Keeping up appearances

So far eHarmony has sent me 126 matches – they are slowly branching out across the US now, last week they added Texas, Virginia and Arkansas to the list, and so far this week they have sent me Missouri, Delaware, DC and Ohio. I had to chuckle when I saw the match from St. Louis – that’s getting awfully close to my hometown of Rockford, Illinois! I wonder how long before they start sending me matches from Canada.

I think I mentioned in an earlier blog that I had downloaded my favorite book, EXCUSE ME, YOUR LIFE IS WAITING by Lynn Grabhorn to my kindle, and have started to re-read it. Don’t you love it when people say “this book/movie/song changed my life?”  Well THIS   BOOK   CHANGED   MY   LIFE! I first read it in 2009 after having returned here from the failed attempt to “go home again”, and had just lost the job that I had started only nine days before, after a year and a half of unemployment . I had used up all the money that I had renting the guest house, that was a block and a half from the beach by the way (insert smug face here), and was pretty close to being at the lowest point of my life. In a nutshell, the book explained the Law of Attraction to me – as if I were a three year old. I really liked the way she put it, “cruddy out, cruddy back”, and for the first time in my life I understood that my own stinking thought process was attracting all the things I did not want into my life; like unemployment, cars breaking down, bad relationships, and the way I looked. For instance, I remember when I was a  kid seeing a woman whose neck had something that resembled a football tucked under her chin. It actually frightened me, and I overheard my Aunts saying that she had a goiter. I didn't really know what that was, could have been an alien waiting to break loose for all I knew, but I was terrified of goiters, and swore I would do anything possible to avoid getting one. Not to the point of being obsessed with it or worrying about it constantly, like I would eventually do about my car breaking down, but I did send that “I don't want” thought out into the Universe, and sure enough in 2001 I found out that I had an undiagnosed hyperthyroid condition, and I had . . . . you guessed it. . . . .   a GOITER!!! Okay, it was tiny, I couldn't even see it, but it was there just the same.  

So as I look in the mirror, and see the inevitable changing landscape that used to be MY face morphing into my mother, I realize that all the things I don't like about my changing body are the same things I swore would NEVER happen to me! I have always had body issues, my step-father has the distinction of being the most critical person on earth, and I was teased and generally made fun of right up until I married my first husband, and then he and his sister took over the challenge of completely destroying my self-esteem. I was bow legged, flat chested, wore glasses, had ugly feet, etc., etc. and that was just my physical attributes. Honestly, I could never understand why the man wanted to marry me so badly in the first place, until about ten years into the marriage when I realized that he just wanted something different (I was an American living in Britain), and a green card! With all the negative comments about my looks, I was pretty convinced that I was average at best; years later I would look back at pictures of myself and realize that I was actually pretty.

When I was younger I swore that I didn't mind getting older, but I did not intend to look older. And that still holds true to some extent – the wisdom I have gained, and the experiences I have had over the years has only made me stronger. One of my favorite saying is “youth is wasted on the young”, and that is so true, if I knew then – when I was strong and pretty – what I know now, I could have ruled the world!! Or at least made better choices.  But that’s not the way it works is it? As we get older, our body stops producing collagen and everything starts sliding south. I don't know if it was the five plus years of stress, and the inevitable depression that came with it causing me to neglect my normally stringent skin care regimen or what, but over the course of the last year I have seen some not-so-subtle things happening to my face.  My eyelids are getting droopy, those awful dimples that I hated so much since childhood have now become massive craters and worst of all, I am starting to develop the dreaded TURKEY NECK/waddle. My friends will tell you, getting a waddle has probably been my biggest fear (more than being abducted by aliens) – which just goes to show – what you think about you bring about. I have obviously obsessed about it enough to make it materialize – a definite “don't want”.

So what, if anything does this have to do with eHarmony? Well first of all I need to point out that eHarmony was probably my least favorite dating site (next to POF) when, ten years or so ago I decided that I might shrivel up and die if I was not in a relationship. At that point I didn't think I could possibly survive on my own, and I didn't really like myself very much at the time, so the last person I wanted to spend quality time with was ME.  eHarmony kept trying to hook me up with a lot of really not-so-attractive guys, and even though I went on a couple of really awkward dates nothing ever materialized. Of course now I realize that I was the one making the dates awkward. I was so desperate to make them like me that I was afraid to do or say much of anything.  It’s been close to ten years now since I did the whole online dating thing, and my attitude towards it has completely changed. I think it could be summed up in one word – meh.  Don’t care if I do, don’t care if I don't, totally ambivalent.

The biggest obstacle to this process is the fact that I DON'T LIKE OLDER MEN – which is especially strange considering I am an older woman. I recently saw something that said that the ‘accepted’ age difference is half your age plus 8, in my case that gives me an age range starting at 40.5 – okay, I'm cool with that. Apart from that hit and miss online dating adventure ten years ago, I have only dated three guys that were my age since I got out of college. My first husband was six months older than me, second husband was eleven years younger than me, and the last long term relationship, and very possibly the love of my life, was thirteen years younger than me. I still remember the first younger man I dated, I was 21 and he was 19, not a big deal – or so you would think. My mother called me a ‘cradle robber’ – this is the same woman who years later saw absolutely nothing wrong with my marrying somebody 11 years younger – go figure. 

I chose eharmony out of the plethora of online dating sites because they supposedly match you up based on compatibility. This does not stop my first priority from being do I want to see that face when I wake up in the morning.  It sounds really shallow, but physical attraction is extremely important to me. At this stage in the game of life I am expecting this to be a forever proposition, I ‘settled’ with both of my marriages, and I am no longer willing to do that. Sure I have had some very rough times being on my own in the past, but I have managed to make it out of the tunnel not only unscathed, but very much wiser. But a relatively good looking and healthy older man that does not have twenty-year-old arm candy is really hard to find these days.  Unfortunately age has the same ravaging effect on men as it does on women, which would probably explain why so many older men are now sporting goatees – it hides the waddle!

Case in point, Tom Berenger, here is a guy that back in the day was an absolute drop-dead-gorgeous hunk – well, at least I thought so. I just saw him on Major Crimes this week and didn't even know who he was he had changed so much.  Now, seriously, Tom just needs to lose weight and he would look pretty damned good.

Does anybody know if Tom is single?

~Namaste~