HOME TOWN DATE — Adventure 2
Adventure two is a hometown date — with a fit, attractive American who shares the prerequisite love of a high number of fitness/sports activities, a solid education, professional credentials, above average communication skills and a spirit of adventure that would allow him to travel to meet a Canadian.
Once again the lead up to the adventure is exciting to the point that it creates some risk that the actual date will fall short of the verbal foreplay.
Wordplay begins one Friday night with me home in front of the computer, fire roaring, with red wine close at hand. A few days after discovering the “find fitness friends here” site I locate an advanced search function. “This could be fun,” I think. I mentally pull up my 10% criteria. The 10% has become code for how much time a potential “Mr. Right” will have left to spend with me after he participates in all the activities on my “Mr. Right” list. We focus the data points to find the well educated, super fit, adventure seeking guys in my preferred age range and in a geographic radius that includes direct flights of reasonable duration. Seriously, who wants to run the risk of dating someone in your city who was married to or dated someone you know….or requires a connecting flight to reach?
Search parameters loaded I push the button and reveal a page and a half of potentials — bonanza — I’m only looking for one! A friendly smile from bachelor number three draws me in. A click on his profile and I find the hilarious photo post placed by a man who seems unaware that the purpose of the photos is to make him attractive to potential suitors/workout partners. No man can think a woman on any dating app is interested in seeing their potential date with the lightly clad “car girls” at the race track. Women are not generally in awe of cool cars and comparing ourselves to the 20 something car gals on your arm does little for the self-esteem.
I was torn between my inner “Dudegirl” who wanted to befriend the guy with the great sense of humor and “Dear Abby” the helpful dating advisor who wanted to coach the hopeless single with online dating 101.
Then I did something I have never done before. I sent him an email. For those of you who are new here — my trepidation about online dating keeps me in a state of passivity that does not remotely reflect my personality and level of engagement with any other activity. Other than two fitness apps where you tick the activities you love boxes I have no visibility in this world.
My email to him is balanced between…”if we were in the same orbit; we would have met given our common interests and your apparent sense of humor” and advice that the photo may not be a magnet for attracting dates. I pushed send, my work here is done, #helpful. Close computer. Watch Scandal!
A couple of days later I receive a “you’ve got mail from car guy” notice I am shocked. A witty, articulate response concludes with his phone number and a suggestion to give him a call or shoot him a text — OMG your phone number! He is fearless and funny.
I respond via email so that I can answer some of his questions on a full keyboard and I indicate I will text or call him later and providing my “real” coordinates. Before I walk up the stairs and brush my teeth, he has phoned. His caution to the wind approach in this game of being cool was endearing — I may have met my match. I returned his call, and we talked for 2.5 hours. We talk as if we had known each other for a long time, and were hungry to catch up. We repeated this for the next three days in addition to texts and emails. I spoke to this man more than I spoke to my husband in the entire last year we lived in the same house.
Day three he sent flight options suggesting a ski weekend out west. Interested and excited but still sane, I flag we may want to do some risk managment…..you know — share our last names. (OMG who is this woman who is considering meeting “first name only guy” at a distant ski resort?) In lightning speed, I receive an email with a link to his professional profile, his corporate web-site, his address with a note “Risk Management Managed.” Check the flights!
After the challenges of scheduling flights and hotels last minute on a long weekend become insurmountable we end up with a plan for a “hometown date” in my hometown. I feel better about this destination. The reaction of the two friends who were in the know about the plan ranged between concern and awe, swinging from optimism to “she has lost her mind” in this quest to find “Chapter 3 guy”.
Following the helpful, logical discussions with my bestie. I call him and together we more seriously discuss the details of this odd adventure. Both well educated, logical adults we seamlessly move from flirtatious, romantic speak to the business-like precision of managing the rising expectations and logistics of the “date” against a backdrop of reality. He understands — my recommendation that we create his “exit strategy” — logic, however, indicates that we are not going to be on a remote island where the plane won’t be back for a week but rather in one of the largest cities in North America and he can just go home!
He drives across the border, arriving at my home late Friday night. We meet; we say hello. We kiss hello like friends…like friends who may become more than friends — I hear an audible “click” as if I were on a sit com with a sound track.
Over the weekend we discover a great deal of compatibility. An unspoken list of the differences and a higher number of similarities begin to form in the ven diagram in my head. We work out, we walk and talk, we dine and talk, we meet my friends, go to the movies, cook, stoke the fire in the fireplace, make our own flames and hope neither of us gets burned. It is fun, exciting, interesting…and we balance anticipation with reality.
I feel sorry for people who don’t sign up for adventures, complete with the risks — because the reward of having this much fun, and feeling this alive is worth it. I feel like an entire piece of my being was asleep like some crazy fairy tale and “I’m back.” The metaphorical lyric to a popular song…”I never knew that I was starving till I tasted you” has become the background music in the soundtrack of my weekend.
Unlike adventure one where we kiss on a street corner in a world-class city — never to repeat the wonderful experience we have just had. When we say goodbye at the end of adventure two, and he heads back home, I know we will see each other again.
For the third time in a row — I got lucky. Or, Meyers-Briggs is correct, and my “intuition” is indeed off the charts. For those keeping score, I am the recipient of the best first date set up post-divorce, the best first “super date/adventure post-divorce, and now…the best second “adventure” post divorce. I am on the verge of TMI, but to say that waiting a year plus to put my toe in the dating pool was worth the wait would be an understatement.
I know he isn’t Mr. Right — something I can only say because I don’t expect he will ever read this. He is wonderful, kind, intelligent, funny, adventurous, interesting — an exceptional human specimen — he is/I am just not his “Rightchapter3-soulmate”.
He may not feel the same way in this regard — I have been on both sides of this equation. One person always knows, and one person does not. I want more time with him. He wants more time with me. Win Win. On the other hand, I know that I need to keep looking — that the differences I have seen — will matter to me in time and they will matter to him. He may think that the differences are small and won’t matter. What you know when you have had more life experience are the differences that do matter. You remember the ones that you overlooked when you were lovestruck 20 years ago, the ones your mother or your best friend questioned you about before you married and you brushed them aside, only to recall the conversation ten years later when the difference did matter. Your life experience is such that you are no longer prepared to alter your tastes to fit in better with someone else. You intuitively know the difference between acceptable compromise, healthy differences and the ones that will break you. The difference that are too big to carry through chapter three.
I know that with each adventure, with each new person I meet I will learn more about myself — more about who I am and what I really want. What the 1% of the 10% looks like is coming into focus. I am on a path to discern how to tell the difference between Mr. Right and Mr. Right Now. And that Mr. Right now, may be just fine for right now.
I am looking for someone I hope to spend 25–30 years with. The sample size is small. But the romantic, optimist in me knows that for now….I need to keep looking for the person, who will make this chapter 3 adventure…the best, longest one ever.
