On Line Dating for The Over 50 Crowd - Part 2

I've said it before and I'll say it again: being alone over 50 sucks.

Sorry for the harsh language, but in reality, for a lot of people, "sucks" isn't nearly harsh enough a word!

And for me it has nothing to do with low self esteem, co-dependence, fear of dying alone, or anything all the experts and every one around you may say. (Isn't it funny how it seems that all of "the experts" and "every one around you" who gives you advice about being single is married or in some sort of relationship? Things that make you go hmmmm . . .)

In my last post on the subject, I alluded to the fact I was 52 years old when I found out my wife was leaving me, and it wasn't the first time I'd been married and divorced, but it was now the second time. AND I'd actually lived with a third woman for seven years in between my two marriages, helping her raise her two very young sons as the father figure they had never had. The biological father was MIA most of the time due to his own issues that I really don't have any right to discuss here, so you can fill in the blanks for yourself on that one. So, I arguably feel as though I've been through 3 (count 'em, THREE) wives.

What a loser, right?  Nope . . . no way.


For over 20 years of my life I had essentially been married. And I don't consider any of those relationships or marriages "failed" either. I loved each and every one of those women, I did a lot of good things for our families, made a lot of screw ups too, but in this day and age when 50% of all marriages end in divorce and about 70% of second marriages fail, I think I've had some pretty good runs. Further, I don't harbor any ill will toward any of my ex-wives, and wish them all the best life has to offer. (Well, for the most part at least.)

But, that also means I've been alone for about 20 years of my life, too. And I mean, at times, REALLY alone.

For instance, when I decided to move from New England to the Philadelphia area I was 30 years old. I loved my life at that time, and had a fairly good job, paying me enough to live a pretty good life style for a kid that age. I was on a career track in insurance, learning the home office side business, and building what would turn out to be a really marketable background for what was to come.

But New England was "home". All my friends were there. And I had a lot of them. All great guys and girls who made my life back then "magical". I'm still in touch with most of them, and we all agree with Charles Dickens: it was definitely "the best of times".

There was a crowd of about 10 or 12 of us that played cards every Thursday night, (one of the guys dubbed us "The Rounds of The Night Table" and even had shirts made for us). We went out dancing and partying on Friday nights, went out with our girlfriends on Saturday nights, and filled in the rest of the week together, breaking into smaller groups and living the good life that only twenty something singles can live. When one of us bought a motorcycle, the rest of us eventually ended up getting them, too. We were the crowd to know.

We didn't know it then, but we were "creating memories".

And then one day, right out of the blue, my manager's manager called me into her office and said she had recommended me for a marketing position with the company's biggest producer. The position was to run his sales business for him so he could focus more on his fledgling motivational speaking business, and I would essentially be his right hand man.

I wasn't looking for another job at the time, other than climbing the corporate ladder where I was, I didn't particularly want to sell, and I certainly DIDN'T want to move away, and she knew all these things, so I'm confident that she wasn't trying to get rid of me, which is my normal first thought in situations like this, if you can relate.

I couldn't believe it: WHAT an opportunity!! Like many of the best things in our lives, it had fallen right into my lap when I least expected it.

But it was in Philadelphia, a good 5 hours away, which meant I would HAVE to move.


My ship had come in, I thought, and I was old enough to know that opportunities like these don't just happen very often, and I had to take it, right?

So, I said goodbye to the good life, put on my big boy suit and tie, and moved to the big city.

And was miserable.

The hardest part was that I KNEW I'd be miserable. I knew no one there, felt completely out of my element, and there was no such thing as internet dating or on-line friend meeting sites like there are today, so, as anyone who's ever moved to a large metropolitan area can attest to, it was next to impossible to meet anyone outside of work.

Those first three years here were the loneliest time of my life. It seemed no matter what I did or who I met, I just couldn't break into anyone's circle and belong. I felt different, and I was.

The new job helped keep me busy Monday through Friday -- I threw myself into it like a mad man. I was in the office many days before 7 AM, and often didn't leave until 7 at night because that's what aspiring marketing people are supposed to do, right?

But the weekends were almost unbearably lonely. And after a short time, it became clear that I was going to have to do the best I could to start over.

I did things alone. I took advantage of the fact that I was living in a large metropolitan area, rich in history and culture. I went to museums alone. I went shopping alone. I went to clubs alone. And there were a lot of times I just sat in my apartment, or out by the swimming pool with the hundreds of other tenants, alone.

I didn't know it then, but I was getting to know myself.

AND I was "putting myself out there".

Every place I went to "alone", I would try to engage people. If I was at a museum, I might strike up a discussion of an exhibit with the other people standing around me. If I was at the pool, I would try to strike up a conversation with those people around me. If I was shopping, I would ask for help and make a few jokes with the sales person, or maybe ask another shopper nearby what they thought of an item.

After about 3 years, I looked around myself and realized that I had a circle of friends. I'd been introduced to the woman who would soon be my first wife - a marriage that would last 9 years. I was being invited to parties, and over to other people's homes, and out for happy hours with "the guys". You know: STUFF! It wasn't like it was back home, because those kind of relationships are rare and built around growing up together and sharing decades of experiences with people.

And, more often than not, they are because you are YOUNG. And as we all know, youth is wasted on the young.

What does this have to do with on-line dating after age 50?

This was only ONE of the "new starts" I would have to make in my life. I'd had quite a few before (albeit none as dramatic as this one) but more importantly, I had a few more to come.

And from each new start, I took what I had learned from the previous ones, and learned from my "loneliness". With each new change, every new heartbreak, every friend I had to leave or had to leave me, I took the opportunity to examine the relationship, learn from it, and the do my best to "reinvent" myself. I tried to keep what it was about me that worked with people, and change what didn't.

I WORKED at becoming "attractive" to others. And, two divorces later (three, really, if you count the break up of my 7 year relationship, which I do) I had to do it all over again.

Being alone sucks. But before you jump into the next "latest and greatest" relationship, you gotta go through it, and if you're smarter than me, which most of you out there are, you'll take the opportunity to

1) heal,

2) figure out what your part in the breakup was (sometimes my part in the breakup was just the fact that I picked the wrong person to begin with!),

3) reinvent yourself into the kind of person you want to attract, and

4) BE GRATEFUL that you know what you know now, and have such a rich history of experience to draw upon.

It took me over 50 years to figure out that no matter where I am in life, whom I dating or not dating at any given period in time, and who and what I have around me, RIGHT NOW is "The Best of Times".

And that's a tremendous advantage to have in today's wacky adult dating scene.