Hello Allison,

I read the two parts of the series that you released. Very compelling and similar to my own feelings.

Men are just different! I kinda get them and I kinda don’t. Their internalized rulebook is just different.

In my closed-narrative marriage I realized that my internal dialog was so different from his. And he certainly was not into “girl talk” and swapping little secrets about our growing up. Not that he was unfeeling, but men seem to work through their feelings differently. If I wanted girl talk, I had to find other women, but all those other women dropped their girl relations at the snap of the fingers if they could get a date with a man.

One of my earliest female experiences (pre-marriage) was missing a long planned dinner with three other girlfriends because a man called and asked me out. I cancelled with my friends. Then it turned out he had to bump it back a day. But there I was. I realized my priorities were dating this guy instead of my friends. Who am I to talk. A man always trumps relationships with other women.

Come to find out as the dynamics of the relationship developed, the man who bumped the date was a young widower and he had kids and the series of dates were actually “job interviews,” though he would be horrified to hear me say that, all to be hired as “new mom” for his two sub-teen children. Would it be tempting to step into the housewife role? Yes. Did I? No. Not in his case. Too needy. Too much baggage.

I think the trouble all people have who are dating beyond their twenties is that most everyone has had some sort of long-term relationship. “Why’s he single? Again!” Okay, the widower’s story holds water, though I did not see the wife’s death certificate. But what about the guy who has been married four times? Does he just pick badly or is there something else?

In a way, someone who has been single for a long time is better bet than a serial monogamist. I can tell the guy the truth that my career came first and I did not have children and my mates would not move as my career advanced. All true. I avoided, as in never!, made up stories about high school days. I once heard a woman of transition (back from the 1960s) say, “I was the homecoming queen.” Not in those days, you weren’t. Why make that stuff up? Our adult lives are certainly more interesting than what happened among those folks who are nowcard-carrying members of the AARP.

But as I dated older men, the physical facts caught up — and not with me. The men in my dating pool are long past their 17-year old hot stud days and the mechanics of sex become more problematic. If you are at his house, sneak a peek into the medicine cabinet to see if he has a bottle of viagra. (Just kidding.) But seriously, see when he discloses this piece of sex information.

All this disclosure business is possibly theoretical and certainly comes out of data based on a different dating pool than for those over 50. Weird, but there you are.