.

It was she that made me feel as though I wasn't . . . alone.

Chuck
http://www.adultmedsupply.com 

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