Bitter: It's not just a gal thing

“You’re not like other fortysomething women I’ve met.”

These are interesting words to come from a man I barely knew. For a moment, I panicked. I mean, I like being different, but only in certain ways. The good ways. What was he getting at?
“What do you mean?” I asked dispassionately so I didn’t come off tweaked, too eager or neurotic.
“You’re not bitter.”

I drew a sigh of relief. But I could tell we were on to something, and it was infinitely more intriguing than even my green papaya salad.

It was my first date with Peter, a fiftysomething guy I met online. He was tall and lanky, cute in a face-that-grows-on-you kinda way. We agreed to meet at E&O Trading Co. He showed up in a thrift-store Versace leopard print shirt, funky jeans, a large silver hoop in his right ear and a goofy smile. I had a feeling I was going to like him right away. Now I wasn’t too sure how the night was going to go. But I mustered up all my best people skills and got at it.

“Bitter? Do you find that women are bitter?”
“Most of them,” he said as he munched on a corn fritter.
“Why is that?”

“They’re angry. Angry at their exes, at the last boyfriend who dumped them, at the guy they gave their number to who doesn’t call, at the guy they slept with and then never see again ...”
I started to squirm a bit. I thought of some of the experiences my divorced girlfriends and I have gone through lately, and some of the things we’ve said. Were they bitter? Was I bitter, too, but better able to mask it — at least for date No. 1?

Jennifer, a newly divorced mom who gets hit on all the time, has been wondering why the guys she’s not interested in keep calling but she never gets calls from the ones she really likes, even though they say they will.

Mia, whose husband went through hundreds of thousands of their life savings and never told her (and ended up with their house!), is just barely over the guy who pursued her even though she kept insisting she didn’t want a relationship. Two years of hot-and-heavy dating later, when she finally started thinking, “OK, I’ve found The One,” he announced that he couldn’t commit. He split.

Nadine, a talented, smart, genuine and sassy gal not only hasn’t had a boyfriend in five years, but she hasn’t been able to muster many dates either, despite going online, trying speed-dating, volunteering and hanging out at all the happening music places from Petaluma to San Francisco.

Anna was seeing a dashing man who actively wooed her. They were fast approaching boyfriend-girlfriend status and then one day, out of nowhere, the fateful words: “I just don’t want to get too involved.”

Lara dated a man for a year, a man she talked about having babies with, when he just kinda disappeared one day. She hasn’t heard from him since. No goodbye, not even a “It’s not you, it’s me.”
I’ve had a head-scratching experience, too. Dave was one of the hottest-looking men I’d seen online, a former model with blue-green eyes and an amazing body. But much more important, he wrote an enticing profile — and with no spelling errors (a rarity among online profiles). He said he was seeking honesty, a soul mate, a woman with depth, intellect and character. Plus he was a dad, so I knew he’d be empathetic to my single-mom status.

He was charming and gracious in person. We hit it off on our first date and had two more. He was gushy when he talked to me, complimenting me on everything, wanting to make more plans. I started to feel a little gushy myself. And then ... the e-mail. I don’t remember exactly what it said anymore, but he basically told me we just weren’t a good fit. I was a little surprised but, OK — I know it takes more than a few dates before you really get a sense of someone, so I didn’t feel too disappointed or give it too much thought. But a few weeks later, while goofing off on Craigslist, I saw some chatter about him in the Missed Connections section.

“Anyone ever go out with Dave from Yahoo? He wines and dines you, sends you flowers and then dumps you with an e-mail,” one woman wrote.
And then a whole chorus of women chimed in with their Dave experiences, and one even reprinted his e-mail. As I read it, I shuddered: He sent the same Dear Jane e-mail word-for-word to each of them — and me!

I just coudn’t resist. I still had his personal e-mail address so I sent him an e-mail letting him know that he was a hot topic among the women he’d left in his wake. “What goes around comes around, I guess,” I wrote. He didn’t write back, but he’s still online, probably with the same M.O.
Sure, these are just bumps in the dating road, but are they enough to make a gal bitter? If a woman has several experiences like this — on top of a messy divorce, dealing with a deadbeat dad, feeling overwhelmed by her full-time job and mommy duties, struggling to make ends meet
because the divorce blasts her level of living — does that make it OK to become a bit jaded? Is it any different if a guy gets rejected over and over?

Some men seem to think “bitter” and “divorcee” go together like that old love and marriage, horse and carriage ditty. Author and former psychotherapist R. Don Steele (“How to Date Young Women”) who writes advice columns for men on www.mensnewsdaily.com, www.menstuff.org and his own site, www.steelballs.com, evidently is one.

“Are there very many women who can overcome their bitterness?” a male reader writes in to Steele.

Steele’s answer? “No, not many. Most women fester there until after menopause. About seven years later, many women are able to accept that the world is the way it is and that they were operating on a faulty set of principles. ... The rest are grumpy, angry, bitter old ladies.”
If this is what most men think about us — you know, the soon-to-be grumpy, angry, bitter old ladies — we have a much bigger problem here than I thought. And, perhaps something to really be bitter about.

As for Peter, we went out a few more times, and although I liked a lot of things about him, there was one area that we were just not a good fit (so to speak): Sex. But this is a really touchy topic to approach with a guy, especially when no amount of Viagra, tantra or sex therapy sessions were going to help.
I’m a very honest gal, but there was no way to tell him the truth. So I told him a “mistruth,” cringing inside as the words came out of my mouth — that I just wasn’t emotionally ready to commit so soon. He didn’t take the news happily, and for weeks he kept trying to get together. I felt pretty awful, but we were done, and I didn’t want to lead him on.
I’ve seen Peter around since, and he’s been standoffish and curt. One might even say bitter.
I guess he knows now that bitter can go both ways.

Male on the brain

I often marvel at my girlfriends. They’re amazing not only for their incredible beauty, but by the amazing lives they lead. Beyond the smart, polite kids they’ve raised and the inviting homes they’ve created, these fortysomething gals have managed to carve out successful, high-powered careers.

But lately I am marveling at the odd affliction that has possessed their minds, their thoughts, their conversations.

It’s men, men, men, 24/7.

Just what in the world is going on?

Of course, it wasn’t always like this. On our long morning hikes in the Headlands, at our gal get-togethers at the Left Bank or the Buckeye, on the bleachers at Boyle Park or Friends Field for our kids’ soccer and baseball games, we used to talk about other things. Politics, aging, sex, work. Intellectual things. OK, I’ll fess up; we talked about our kids mostly. But men? Outside of gripes about how our husbands did one thing or another, or the one time we rated which of the dads at out kids’ school was “doable,” men just weren’t on our radar all that much.
Now, I know that this isn’t happening everywhere. I talk weekly with my dear friend Ali who moved to Seattle just as my marriage was busting up. Her knitting group talks politics, books, movies, wool weights.

So what happened? Is it yet another an Only in Marin thing? No, but I can only blame it on one thing: the D-word. D as in Divorce. First Mary, then Anna, then Mia, then Jessica, then me, then Jennifer (prompting Trent, my teenager, to ask, “Did you guys all make bets on who was divorcing next?”)

If I’ve learned nothing else in the few years since my split (and I’ve learned plenty), it’s this: Get a bunch of divorced fortysomething women together and nothing else is going on in the world except men. Forget Iraq, stem-cell research and what’s going on in the Mideast: It’s all about who called, who didn’t call, who did what and when and — yep, sorry guys — how.
Unfortunately, it’s even afflicted the (very few, at this point) married gals among us, who listen in envy — or downright fear, depending on the situation — of the tales of sexual conquest and dating disasters. The married ones are pretty fascinated by the lives of the divorced ones. And I admit, sometimes with good reason; It can be fun (if you can forget, for a while anyway, the havoc divorce wreaks on your kids, emotions and finances).

But this obsession with men starts to get old, not so much because of the topic — I happen to find men fascinating. In fact, I love them. But because it inevitably comes down to the B-word. B as in Boyfriend.

Accustomed to having someone warm next to us when we wake up and go to sleep for a decade or two, my divorced friends are looking to fill that spot. And it seems the only way we know how is by finding a man to call our own. Now.

“I don’t want to do that whole dating thing. I’m tired of going to parties alone. I want a boyfriend,” Jennifer protests.

“I know, Jen, but so does Anna and Mia and Nadine and Mary and ...” I answer, perhaps just a bit too snarky. “Plus, how do you expect to find a boyfriend without the dating part first?”
One friend rejected a man because he was bi-coastal. “I don’t want a boyfriend I only see every other weekend,” she sniffed. They’d only gone on two or three dates. They hadn’t even entered boyfriend-girlfriend territory yet.

Another friend started talking of a future with a single dad who drank way too much. How well was that going to play out?

But the part that worries me is this: Here they are, successful, smart, beautiful women so focused on filling the void when they finally have the time to know who they are now, minus a husband and the trappings of marriage, what they really want and what they want in a partner.
I say “they,” not “we,” not because I have it all figured out. Trust me: I don’t. But I am looking at this solo time as an opportunity to explore a lot of different experiences with a lot of different people. I read an interview with Eve Ensler, author of “The Vagina Monologues” recently, and she put it so beautifully: “I meet people and I have experiences, but I don’t date.” To that I say, right on, Eve. And if those “experiences” don’t look like the traditional every-Friday-and-Saturday-night-date kind of relationship, that’s OK, too. I’ve done that. My thinking is: What haven’t I done?

Do I want to meet and “experience” men? You bet. Do I want a boyfriend? Not really.
The last thing I want to do is to partner quickly with someone just because we like each other and we’re hanging out together so ... I dunno, must be the next step. There’s too much at stake now. I’ve dragged my kid through one divorce that’s probably going to impact his life for a long, long time, likely forever.

I’m not against having a partner. In fact, at some point in my life, probably when Trent’s launched into a life on his own, I really would like one. What that partnership looks like, however, is open to discussion.

If I can ever get back to discussing things other than men, that is.

Ready, willing and oh-so able

There’s an odd phenomenon that happens when a fortysomething woman is newly separated or divorced. I can’t quite explain it, but let’s call it Divine Intervention.
The Boy Toy.
It’s as if God looks down upon us poor women of a certain age — but in the midst our sexual peak — and says, “Although fortysomething-year-old hubby doesn’t want you, twentysomething Boy Toy does. Don’t be fruitful and multiply, but please — go at it.”
I’m not a very religious gal, but it sure made a believer out of me.
Mia found hers at work. Anna hired a handyman from the Yellow Pages and in walked Mr. Hunkalicious. Nadine shopped at Whole Foods and took home a quarter pound of Castelleno cheese and the deli guy. Jennifer dined at a San Rafael restaurant and the maitre d’ decided he’d like to do more than just seat her. For me, it was as easy as this: He moved in down the street just after Rob, my ex, moved out.
He was staying for free in a room in my neighbor’s house in exchange for some fence work while he looked for a permanent place. I noticed him right away — a striking blond, blue-eyed and perfectly buff Jude Law look-alike.
I’d sensed a presence watching me from time to time, and prayed that it wasn’t the 68-year-old homeowner. I started to be a little more careful about how I dressed each day. And I started wearing matching lingerie, too — my mother always told me to wear nice undies “just in case,” but I’m not sure this is what she meant.
“So how are you doing?” my friend Ali asked, calling from the Seattle house she moved to just as my marriage began falling apart. I had imagined I would be supporting her in her new Pacific Northwest life and instead here she was, checking up on me several times a week as I navigated my unexpected new solo life.
“I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I cry all the time, I’ve lost weight and everyone tells me how great I look! But, the most adorable man or boy — I can’t quite tell — moved in down the block.”
“Oh?”
“Well, I think he’s a man. I haven’t had a good enough look at him to figure out if he’s three or just two decades younger than I am.”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
“Yep, and I plan to act on it ASAP. In the meantime, I think I’ll have a very, very good fantasy about him tonight.”
“Sweet dreams ...”
A few days after, I noticed him working outside. It was my chance. Being a good neighbor (and a flirt), I complimented him on his fanciful fence and we started chatting. Well, I know he was talking, but I was so taken by his looks, by the very idea of him, I’m not so sure I was my usual eloquent self.
“So, what’s your name?” I asked, coyly.
“Ian.”
“Ian what?”
“Ian Goodson.”
“Good son? Hmm, well, I’d probably have to ask your mom about that,” I teased.
“There are many ways to be good,” he said, his eyes locking with mine as he gently squeezed my arm.
Let the seduction begin!
As it turns out, Ian was 25. Man enough for me. Our fling was, well, amazing. The split had left me an emotional wreck, a sudden reader of way-too-many self-help books in between my weekly therapy sessions. My life was all too Woody Allen-like. And here was Boy Toy, telling me how beautiful I was and wanting to jump my bones.
What could I do? Like Oscar Wilde said, the only way to resist temptation is to give into it.
He was the first man I had been with other than the man I had been with for 16 years. And although I was separated, I was still technically married. For a few weeks, I walked around in an oxytocin-fueled daze, feeling like Diane Lane surely felt on the train ride home after her first tryst with Olivier Martinez in “Unfaithful.” Boy Toy — 15 years my junior — reeked of all that was illicit, forbidden and naughty. But even if he were my age, just being with someone new is intoxicating. In a way, it makes the lure of an extramarital affair seem understandable, but certainly not justifiable or excusable.
At some point, though, I sadly came to realize that my Boy Toy — just like the fake nails and blond hair streaks I relied on to feel better after my split — had to go. Forgive me, Demi and Ashton, but a Boy Toy does not a relationship make. He was not my life partner. He was not going to stepdad my kid. He was not going to help me through the perimenopausal hell that was sure to start any day. I had to acknowledge that Boy Toy came into my life for one reason only — to help me understand that even though a marriage ended, I was still a desirable person with a lot to offer. He rekindled in me a passion that had been hidden behind years of trying to be the Good Wife and Mother. I had somehow forgotten that I was still the same fun, smart, flirtatious, sensual gal that attracted Rob, my former hubby, in the first place. Unfortunately, he had forgotten it, too.
I knew it was time for me to dive into the muck of my split, go deep into the uncomfortable emotional zone of figuring out just what happened and why, and come out a healthy woman and mother focused on who she is and what she wants. That part is so much clearer now, but it’s still a journey.
And like all journeys, there are memories — good and bad. I’m grateful I have good ones of my lusty Boy Toy days. And talk about the home movies!

He's the perfect catch, but he's my ex

“I can’t believe what he’s done!” Jennifer fumes so loudly into my cell phone that I have to hold it a few inches away.
“Who? What?”
“My ex! He took his new girlfriend away for a week to Cinqe Terra, the place I’d been after him for years to take me to. I’m so mad!”
“Isn’t that just like him,” I say in empathy. “So spiteful.”
“And he just hosted a huge dinner party that he actually catered! He never did that with me. And they ate at the French Laundry! I can’t stand that he’s having so much fun!”
Then, after a tearful pause, “I just didn’t think he’d be partnered before me.”
Jennifer is facing the cold reality that eventually every divorcee faces. I call it Ex Envy.
He’s got a new girlfriend who’s younger, shapelier and blonder than you; he’s finally lost the 15 pounds you never complained about but secretly wished he’d shed; he’s given up channel surfing for actual surfing ... as well as tennis and salsa classes; he’s reading things other than TV Guide and the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue; he’s going to see theater other than your children’s school play; and he’s traded in the baggy, crack-revealing Levi’s for $200 Rock & Republic jeans.
In other words, he’s become a catch.
Just like our children — after all those years of us helping them, guiding them, shaping them, at some point, it’s payoff time. Except with the ex, some other woman is reaping all the spoils.
Really, is this fair?
“If he’d only done those things when we were married, I wouldn’t have divorced him!” sniffs Anna, whose former hubby never seemed to find a decent job while they were married but is now wildly successful and earning big bucks.
Why is it that the ex becomes (almost) everything you wish he’d been when you were married after you’ve split? And it’s not that you want to be back with him; it’s just that you didn’t really expect him to enjoy life so much without you.
Like Rob, my former hubby of 15 years. He’s been seeing Tina (a nice gal but, you know, six years older than I am) for almost three years. His career’s taken off, he’s taken up tennis and ballroom dancing, he weekends in Tahoe and the Wine Country and even drives into San Francisco to dine at fancy restaurants — things I could never get him to do.
Of course, there are two ways to look at this. The one I prefer is that he realizes the many mistakes he made with me and finally understands that he’ll have to be a more active, engaging and exciting partner if he wants to keep an active, engaging and exciting woman.
The other way of looking at it is just too horrible to acknowledge: That he’s always wanted to do those things, it’s just that he didn’t want to do them with me.
“Do you think Rob will marry Tina?” Jennifer asks me as we sip our cappuccinos at a cozy corner table at Caffe Trieste, eyeing the tight spandex butts of the bicyclists hanging around.
“Are you kidding?” I say, feeling pretty smug. “He’s getting sex whenever he wants it, he only has the kid every other week and he can do whatever he wants whenever he wants to. Why in the world would he want to mess that up by getting married? He’s finally gotten what he’s always wanted — freedom.”
“What if he did? Would you be jealous?”
“No way. I never think about him in that way.”
But as I answer, I thought of friends whose former hubbies had recently gotten engaged or married. Even through they can’t even imagine being back with their exes (some can’t even imagine being in the same room), they confessed that it was hard not to be emotional, no matter how conflicted their relationships with them were. Mostly because they compared his life with theirs. He found love, she didn’t, and what was up with that?
I like to see myself as a “good” ex — not jealous, revengeful or bitter — but I wondered: Would I feel the same?
I needed empirical evidence, so I tested myself on www.blogthings.com/whattypeofexareyouquiz. My results: “You’re so over your ex, you hardly even remember you have an ex. You prefer to leave all of the baggage behind you — far, far behind. As they say, indifference is the opposite of love!”
Excuse me while I gloat.
Actually, I really am happy for Rob, and as long as Tina is nice to our son Trent, all’s fine. I admit it took me some time to get used to the idea that he could be so happy without me. Sometimes, when I’m veering dangerously close to a “woe-is-me” mode — Trent’s in full-on teenage hormonal angst and sassing back, the paycheck’s not enough to cover any extras and the credit card’s maxed, the dating thing is just not happening — I look at how things have turned out and think, “This is not my beautiful life.”
I know Rob’s life isn’t perfect either, and yet he has, at the very least, a relationship that appears loving.
But I never once want to go back to Rob or the life we had.
Because it isn’t just ballroom dancing, Wine Country jaunts and fine San Francisco dining that make a relationship, just as surely as the channel-surfing, extra pounds and ill-fitting clothes didn’t tear it apart.
Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards, Benjamin Franklin advised, to which I’d add: “And, after divorce, focus on something else — like yourself and your kids — and never look back.”