I have heard it said in every city I know well, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Boston: There are no men.
The remark does not mean there are literally no men but that the quality is generally unacceptable. The received wisdom is that all the good guys are taken: Even men who are unhappily married have the substitute team in place. In other words, the desirable men are thought to have either wives or mistresses. Or both.
For women over 40, the dating scene is so disappointing that some of my friends have decided to bag it altogether. I know women who will no longer accept dates, blind or otherwise. They have had it with the turkeys and wish to avoid any more odd evenings. I, however, have chosen to continue the game. And to take notes.
I confess I am interested in this subject because I am divorced. Actually, more than once. Never a bridesmaid, always a bride.
What follows is not meant as male-bashing or as the piece de PMS. I do not harbor such sentiments and am, of course, aware that men have their own complaints about women. Sometimes they are the same complaints that we have about men. Let’s proceed.
Every woman I know who is not hermetically sealed into her own life has a core group of what I call The Girlfriends. In my group, there are six of us-five divorcees and one widow. We were all well and interestingly married. Our husband roster includes a distinguished academic, two prominent Harvard-trained physicians, a United States senator, an upper-echelon figure in publishing and an established actor. I, like the others, have auxiliary girlfriends both here and elsewhere, married and single. This network is the source of the following information.
There is a spoken shorthand that girlfriends use for those not in daily contact. A common greeting is, “How’s your love life?” If the answer is “complicated,” that means he’s married. If a man is “in a long marriage,” that means he is known to fool around. “Leftovers” is someone you’ve been fixed up with who isn’t suitable and whom you then pass on to another woman. (She usually doesn’t like him either.) “NBMs” are men who have Never Been Married, a big red flag for those over 40. Another verbal shortcut: Instead of saying “my former husband” or “my ex-lover,” we just say, “the former.” Everyone knows whom you mean.
If one is an astute observer, it is possible to invest only the time it takes for a single drink or lunch or dinner to figure out if a man has possibilities. Such focused analysis has saved me from spending excessive time with:
1. A man who drove to brunch while drinking bourbon from a Dixie cup.
2. The doctor against whom I probably had a malpractice suit (not for the quality of the date but for a procedure he had performed two years earlier).
3. A fellow who made numerous references to his recent lady friend (a flight attendant) whom he called “Sky Slut.”
But while some chaps offer obvious clues that things are going to derail, other have the ability to disguise themselves as normal people, so that there is a second date or even a third. And there are types we all recognize.
One category is made up of men who are low-energy. They talk too much to be dead, but that is the only giveaway. Then there are those who are extremely chatty, though nothing much gets said. These guys are living beyond their intellectual means and have learned how to varnish nonsense with the charms of sound. (If you are lucky, your date with such an escort will be a concert or a movie.)
A subset of the talkers is those who tell you interminable stories, all involving themselves. Early on I found this flattering, assuming that something about me inspired these confidences. When I mentioned this to The Girlfriends, they disabused me of any such notion. “Of course, they tell you things,” they said. “They love to talk about themselves.” One chum said this was standard behavior. “You know their life story, they know your first name.”
There is, in fact, a clinical designation for an excess of information on the first date. It is called “spilling.” As one woman explains it: “When a man confides about his therapist, his first marriage and his experience with AA, he thinks it presents him as sensitive and `in touch with his feelings.’ To have a therapist, they believe, is an asset-not unlike saying, `I have 2,000 shares of Syntex.’ ” Her response has not been the hoped-for reaction. “When I hear this kind of information,” she says, “I think it makes the guy look damaged and dangerous, and I run.”
Another category of men-more heard about than seen in our circle-is the breed that only takes out women under 25. These men are not interested in what shrinks call “age-appropriate companions.” Neil Simon once said that older men like younger women because their stories are shorter. My group takes a more jaundiced view. We wonder what these geezers imagine their attraction is for women 20 and 30 years their junior. Don’t they know it’s as though they’d glued their American Express cards to their foreheads?
Another type, comprising a regrettably large sample of men over 45, is those who seem corroded by divorce. These guys carry more baggage than a DC-10. They are either afraid of new women or bitter about the old ones. They can recite a list of wrongs done to them, along with an inventory of possessions they had to leave behind.
Fewer in number but prevalent nonetheless are the Sen. Packwood types who lurch at you, trying to commit romance. It’s hard to decide who are a greater disappointment, they or their opposite, the heterosexual little old ladies. These prissy older men exude not a hint of spontaneity or sexuality. (This genus is not to be confused with men who have been giving a lot of thought to their inner Oscar Wilde.) And well known to any woman who has ever removed a wedding ring is the egomaniac-narcissist, who believes he is performing a public service by simply making himself available. My favorite was the Cesar Romero type, snow-white pompadour and all, who approached me in a theater lobby at intermission. He struck up a conversation about the play, complimented me on my looks, then handed me his card saying he hoped I would call!
For good dialogue, I did like the conversation with the gentleman who asked if I could envision a committed relationship in which there was no sex. He said the question was hypothetical, of course. Of course. I said such a situation would be possible-if the man were the Sultan of Brunei.
Which brings me to an indelicate but nonetheless real issue of middle-aged dating: the number of men who, for reasons of psychological difficulty or electrical circuitry, have hung up their cleats. Women are never quite sure how to greet this information. It usually depends on whether they are advised of the situation of they . . . discover it.
There are basically two ways in which women meet men. One is to stumble into someone through work or a social situation. The other is to be “fixed up”-an expression I find picturesque because it implies you are broken.
Experience has taught me the hazards of being fixed up. When a man describes another man as bright, good-looking, charming or fun, those words often have no relationship to reality. The chasm between such adjectives and the real thing is often so vast that I sometimes think males, when they were young, were taught a vocabulary different from that taught to us. HOWEVER, when women fix you up, the results can be equally disastrous. In any case, first dates for the over-40 crowd can be a perilous undertaking. Allow me to share some real-life stories.
Sharlene recounts an extremely long negotiation to make a dinner date with a man who acknowledged being attracted to her. She felt there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing to arrange a simple dinner engagement, but she went along with the gentleman’s ambivalence. Finally, on the day of the agreed-upon event, a woman from Hamlet’s office called to relay the following message: He was “too busy” to make it and, moreover, would have no free time for the next two years.
Susie took a gamble and placed a personal in Harvard Magazine, a publication whose audience one would assume to be top-drawer. Her description of herself as a “lissome Buddhist authoress” elicited two responses. One came from a prisoner doing 20 years on an assault charge, the other from a Japanese woman who did not know what authoress meant.
Dianne accepted an invitation from an old beau to dine at the Harvard Club on Valentine’s Day. As soon as they were seated, the maitre d’ informed her escort that there was a phone call for him. He asked that someone please take the message-thus confirming that he was there. A half-hour later, the man’s ex-girlfriend showed up at the table, wanting to “talk about it.”
Anne was fixed up with a man who talked only about himself. She does not believe he even knew what she did for a living. He did not ask her one question. Well, actually, he did ask one: Had she ever been to a gay bar? Anne told him no. He asked if he could take her. “It was quite nice,” she said, “and very quiet. And totally gay. It was apparent they didn’t want women in there. Anyway, he’s holding my hand the whole time while he is intently watching all the gay guys.” Anne is convinced this man did not understand the dynamic of what was going on.
Nancy, a correspondent for a national TV show, tells of a blind date with a man who announced he never watched television. She didn’t mind that but was a little miffed when he went on to say: “Well, there is one thing I watch-the reruns of Mary Tyler Moore. Now, she is really my type. I mean, if you were walking down the street, I wouldn’t look at you twice.”
Cheryl had a blind date who let her know he was interested in going to a “moderately priced” restaurant. She understood the euphemism. The guy wanted something on the order of the Road Kill Cafe. She obliged and picked a joint in a not-too-ritzy part of town.
He took a look at the menu-well, at the prices, actually-and announced that what he really felt like was pizza, so they got up and went to a pizzeria. When the check came, he said, “Oops, I forgot my credit card. Could you pay?” She did, it being a modest enough bill, to be sure. Then, in the car, Sir Galahad made the following speech: “You and I both know I’m not in love with you.” (This is a first date.) “Would you mind introducing me to some of your friends?”
Judy answered a personal ad. When she called the man, he said, “Wait one minute, please,” returning to read what was clearly a script. “I am 5 feet 10,” he began in a singsong voice, and went on to list facts about himself. Judy listened patiently until she heard, “Although I am completely bald, I have brown curly hair all over my body, front and back.” Then she gently hung up.
As for me, the date I could have lived without was actually two dates. A clue to what was coming should have been apparent in our first phone conversation, when he asked how we should get together.
“Dinner?” I suggested.
“Oh, no,” he responded. “I never have dinner with people I don’t know. Do you?”
“Well, yes,” I said, “I do.”
“But what if it’s awful?” he asked.
“Well, then it’s awful,” I said.
He then recommended that we each dine at our respective homes, and that after our separate dinners he would take me for coffee and dessert. It never occurred to me that he was cheap; I just thought he was eccentric. When he arrived, I must admit, I was struck by how attractive he was. And we did go for coffee and dessert, which lasted nearly four hours. He told me matter-of-factly that his wife had left him because he wasn’t “spiritual” enough.
“Let me guess,” I told him. “She is making her own journey and wants to align her chakras.”
“Why yes,” he said with some awe. Further into the conversation, he failed to pick up on the fact that I had not the faintest idea of what he was talking about during a v-e-r-y long explanation (roughly 40 minutes) of the scientific principles of a business he owned.
Perhaps a little disarmed by his degrees, the handsome face and incomprehensible conversation, I accepted a second date, this one-aha!-for dinner, during which he told me quite a bit about himself, his history and his upcoming trip abroad. As he talked, it became clear that my personality-free companion was a mismatch. And when the check came, something else became clear. Waving the bill in my direction, he said, “Don’t you think we should split this?”
I was dumbstruck, never having been asked this question by a man, but I stammered, “Well, yes, I suppose we could do that.” I could not figure out, though, the intended message. Did it mean “This is not a date,” “I do not wish to take care of you,” or “You might be a feminist, and I don’t want to offend you”? All I knew for sure was that I was in a bad movie and the word fini had just flashed across this fellow’s face.
To be fair, there are degrees of deficiency. The man who continually found ways to reiterate that he belonged to the Social Register, the American Kennel Club for humans, is certainly a less serious irritant than the one who knocked up a 45-year-old woman-with twins!-and offered no moral support (the only kind she was looking for). The Girlfriends referred to the two embryonic entities as Gaston and Snow, the name of a late local law firm.
Many of my friends and I have come to believe, a la Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, that there are four stages of middle-aged dating: 1. disbelief, 2. anger, 3. acceptance and 4. amusement.
Let there be no mistake: I do not believe the world is populated with spectacular women let down at every turn by inferior men. For some females trying to make new lives, a man’s character, personality and other qualifications hardly figure in. Some of our less-discriminating sisters seem to require of prospective mates only the following: 1. trousers, 2. a pulse and 3. a Keogh Plan about to mature.
Luckily, women have different priorities, and that keeps us all from zeroing in on the same men. I, for example, am not athletic. It would not matter to me if every tennis court in America were converted into a beauty salon. I know women, however, who will not consider a man who foot-faults more than once.
Some women go for appreciably younger men. I do not blame them for what I consider youth slumming, though I do worry that it may be a spin on geezers-with-young-girls, an implied way of showing off either one’s youthful looks or one’s bank book.
I must also say that middle-aged dating, when it works well, can be terrific fun. A moment of warmth and humor for one of The Girlfriends came when her doc ordered a colonoscopy. Because this procedure involves an intravenous Demerol drip, people are advised that they will be whacked out for the rest of the day. For this reason the “patient” asked her Mr. Right For Now, who had had the procedure himself some months earlier, if he would bring in dinner and be a kind of nurse-caretaker for the evening. This he did with great style, arriving with wonderful Italian food and a somewhat atypical solicitude. When you think of romantic friends comparing notes about colonoscopies, you cannot help but realize the Cosmo Girl has grown up.
Maybe, in the end, there are not such great differences between old girls and young girls when it comes to their views of the opposite sex. An adolescent recently wrote a diary, just published, of her 12th year. She begins by finding her boyfriend “cute.” Then, he is “understanding.” Finally, he is a “jerk.”
In a perfect world, two people will “get” each other. They will connect and appreciate each other’s humor, history and rhythm of life. In fact, so many more people miss each other than get each other that most women wind up lowering their expectations, if not their standards. The scarcity of available men compounds the difficulty, causing a downward progression from Mr. Right to Mr. You Might Do.
Sooner or later, thoughtful middle-aged singles give serious consideration to how they want to live as they roll into the second half of their lives. There are certainly pleasures to living alone. It is an exquisite kind of selfishness. Show me the man to whom you can serve a dinner of squash, popcorn and applesauce. Those of us who have good health, dear friends and children who are not in jail or rehab consider ourselves fortunate. Many women, caretakers by nature, learn to live happily on their own, even after long marriages. I have not heard any female friend wish for a man in the house so she could look after his clothes, cook for him, do errands, deal with his family and accompany him to professional functions.
Some married people still ask, “Well, what keeps you warm at night?” They must be kidding. A hot-water bottle, of course. It doesn’t roll over on you, sock you in a reflex movement, snore, yank the covers or tell you its troubles. In the end, I do not think it is the reality of living alone that is problematic. It is the idea. For those of us who have experienced real enchantment in a relationship, there is the wish to see the show one more time. But failing that, to be single is to travel light. And that is not a bad way to go.
