Do you remember what it was like way back in the very earliest days of courtship? For some of you reading this, that may not have been that long ago. But for those of us that are about midlife…if we’re lucky. That was thirty years ago or more.
Everything was so new. You met the potential love of your life at school, the roller rink, or maybe confirmation classes at church. The attraction was almost always purely physical. We had no idea what we wanted out of life, or our mates. Our hormones did all the talking.
If we found ourselves single in our mid to late twenties, it wasn’t much different. It was still easy to meet members of the opposite sex, as long as you had a life. The bar was the most common, but I did well at weddings, and as I pursued my dreams, I met many wonderful women with the same interests.
It just wasn’t that hard.
After the failed engagement in Pennsylvania, I moped around for a couple of years, licking my wounds, while driving the highways and byways. Even though I didn’t follow through on the opportunities, they were still plenty of them. At this point many of us had a decade’s worth of baggage, but the attraction was instantaneously recognizable, and there just didn’t seem to be that much trouble getting two individual lives to mesh.
Now, twenty years later and a failed marriage behind me, it just isn’t as easy as you would think.
I thought being a late forty something with all his hair, in good shape, and a solid career would be a shoo-in for the best available.
So much for assumptions.
Though I am just in the early stages of the next phase of my life, I can already see the writing on the wall. No longer is it about raging hormones, it’s all about learning from past mistakes and creating this very, very, narrow focus of what we expect out of our next mate.
More than that, it’s about figuring out how to fit a person into your busy life. Times two.
My children are grown, I really don’t have to worry about how they will fit into the picture. However, for so many woman, plus or minus five years my age, they still have children at home. With children come sports, recitals, and other activities. If she has more than one, this becomes even more of an issue.
We also get set into our lives…routines, schedules…
“How about we meet next weekend?”
“I have the kids that weekend, going to the Dells. Maybe Thursday night, we can meet for drinks.”
“I have a work thing.”
And so it goes.
It is amazing how many woman within ten years of my own age, career woman, who were in their mid to late thirties when they had their first child. Even more amazing, are those who are in their late thirties, early forties, are childless, and still hope to have child or two.