The Wisdom of Women II

If I hadn't depended on friends to urge me on when I wanted to quit, if I hadn't promised myself to cover twenty five profiles before I even considered quitting, and if I hadn't vowed to contact five men every week, I wouldn't have met David on the first day of May, nearly three months after I had first posted my profile on two dating sites.

I wouldn't have met him because he didn't contact me. In March, at the beginning of my foray into Internet dating, I had waited for men to write to me until my friend told me that was all wrong. I had to learn to choose and act on my own, which in itself was a payoff since I began to accept my personal power or, at least, not to deny or repress it as I had learned in my 1950s childhood.

And even when I began sending messages to men of interest, I still wouldn't have met him because his profile picture was out of focus and his face hidden within the hood of his ski jacket. I couldn't make him out, and that was enough reason to pass on him. Even though I didn't know what exactly I was looking for, I found it fairly easy to reject men for superficial reasons. I was still holding on to fear and ambivalence.

The five-men-a-week plan took care of that.

I remember distinctly a telephone conversation I had with my best friend, Maggie. It was towards the end of a week in the middle of April. I finally had my process in place, and part of it was reporting to her.

¨Did you contact five men yet?¨

¨No,¨ I admitted, feeling very tired of the whole thing. After weeks of unanswered or aborted messaging, I'd had several telephone talks that led nowhere. Maybe it was too soon, not the right time. I'd try again later. Much later.

¨It's already Thursday. How many more do you need?¨

¨Two more.¨

¨Well, I'm hanging up now. Don't call me back until you're done.¨

With a sigh, I turned toward my screen and reviewed the profiles I'd already passed over. The guy in the ski jacket was hunched over, maybe from the cold. Or worse. I read his profile. Widower. I'd been giving extra points to widowers, thinking we might share common knowledge that no one could know unless they had gone through the death of a spouse themselves. Columbia higher education. Me too. Same religion--didn't hurt. He lived in the same county upstate--convenient for a meeting, if it came to that.

So the same profile I'd passed on earlier made it into the ¨maybe¨ list. But really, why not just pass him? With so many men who hadn't panned out over the last month and a half, I decided not to dwell on this one. I figured we'd never make it to the meet-in-person stage anyway. Move it along, I thought to myself. Two more this week to make my quota. I copied my usual message, tweaked a little to personalize it, and hit send.

I forget the last profile--someone who didn't work out ultimately--but I sent that too. Then, I called back Maggie to report that my work was done (for the week anyway).

Somehow, after many stops and starts, I wound up meeting three men for coffee the first week in May. David, the one in the ski jacket was one of them. Since it was May when we met, he had shed his ski jacket. He had a nice face. After coffee, which led to lunch, he asked me to go out with him on the following Friday. That Friday happened to be my 61st birthday, and I had no plans. He asked me to go dancing with him. I said yes, because it sounded like a lovely thing to do on my birthday even though I didn't know how to dance.

¨I'll show you,¨ he said. ¨Don't worry. I'm a good teacher.¨

He is.

My level-headed neighbor--the one whose mother had told her she was too young to be alone--passed along to me another piece of wisdom. ¨You need to go through all the work of Internet dating, cut through all the resistance, and meet a lot of men you'd rather not know before you find someone special. Then magic happens." Lisa isn't usually the type to talk about magic, but she is scrupulously honest. Her promise gave me hope.

David and I are still together after nearly three years. I don't want to write more about us, because I don't want to jinx us. After all, the pain of spouse bereavement fades somewhat in time, but the fear of bad luck, bad health, some thing that goes wrong beyond one's control doesn't go away. At least, it hasn't for me.

I wanted to write about this episode in my life to pass along what worked for me. I know many mature women who are alone. Some of them prefer it that way, but some do not. Some are situated in fear or pessimism or uncertainty. I want to tell them that they have nothing to lose by trying. I want to pass along what worked for me in honor of all the generous women I know.

Assign Him a Number

After I had joined a couple of sites and posted my profile, I had trouble moving forward. I waited for men to contact me. . . . 

Not hearing from droves of men or hearing from those who didn't seem right for me felt like a  measure of my worth in the dating market (I must be too old, too set in my ways). I was looking for a sign that I should quit.

Then I heard some advice from the friend of a friend. She had met her husband through Internet dating. In her early seventies, she was at least ten years my senior, and she hadn't been too old! This woman had been a marketing consultant and used what she knew about output and projected returns to come up with her rule of twenty-five.

She said, "Sure, it's stressful, but it's a worthy goal. Plan to interact on some level with twenty-five men before you come up with one who suits you." By interaction she meant all stages of contact--emails, telephone interviews, and face-to-face meetings.

Of course, twenty-five is an arbitrary number. I liked it because it seemed possible to achieve, but I would have raised it if I hadn't found my guy by then. When I told another friend about this "rule," she grew thoughtful and started counting on her fingers. "Let's see," she said. "Alan was number twenty-six." She hadn't been keeping count at all. Nor had another Internet-mated friend who shrugged and replied, "Who knows?" when I asked her, adding "If someone doesn't suit you, tell him, and cut the meeting short!"

I suppose being business-like means different things to different women. I would have had trouble being that direct. Likewise, thinking in bulk numbers isn't for everyone. It worked for me, because I tend to get bogged down with individual details, no matter what I'm doing. So having an overview of this process made each contact feel less critical to me. After all he was just one out of twenty-five. Big deal if we weren't clicking! I'd say to myself, This one's not for me. Assign him a number and move on.  

Mentors, Cheerleaders, and Buddies

Keeping up a consistent flow of encouragement was crucial for me. When my enthusiasm flagged and I wanted to "take a break" (the first step towards quitting entirely) my friends pushed me to stay the course. I had constant personal contact with supportive friends. Some mentored me, and some cheered me on. Here's how it worked for me.

 

My mentors had already been through the process and had figured out some smart things to do and other things to avoid, which made it easier for me to proceed. (Why reinvent the wheel?) A colleague whose teaching schedule overlapped with mine met with me every Tuesday afternoon over tea and discussed my week's questions and concerns. New ones seemed to come up all the time, and I was the beneficiary of her past experiences. Since she was developing her relationship with the man she had met through the Internet, I was able to give her advice that I had figured out from my twenty years of marriage.

I also asked others who I knew were experienced with Internet dating what advice they could offer and what they wished they had known when they were starting their quests. Some took the time to respond and some didn't. That was fine. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

 My best friend, Maggie, was my cheerleader nonpareil. She and I had been through the ups and downs of life for more than thirty years. Even though she was married and living in the suburbs of New Jersey while I was widowed and living in New York, she quickly caught on to the best practices principles and urged me forward when all I wanted to do was get in bed and pull the covers over my head.

One day, when we were speaking on the phone, she inquired, "Have you gone over your matches today?" At that point, I was feeling particularly resistant to reading the profiles that the dating service sent. "No," I admitted. "Well," she said, "I'm hanging up right now! Get up and do it, and don't call me back until you have!" She meant business, and even though she made me laugh at her tone of voice, I did what she said. When my perseverance would have failed me time and time again, her insistence that I carry on kept me going.

 Even though I didn't have a buddy, someone who is going through the process at the same time, I know women who have benefitted from comparing notes, working out next moves, and even going on double first-time meetings. Buddies can help bolster one another's flagging confidence, energy, and resolve.

 

 

Ask for Help

Business men who recognize the importance of achieving their goals don't fret about what they don't know or can't do themselves. They find advisors, seek counsel, and create boards of specialists. Athletes take as a given that their crucial wins are dependent on the right coaches, trainers, and team members, and they find them. Why is it so hard for us to ask for help?

That's a rhetorical question. I know why. Women of my generation were raised to do things for themselves or do without. Sure, we read how-to articles and books, and chat informally about our worries and wishes. We commiserate well with one another and grab at snatches of one anothers' stories. But I'm talking about intentionally soliciting help on a continuous basis until a task has been accomplished. And yes, finding a new mate who is appropriate and appealing to this new stage of life is a task, and an arduous one at that. Acknowledging its importance and assuming a successful conclusion are initial steps. Amassing a team is next.

Do I sound aggressive? My mother would think so, as would my grandmothers. After all, I'm one generation removed from centuries of arranged marriages.

I sound aggressive to myself. Applying the same focus and determination to a romantic goal that I use in my professional life was (and still is) uncomfortable. I sometimes forget that I'm  the first person in my family to earn a PhD. My discomfort about pursuing goals in a manner that my family has deemed "unfeminine" is likely a sign that I'm on the right track.

Besides, who knows? Maybe my ancestors have all been cheering me on from the great beyond. They could have been members of my team all along.

I didn't consciously assemble a team of advisors, and they weren't a team in the literal sense. Most of them never met one another. In fact, I never met some of them--mostly friends of friends and book authors. But I took their most relevant bits of advice to heart as if we were sitting across the table from each other in a cozy diner booth.

Thinking of them all as my team--those I know personally and those I don't--helped me cut through my own resistance to carrying out such a dramatic change in my life. It helped me focus on the present instead of the past.