Life After Forty

Truism bites the dust

How many times have you heard “If you really wanted a partner you would make time to date”?  There is always enough time for high priorities right? I scoffed at women who said they did not have time to date. I knew they were simply lazy. Or cowards. Or thought prince charming was going to knock on the door out of the blue. They were not too busy to spend hours on Facebook right? 

Here I am eating my words yet again. Yet another recurring theme. I remember this oldie but goodie I stood by for many years: ”Dating/marrying someone decades younger is a sign of a shallow, immature, predator” (we all know what happened here), and about Christa McAuliffe: “A mother should never purposely endanger herself ” (she was almost 40 and had the unbelievable opportunity to fly on the space shuttle and interact with students around the world). Me: I regularly head out to sea in rough weather with a few emergency supplies on top of a flimsy board. And this is a good one: “my child would never do _____” (whatever a misbehaving kid was doing at that moment) and now …. there was actually one time where I denied the boys were mine and looked around to see where the parents of these obvious delinquents were.

So as you can see I have a history of making proclamations which don’t work out that well for me. I should have listened more closely to “until you walk a mile in someone else’s shoes…”

Here I am fumbling around home-schooling, trying to keep up with outside activities for the kids, trying to make time for racing outriggers again, working a tiny bit outside the house, and taking 3 online classes. I can’t seem to keep up with any of this stuff.  My house is a mess, bills get paid late, I forget appointments and my relationship got to be too stressful.

So now I am in the position of having no time to date. I tried to get my guy to agree to a couple evenings a week and maybe something on the weekend now and then but the emotional distance grew and then the drama started. So there you have it – you can be too busy to date. Or rather too busy for a relationship (which people seem to want to do after a few dates…)