It’s an incredibly interesting phenomenon and I actually understand it to a point.  It’s just beyond that point…and when it affects me personally…that I lose it.  I will freely admit, there are some hot looking women who are older than I am…although not that much older.  And I have to admit, I’ve even contacted some of them… but 20 years makes her eligible to be my mother, and sorry guys, I’m just not that into Greek tragedies.  (That reference is for anyone who actually paid attention in school when they were teaching classical literature.  What is literature you ask?  If you have to ask, I guess you’ll never know.)

So I logged into some senior oriented sites just to check out this affinity approach to dating…getting together with someone having like interests.  Well first of all, there are chicks posted on the site that are 40 years old or younger!  Talk about looking for a sugar daddy and doing the Anna Nicole Smith routine…Whoa!  I look at it this way…The old guys that have lost it, are looking for a nurse…hot looking or not.  The younger ones are trying to relive their youth, but they can’t go too far afield or they’ll end up on Dateline with Chris Harrison and the crew from Perverted Justice.  The women are also looking to stay young with a more youthful beau at their side when they’re out dancing or in bed doing whatever it is they do at that age.  Plus, simply due to the way things are, the pool of potential prospects keeps getting thinner the older the guys they’re looking at…so why don’t start at the other end of the scale?

Hey, I’ve dated younger and I’ve dated older.  If they’re not too much younger and not too much older, it really doesn’t make a big difference.  If everything works, they’re attractive, they’ve got a brain, and can have a conversation without too many dysfluencies (oh, just go look it up)… it’s all good to me.  Frankly, I’ve got bigger problems than worrying about whether the woman I’m dating is too old or too young…I’M SHORT!!!!  And talk about women not wanting to date “beneath” them.    But that’s a rant for another day….

It was an interesting time.  I had actually flagged her as a favorite on one of the dating sites and was going to contact her when my life was a bit more settled.  But she contacted me first after recognizing one of the pictures in my profile.  I met her on a frenzied weekend of internet dating.  Somehow, I had managed to compress all my “dating” into one crazy weekend. I was having coffee with Ms. Wonderful on a Friday afternoon, dinner Friday night with another woman I had recently been fixed up with, and Saturday night was again dinner with a third woman I had recently met online…and she was another high school classmate of sorts.  Ms. Wonderful and I had a nice time chatting and I ended up calling her later to set up a meeting the following Monday for some more coffee and then again on Wednesday for lunch.  The other women became history and Ms. Wonderful and we saw a lot of each other.

At our second meeting I was so excited to see her that my knees went week when she drove up. The whole thing was a bit crazy.  I was an uptight guy who was trying to loosen up a bit and get back into the dating scene, and she was a free spirit.  She became part of my life very quickly.

We had a lot in common.  Aside from high school and a lot of people we both knew way back when, we had both been through some tough times and we were both looking forward to something new happening in our lives.  We were enjoying our relationship and before I knew it, we’d been together for six months.

But recently, something happened. Something changed and I’m not sure what.  Things weren’t clicking as smoothly as before. The honeymoon was OVER!

I’m sure it had to be me. In retrospect I wasn’t working at making the relationship as great as I should have been…and I don’t know why.  We “talked” about it. She said my head was so far up my ass they’d have to send in a search party to find it. Then I said something I probably shouldn’t have said and I ended up with a size14 foot in my size 9-1/2 mouth…as will happen to guys on a regular basis… and that pretty much put things into a tail spin. No matter what I’d say, I might as well be the target in a dunk tank because things are coming at me fast and furious.  And frankly, if I were her, I’d be throwing stuff at me as well…insults, things I said months ago taken out of context, and of course anything and everything that wasn’t tied down…and a special effort was made to toss the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue extra hard. (Unlike most of the stuff sailing past my head, that one was at least worth trying to catch and save!)

She’s coming by to pick up her stuff later today.  That’s going to be an interesting Kodak moment. I have very mixed feelings about what to do next. Do I try to fix it or just let it go and spend some time trying to learn from it? Does conflict in a relationship ever really allow for true reconciliation? Isn’t there always the seed of mistrust or discontent lingering somewhere?

Words hurt, and next time I’ll certainly think twice and check my brain before putting my mouth in gear.

Whatever I do, I’ll first need to extricate my head from my ass…assuming I can find it…my head that is.  My ass is easy to spot.

Being an honest guy, I set up my profile on a few sites using my true age, reasonably current pictures and my marital status as “separated”.  After all, I wasn’t “officially” divorced – although I had filed my papers to start the process – and I wasn’t single, so there weren’t many other choices.

For a guy, listing yourself as separated is like placing yourself in an online dating abyss.  No woman wants to knowingly date a guy that’s been married and isn’t yet “officially” divorced.  She doesn’t want to deal with possibility of you going back to your Ex and all the garbage that comes with finalizing the terms of the divorce… and there’s probably a good chance she’s gone through the experience of dating a guy that’s been “separated” and it didn’t turn out well, so now every guy she dates that’s in that situation has to suffer.

When I first got on the internet sites, I was pretty proactive about contacting women.  I thought I had a pretty decent profile, was a decent looking guy and simply playing the numbers game, I should have had at least a few responses.  As it turned out, I didn’t get one positive response.  I did get a few “thank you, but no thanks” but most were just completely ignored.

What I did get was a few inquiries from women who saw my profile and contacted me… apparently not noticing my status.  We’d meet for coffee and the question would come up how long I’ve been divorced and the next thing I new I was talking to an empty chair.  On occasion, we’d hit it off and manage to get past that issue, at least temporarily, but it was always in the back of their mind.

But I really don’t get it.  Sure, I can see how a guy might say he’s going back to his wife or use it as a crutch to keep from getting too committed to someone, but he could just as easily say he’s going back to a former girlfriend or that he’s never stopped dating and has found someone else he wants to be with more…so why focus only on one possible risk factor.    And yes, if you’re dating someone during that reasonably short period after the breakup and before the divorce is final, you might be the rebound lover, but again that can happen as a result of any breakup…whether with a “divorced” partner, with one waiting for the process to run its course or even a single guy who has never been married.

If you’re concerned about the possibility of things not working out after investing a little time, effort and emotion into a relationship, then you’re never going to have a satisfactory relationship because you want to know what the final score is going to be and who the winner is before you even play the game…You’re probably the type who reads the last chapter of a book first to see how it ends before you even know who the characters are.

So ladies… take a breath.  Look at the big picture.  Don’t label us as off limits just because we’re honest about where we are in life.  As guys, we certainly don’t place the same emphasis on your marital status as you place on ours, so let’s just even the playing field and take things at face value and one day at a time.  (We may have issues with young kids as part of the package, but that’s a completely different thing.)   I’d be far more concerned about the dishonesty of a man not being forthright about his situation and trying to game the system just for a date than whether he’s divorced, separated or single.  Let’s get our priorities straight.

I used to date two or three women at a time when I was in college.  Back then, no one was looking for a long term commitment…or at least I certainly wasn’t.  I swore I would never do that again after finding myself in a rather difficult situation having called one woman I was dating the name of another at a rather inopportune time…Peggy, Patty…Patty, Peggy…you can see how it would be easy to mix things up, particularly when the brain is engaged elsewhere.  Good thing I was pretty nimble back then because it didn’t take but a few moments after my slip up before the books and shoes were flying fast and furious… and my dorm room wasn’t very big!

I’ve since discovered, as I had feared, that some things don’t change and there are still some major landmines that need to be addressed when dating more than one woman at a time…and I’m only talking dating right now…I’m not even going to discuss sex in today’s blog!  (I’m still trying to figure that one out.) 

So here’s some landmines to be wary of… 

     – Did I already tell that story to this one or was it the other? 

     – Did I already call her just to say hi today, or was it the other? 

     – Who did I send that last email to, Peggy or Patty? 

     - Which one likes roses and which one likes tulips? 

     – Which one prefers steak and which one prefers fish? 

     – And…perhaps one of the most important tidbits to keep straight…other than the names of their kids…is which one is allergic to peanuts!  You definitely DO NOT want to get that one wrong!

I’ve been debating whether to mention to one or more of them that I’m seeing other women…with the addition of a hopefully anger diffusing comment like “But while I’m with you, you are the most important thing to me” (shades of TV’s The Bachelor…note to self…it’s a TV show Bozo, not real life!).  But things are nice and a lot of fun, and I’m not sure if I want to (a) risk the loss of one or more of the relationships, (b) risk having my head torn off if they don’t take it quite the way I had hoped, or (c) relieve myself of the burden of secrecy by being open and honest with each of them…versus just keeping my mouth shut and seeing where things end up naturally.

Obviously, or maybe not so obvious to some, I’m not the kind of guy that would maintain multiple serious relationships if one was getting really serious and just felt really right.  Once I’m committed to an exclusive relationship, I’m committed (remember I was married for 28 years…and if that’s not committment, what is?), so sooner or later, things would have to change…or at least that’s my outlook as of today.

As a fairly jealous guy, I guess I’d feel uncomfortable competing with other guys for the affection and attention of “my” woman, so I would imagine a woman – or women – on the other side of the relationship would probably feel the same… and maybe more so…

And of course, then there’s the other guys.  I like my baby blues and I really don’t want to suddenly find myself with a pair of black eyes having to explain what happened to friends, neighbors and most importantly the women I’ve been dating.

I guess to some degree it all depends on the people involved and what each is looking for.  I suspect the best thing to do is to discuss it right up front.  Ask them what they’re “looking for” and what type of relationship they would expect to have with the men they date.  That would certainly make things easier…but a lot less fun 

It started about a month ago.  I was at an event, and low and behold in the front row was a woman who I recognized immediately as being on at least one, if not two of the dating sites I subscribe to (I’m up to 5 so far with not a lot of luck!).  I have a pretty good eye and memory for faces, even those who I haven’t seen for many years, but as vast as the internet is, I never thought that I’d actually run into these people “in real life.” 

Last week while I was at the dog park playing with my dog (it’s becoming a great regular hangout for me, but I’m mostly there for the dog), I was chatting with a woman when I began to realize that this was a woman who had blown me off online for no apparent reason maybe 4 or 6 months earlier.  We never made it past the email stage so I’m not even sure she had paid much attention to my photograph…or now me, live and in person, but here I was actually talking to her.  Obviously since we didn’t hit it off online, I was pretty sure we wouldn’t hit it off in person, so I didn’t even mention to here that we had had some earlier conversations through an online dating site.  And by the way, in this case, her photo – as bad as it was – was much better than seeing her in real life…which is not always the case.

The latest episode happened in a restaurant.  I was deep into conversation with my date (ironically, an old fashion “set up” and not thru the internet) when this woman gets up from the booth across the way, spins around and heads off to what I could only presume to be the ladies room since her dinner mates were still at the table.  At first I wasn’t quite sure, but when she got back, I got a better look at her and sure enough…she was one of my Match.com matches.  Here again she wasn’t looking nearly as good as some of her photos, but since she had put a variety of both more-flattering and less-flattering photos up, one was pretty close to what she looked like that night.

I guess it’s a bit like living in the Twilight Zone.  You see a face in a book and voila, now you see them walking down the street.  Kind of like catalog shopping for new friends.   

It would certainly make for an interesting ice breaker to walk up to one of these women and say, “Hi…I’m (my profile name) I saw your dating profile on (dating site name).com.  How’s that working out for you?”  

I suspect that as more people are spending time on dating sites and as people propagate multiple sites with their profile (as I said earlier I’m up to 5), you’re not only going to start seeing the same people over and over, but if you’re targeting a reasonably small geographic area, it’s only a matter of time before you start running into them at Starbucks or a restaurant without even offering them the invitation first.

You don’t have to be an anthropologist to understand that there are basically two things that drive a man’s desire for a particular woman…at least at an age where all the plumbing still works (with or without assistance).

The first one is purely visual. A man is going to be attracted to a woman based solely on looks…whether he’s attracted to a pretty face, her rack, her butt, her legs or in some cases her size (as in slender and tiny or thick and obese). There’s no intellectual stimulation baloney… It’s looks, pure and simple.

The second element of “attraction” is “acceptance.” For whatever reason, a woman is interested and attracted to you regardless of how much of a slob you are. Basically, if she’ll have you, there’s a connection. (Sad state of affairs if you ask me, but in the beginning of many relationships, this is why a woman is in control.)

From the woman’s point of view there are many factors that come into play. Looks is obviously a big one, and probably still the number one factor in any relationship and at any age…although as with anything having to do with a woman, there is no single set of criteria about looks that stimulates her…one could be attracted to tall and thin guys, another could be attracted to bald guys, another could be attracted to tattoos or guys that just carry themselves in a very self confident and positive way…it just depends. And then there’s intelligence, financial stability, family orientation, celebrity, status in the community, status in the business world, to name just a few other factors that all play a role in a woman’s selection of a man.

So you just never know what may be attractive about you to a woman as one woman’s criteria may be completely different to another’s…and because we’re dealing with women, it may change over time!

The question is, do you try to do anything about it to try to make yourself more attractive to the type of women you want to meet (if trying to target a particular type of woman is even a good strategy) or just go about being the normal jerk that you are seeking out attractive women in the hope that one will find something about you interesting enough to strike up a conversation?

In my limited dating experience since splitting with my Ex, I find that the less I try to control who I meet or the type of woman I’m looking for, the more women I meet and the more interesting and fun it is.  It’s like that extraordinarily perceptive philosopher Forrest Gump says…life is like a box a chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.

There are some interesting features to these sites…one being that you can track whose checking you out.  What I find interesting is the number of older women that check out my profile, particularly on one of the sites.  I haven’t calculated the number, but it feels like it’s close to 80%!  There are so many older women “hitting” on me you’d think that site would be named SeniorDate.com!  

Now, I’m not just talking a year or two older (assuming they’re not lying…more on that later)…I’m talking 5 to 10 years older.  We’re talking women well into their sixties…not that there’s anything wrong with being in your sixties, I hope to be there myself one day.  I just never expected this was what internet dating was going to be like.  Sure I’ve heard of cougars prowling the web, but I thought they were older women going after much younger guys…guys in their 20’s and 30’s.  But coming after a guy in his 50’s? 

I guess if an “older” woman is looking for a bit of youthfulness in a mature man, searching for someone 5 or 10 years her junior isn’t that big a deal especially if you look at what the flip side has to offer.  When you’re in your early to mid sixties and looking for someone “older” you’re talking 70+ years old and how many sprite old geezers are surfing internet dating sites looking for women in their 60’s?  If those geezers are that spritely, they don’t need the internet.  And that reduces the pool of eligible men even more for these frisky women in their 60’s. 

I really can’t fault older women for looking for slightly younger men.  I use the same criteria when I’m looking for a woman.  My first preference on my search is a woman 5-10 years my junior even though most of the women I’ve met through the internet were a few years older.  Even my ex-wife was older.  So maybe there’s a basic flaw in my logic of trying to find a younger woman… 

On the other hand, it’s blatantly obvious that many women, and guys as well, lie about their age on their internet profiles…so how is one to know the truth?  Some admit it right in their profile, others may never let on.  As one woman wrote, it’s really just  Search Engine Optimization…You want maximum exposure  and more hits so you’ll have a better chance of finding the right match…and the younger you appear to be the more activity there is. (Ain’t that the truth!)

But I still feel odd about it.  I could probably have a very active dating life if I wanted to pursue every older woman that checks me out, but I keep asking myself, if they’re lying about their age when they say their 52, are they still lying about their age when they say they’re 62?  I haven’t quite reached the point where I’m ready to make that connection to find out.   

All that having been said, it’s Saturday night and I’m sitting here at home writing my blog instead of out with an interesting and attractive woman, of any age, having a great time.  Maybe I need to rethink this age thing and go with the flow…

It seems to have taken up residence on the screen to my laptop.  It wanders around checking out the pictures and I’m sure reading my posts…especially since it’s got enough eyes to read them all at once…and then it takes off to I don’t know where.

I’ve tried to entertain myself with it seeing if it would chase the cursor like those clips on YouTube where a cat is chasing a laser dot, and a guy I know has a dog that chases his shadow – and yours too, but it doesn’t seem to want to play along. 

I’ve tried changing the pictures to see if it’s attracted to any particular type of picture…news, shit videos (or should I say videos of cow shit – don’t flies love that stuff?) and even porn…but again, no discernable reaction…  It just seems to wander aimlessly…like a lot of my friends.

It comes and goes at will and I’m really not sure I want to smash it while it’s on the screen of my laptop.  I may have to hunt it down in some other part of the house and make my stand there.  I could sick my dog on it…he has fun chasing flies when they’re on a window, and he’s caught a few – adding a little protein to his diet – but he’s only good up to about 3 feet.  If it’s higher than that, it’s going to have to be swatter time.

Or, I could just wait it out for a day or so…It was a pretty sizable critter, so I have to assume it’s more than a babe in the woods and will have completed it’s time on earth relatively soon.

I knew that having the doors open most of the day, while I moved furniture in and out of the house, was going to be an invitation for unwanted guests, but I wasn’t thinking about flies…more like rats and neighbors…only the rats are better guests.  You know they just come in for the food.  The neighbors come over to check out your house, make a few snide remarks, and then they take your food.

It’s been a while since that little bugger has been back to annoy me.  I did catch a glimpse of him doing a couple of low level passes, buzzing the deck so to speak, to let me know he’s still in the room.  And occasionally I can hear him in the background, but as long as he stays off the computer, I’m good with that…at least until I’m done working.  Then it’s safari time.  I guess he didn’t read the sign on my door…This is a No Fly Zone.

Now, I didn’t just say that to placate her.  It actually looked like it was put in as an afterthought.  It took up a lot of room in the bathroom and made stepping into the tub a bit awkward since you’re stepping up and then taking a BIG step down.  Didn’t make much sense and not to sensible a situation for my 79 year old mother and especially my 88 year old father. 

Having finished up just about everything I had planned to do today I stopped home (I only live maybe five minutes or so from them), grabbed a few “demolition” tools…a hammer and some crowbars of various sizes (no real tool hound has just one, does he?) and headed back to do a quick little smash it and trash it job for my parents.

As with all jobs of this type, the first few steps are just too easy and suck you in for the adventure of your life.  The whole purpose of this “remodel” was to prepare the room for new flooring and gain a little space…the safety issue was never part of their thinking…but the only one that mattered to me.  So I ripped off the carpet…easy.  Ripped off some old linoleum tile that looked like my brother had put in…again easy.  Removed the molding on the sides…still pretty easy.  And then proceeded to remove the underlying frame…NOT so easy.

What I thought had been an afterthought, apparently had been installed by the original builder 50 years ago and it was clear he (and I say he because back then there weren’t many, if any, women in the construction trade) wasn’t about to have some young whippersnapper fool around with his work or take it out.

It was now obvious my hammer and crow bars were not going to be enough.  This job was screaming “Sawszall”, ”acetylene torch” and I think I even heard “back hoe.”  I originally had figured that the step was just sitting on the floor with maybe a screw or two holding it in place.  When I got down to the wood frame, not only were there three inch nails every inch and a half, and more wood in that frame than can be found in Sequoia National Park, but the damn thing was anchored into the concrete with concrete nails that had to be left over from when they built Fort Knox.  There were more anchors nailed into the concrete than I have teeth!  

That step was not going anywhere, but it was too late to put it back together…I had already cut and chopped the outer parts of the frame to pieces in an attempt to get in and out of there fast since I was supposed to be meeting with friends at the local sports bar for happy hour.

Well, there was nothing happy about this hour…or should I say hours.  Have you ever tried to remove a nail that’s been shot into concrete and is holding down a nice thick piece of lumber?  Every read the story The Sword in the Stone?  We’ll I’m not King Arthur and removing concrete nails imbedded in concrete is not an easy task.

I probably used half the tools in my collection to hit, twist, cut, bend and cajole those damn nails.  Ultimately I did prevail, but happy hour was history…let’s just say we’re probably looking at desert and coffee if anyone was still hungry.  

I managed to remove the step without damaging any other parts of the bathroom but more important without damaging any other parts of ME!  I think this may be the last time I look at any ”fix it”  job as being “easy.”  From now on, when I look at a project and think it’s only going to take an hour, I’m going to go back to my financial modeling days and apply my normal rule of thumb for the best case scenario:  take your best guess (ok, I’d make a calculation, but it’s still a guess), then double it and add 50%.  Of course for the worst case scenario I just suggest to anyone who wants to stand around and watch that they buy season tickets.

Anyway, now I’m faced with having to learn an entirely new device.  I just finally figured out how to program my VCR and now I’ve got to do this?  And have you seen the keys on this thing?  Who has fingers that small?

In order to save a lot of time (and a lot of mistakes), I may actually have to break down and read the manual…assuming there’s even a manual in the box.  I’ve been afraid to look.  I did manage to talk the guy at the Verizon store into giving me a few lessons on how to use the phone before I left.  So here’s what I got.

Lesson 1:  Turning the phone on and off, charging it, and making and receiving calls.  OK, so what.  I could do that on Old Faithful, my other phone.  

Lesson 2:  Navigating the operating system using that fish eye track ball they have right in the middle of the phone.  Kind of reminds me of a meal my Ex had ordered about 20 years ago when we used to have Date Nights.  She ordered Trout which is often served with the head on and the eyes starring right at you.  It was one of those meals I ended up eating even though it wasn’t the one I ordered.  And I don’t even like fish… or at least the kind that stare at you when you’re trying to decide where to stick your fork.  So much for Date Nights.

Lesson 3: Using the keypad.  Who designs these things…Lilliputians?  I can barely read the keys, much less type on them…and what’s with thumb typing?  OK, I can do a mean hunt and peck with my index finger on my laptop, but getting those thumbs to move where I want them is like teaching my feet to dance (and if you’ve read my Swinger’s Life blog post, you’ll know what I’m talking about!).

What’s so funny about the whole thing is that 40 years ago (yes, I’m really dating myself now…) I was doing programming on some of the early “mainframe” computers and even some “mini” computers…you know those little computers that took up a room the size of the L.A. Coliseum and had to have their own snow making equipment inside the room to keep it cool…  I was punching out instructions on tape and hand marking optically read “punch” cards in order to make the computer flash a bunch of lights, make a bunch of noise, and print out a word or two either on an old TV screen or a converted typewriter. (No such thing as inkjet or laser printers in those days).  I even used to room with a guy back in my bachelor days who actually built one of the early IMSAI 8080 micro computers and we used to play around writing programs for that to see what we could make it do.  Those were the good old days…the days before email, facebook and internet porn…. The days when geeks wrote programs for the fun of it… I mean who ever thought that you could make a bazillion dollars just by writing some stupid little program?  If I knew that, I might have stuck with it longer.

So knowing that I was a geek before people even knew what geeks were, you’d think I’d have a better grasp on the technological aspects of my new toy.  Well, I was trying to simplify my life by staying old school.  But since that won’t work anymore, give me a day or two and I’ll have that baby purring…even if I have to do the unthinkable – something that no REAL guy ever admits to – I’ll read the instructions.