When I turned 60, I hoped for a river cruise down the Seine as a gift. But instead, I discovered that my husband, the one who never looked at another woman in my presence, was leading a secret life.
After filing for divorce, I took a leap and landed 1,700 miles across the country to start my life over in Palm Springs.
My next leap? Dating in a digital world.
I soon match with a widower who was moving into a new house along with his young adult son.
“He’s not going to college but wants to be an entrepreneur, so I’m financing him until he gets on his feet,” Daddy explained as he supports this kid’s dates, dinner and travel. When I re-connected with the widower again a year later, the unemployed kid was still living the good life on Daddy’s dime.
EnablersRus, anyone? Next.
The best dates should be those where a friend suggests someone they know, right? So when my high school buddy set me up with his friend who’s vertically challenged and has the dark, brooding looks that match his career as a dark, brooding abstract artist, I quickly put on flats and watch him splash color on canvas.
He’s the cheapest man I ever met. He took me to a restaurant only once, yet declared he had plenty of money to live the good life--evidently for a party of one.
He’s also the most temperamental. He knew I’d practiced yoga for 30 years, so decided to test my knowledge. “Can you name the eight limbs of yoga?” he asked one evening. When no Sanskrit words beyond “asana” and “pranayama” rolled off my tongue, he declared I didn’t really know much about yoga. “You’re a dilettante,” he said with a satisfied smirk.
A**holesRus. Next.
Another man was a perfect match for me on paper with his cute-guy, midwestern face and his attention to style--he topped his jeans with a crisp, button-down shirt and a navy blazer for dinners out. We both grew up in Kansas City and have acquaintances in common. He sent me texts after our dates saying, "You are delightful!"
But he’s so tightly wound that when things don’t go his way, even his Hendricks gin martini, up, can’t take the edge off. A hostess at his favorite restaurant gave the booth he'd reserved to the couple ahead of us by mistake--and he glared at her like she'd just asked him to scrub the toilets.
When we drove through the neighborhoods where we lived as kids, he mentioned that his father was a tightly wound Marine and there’d been a lot of pressure growing up. Probably true, but I wasn’t willing to stick around long enough to see his steely stare turn on me if I did something that didn’t meet his rigorous standards.
I had one date with another man who dropped names of designers—"Are those Valentino sandals you have on?” They weren’t, but I was happy the dupes looked real. He talked luxury brands of cars with gusto and told me he lived in the toniest part of town, but when I checked, it was really “tony adjacent.”
As I gave a parting embrace to mr. tony adjacent, I noticed the faint whiff of a social climber.
And then there was he of the poetry writing and picnic planning school of charm. He took me to his hometown and the beach where he learned to surf. He introduced me to his best friend who described my date as, “one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met.”
So what happened?
As the weeks of hiking and hand holding rolled along, he did something that stopped me cold after dinner at my favorite Vietnamese restaurant. The lovely Denise was tending to all our needs like we were the only patrons there, and when the check came, mr. charming left her a 12 percent tip.
I made up for his stinginess on my next visit, but did he misread the bill? A seventy-something’s eyesight isn’t what it used to be.
“I think you made a mistake with the tip,” I said to him later.
“No, I think 12-15 percent is the norm, and 20 percent is for five-star service, which rarely happens,” he answered as I looked at him, dumbfounded.
I’d just read Delia Ephron’s book, Left on Tenth, and when she quizzed her new beau Peter on their compatibility, one of her dealbreakers was that he must “tip easily and well.”
Delia has the right idea.
My guy’s thriftiness carried over to his appliances, and he refused to run his dishwasher. About the third time I pulled a greasy plate out of his cabinet, I knew I’d never eat at his house again.
Are any of these guys all bad? No, and none are of the Netflix “Dirty John” variety. The tightly wound dude with the Marine father? He spends weekends with that father, who’s now in his nineties and needs help with meals and programming a new Iphone, bless his heart.
Just because they’re not MY guys doesn’t mean they’re not someone’s love match. We all have baggage, and mine is filled with trust issues that leads me to approach some men like a FBI operative.
So nine years of dating later I ask myself, “Does the kind of man I want exist IRL??”
Stay tuned.