Monthly Archives: August 2015

Well, number 39 was just another date that seemed to fade away almost as soon as we said goodnight… I’m not completely sure where I met him, but I know he contacted me first.  I wasn’t especially interested/attracted, but I am trying to expand my horizons and not just dismiss people at first glance, so I agreed to meet.  The only thing that was a bit weird was that it appeared that one of his kids (he was a single dad of 4 teens–that got my respect pretty quick!) went to school with my daughter.  It makes me nervous when our kids could intersect cause my daughter is so weird about that.  To avoid any issues, I sent her a copy of the picture of the kid I thought went to school with her but she didn’t know him so I was clear to potentially date his dad.

The date was fine, again–really.  We went to a bar nearby that was totally empty for the first 45 minutes we were there and that was a little weird. But there was no chemistry there–at all.  He would say something. I would say something. Awkward silence.  That’s pretty much how it went.  He said he would call me, but I was pretty sure he would not.  And I was right.

Lessons learned:

1.  Whenever you are a parent who dates, it does give you an additional set of rules to follow depending on the ages of your kids.  Once they are old enough to care, their opinion does start to matter–like it or not!

2.  You can’t force chemistry–either it’s there or it’s not….

I imagine you must be wondering what an avocado tree has to do with dating?  Well, I will tell you….

I decided I wanted fruit trees when I moved back to California.  I bought orange, lemon, tangerine, lime and avocado trees and set them up in my backyard.  I watered them faithfully.  I fertilized them as recommended.  They grew bigger every season.  And every season I got lemons, oranges, limes and tangerines.  And not one avocado.  I asked friends what to do to get my avocado tree to produce and it was suggested I get a second tree cause avocados do better in pairs.  So I did–until that second one died!  And still not a single avocado.

At this point I was dating Mr IM and I kept on showing him the tree every time it got a leaf bud on it and telling him that was an avocado.  But it was not–they were just leaves.  Years passed–I have had some of those trees for nearly 5 years now–like my avocado.  And you know what–I looked at my tree a couple of weeks ago and finally–I have avocados!  Like 12 of them!  I wanted to do a happy dance!

I had pretty much resigned myself to having an avocado tree that would never produce–even though I treated it with the same care I did all my other trees that produced many times over.  I guess it just needed to take its time and bloom when it was ready to–not on my schedule.  And what does this have to do with dating–well, everything!  You put your time in. You do all the right things and you still don’t see results…and then one day, boom! Things finally click.  You find your person. And you eat fresh guacamole together.   At least that’s how I want to see it….

By the time I got to number 38, I had been on a number of dates in a relatively short amount of time. Since almost all of my dates involve initially speaking on the phone, I sometimes have trouble keeping the numbers straight when they are not set as a contact–but I have this thing where I feel that someone has to ‘earn’ their way into my address book.  Since you have heard what most of my dates are like, you know how few of them ever ended up as permanent contacts….luckily, I can usually tell who is who by the texting associated with each number and this system works–well, most of the time anyway!

Number 38 first contacted me  from the site for ‘mature’ daters.  I have to admit that after reading his profile, I really couldn’t see where we matched at all–which is exactly what I wrote to him in response to initial e-mail.  He said that even though our likes weren’t too similar (sci-fi? not my cup of tea), he really wanted to meet me because I seemed to have more of a brain in my head than most of the women on this particular site.  We ended up speaking on the phone one Saturday night and impulsively decided to meet that night at 9:30 at a sports bar very close to my home.

I had never been to that particular bar because it is very close to a nearby university and I felt it was a college hangout–well, I was right!  When I tell you that we looked like the chaperones, I’m really not joking.  It was more than a bit uncomfortable for me, but we made light of it and tried to get to know each other.  I found out that he is just separated, not divorced–this is territory I really don’t like to go into so I wanted to find out when he was expecting to be divorced. Much to my surprise, I discovered that due to the cost of covering his wife’s insurance, he had no plans to get divorced cause he would save quite a bit staying married.  He assured me they lived completely separate lives and had for a couple of years, but in my head he was still a married man and I didn’t feel comfortable with that at all.  Honestly, the date was over for me at that point and when we said our goodbyes, I was fully expecting that was it.

Well….remember how I said I was dating a lot in a short amount of time?  And how I didn’t put contact info in my phone?  To make a long story short–he texted me a week later and asked me to the movies–and I thought it was someone else and I said yes–I didn’t realize it was him!  So what did I do–since I couldn’t figure out how to tell him how I mixed him up with another date and just blowing him off wasn’t my style–I went through with it.  So now I have a movie date with this (in my mind) still married man!

We started this date at a bar for happy hour–much better choice than the first place!  We walked over to the movie theater from the bar and I felt like he wanted to hold my hand but I just didn’t want to go there. Then we get to the movies–and before he sits down, he lifts the seat arm from between our chairs to make it more ‘cozy’ but I am just not into it.  As we watched the movie (which was terrible, by the way), he kept on putting his hand on my leg and I kept on pulling it away (at least as far away as I could in the seat!).  At the end of the movie, he walks me back to my car and stands there, expecting a kiss.  There was not even a tiny part of me that wanted to kiss him, so I gave him a peck and got in my car to leave, cursing myself for mixing up people and having to go through that date at all!

The next day he texts me that he expects a physical relationship to be part of the deal and I appeared to have trouble with physical contact (um, not really, just ask number 29 ugh) I replied that I was fine with physical contact, but you have to give me a bit of time to get there–and since this was pretty much a first date, I just wasn’t there yet (not to mention he was still married in my eyes–but I kept that part to myself!) He said he saw what I meant and would call me again–which, thankfully, he did not–cause I wasn’t going to mix him up and make the same mistake again!  Ugh-again!

Lessons learned:

1.  Try to keep people straight–it really is problematic when you don’t!

2.  I should have just told him that without any kind of divorce plans, he was still married in my eyes and I wasn’t interested. That was my bad.

3.  Don’t engage in physical touching if you are not feeling it–I felt even giving him a good night kiss would be leading him on since I knew I had no interest.