Fifty

I did the math. An acquaintance posted that her fiftieth birthday will be coming soon. I honestly think that she is a little panicked about the coming milestone – not really an unusual occurrence. The woman I married turned fifty when I first met her. She was one of several women I met at the time as a recent divorcee making the rounds on the internet.

One of the first women I met after separation from my first wife was an agent of an apartment complex I was looking at. I was a little taken aback by how easy it was to take her to lunch and have my invitation accepted. We went to a Thai place about a mile from where she worked. We had a lovely conversation that led nowhere romantically, but I did take a neat suggestion from her. She told me that when she and her husband separated, the first thing she did was make a list of things she wanted to accomplish now that she was “footloose and fancy-free.” One of the items on her list was to sample new foods. She had never had Thai, so our date enabled her to scratch that item off her list. The idea had merit, so I adopted it for myself.

My current wife (#2 – with no #3 even being considered) was goaded out of her comfort zone by her daughter. She had just turned fifty and her daughter talked her into going onto a dating website to see what might turn up… something out of her comfort zone at the time.

I had been dating a woman in her forties. It was a case of we were biologically compatible and not much more. I found the future Mrs. on a dating website, messaged back and forth a time or two and finally met her in a rainy parking lot of an all-you-can-eat pizza joint. Wouldn’t you know, I pull up in a parking space, look in my rear-view mirror, and there she is, driving a vehicle identical to mine! Our first date included her youngest son, her granddaughter, and the granddaughter’s mother. (Her older son is still with but has yet to marry the mother of his children – although by this time, their union would be covered under common law. It’s complicated.)

We spent a lot of time talking over the next month and a half, finding our likes and dislikes before proving that we were biologically accommodating. The time I spent getting to know the fifty-year-old woman, became the basis of a relationship that has lasted for a total of 16 years (to date).

While I was musing on the significance of fifty, I recall being in contact with a few other women of a similar age prior to the interim relationship mentioned above. I wasted time with a Harley rider (when she said she liked to ride her cycle, I understood it to mean her bicycle), a woman living in Russia (too far to commute, besides, all she wanted was out of Russia on my dime), and the woman who never married living in the mid-cities (between Dallas and Fort Worth) who called one evening, conducting something akin to a job interview before flat-out telling me that she wasn’t interested.

Good to find out before making a commitment.

My brother’s wife made an “Out of the comfort zone” list for her 50th birthday. The wife and I were both amused and amazed by her list – including overseas trips and jumping out of an airplane. With a parachute. More than once. What was really amazing was that she convinced my brother to jump, too.

You’d have to drug me and throw me out of the plane.

This new acquaintance of mine could use a list. She needs to go out of her comfort zone if she wants the companionship she appears to want. I understand raging hormones combined with a need for reassurance that she is still desirable. We all need human connection. I’ll be a friend without benefits – someone she can talk with every once in a while. But the first step she needs to take if she is serious about finding a new partner is she needs to make a list featuring at least two feats of derring-do that are clearly out of her comfort zone.

If she does that, I’m sure she’ll find her Prince Charming. My wife wishes the same for her.

Be Seeing You!