I’ve been single most of my life. I’ve been married twice, but both those marriages were short and unfulfilling – and that’s probably an understatement. I won’t go into details, but in a way, I’m grateful they happened because it’s helped me be who I am today. Those earlier relationships, while horrible, painful, and emotionally damaging to me, were the best things that could have happened to me. They caused me to fight to be stronger, to heal, to withdraw into myself for a while so that I could truly learn who I was. I don’t credit who I am today totally to past bad relationships, but I also think there’s just something about who I am that enables me to pick myself up by the bootstraps and move forward.
When it comes to romance, there were so many times that I would whine about there not being someone for me. My married girlfriends would tell me that they sometimes wished they were single – they would welcome the chance to do what they wanted when they wanted, and so forth. I would waffle back and forth between enjoying my singlehood and longing for a companion. All my girlfriends would tell me that there was someone for me and often I doubted them, but I held out a glimmer of hope.
Finally, in my deepest, darkest moment of despair, I had to swallow the bitter pill that possibly – just possibly – there was *not* someone meant for me in this lifetime. It happens sometimes. And that had to be okay.
I had to accept my life exactly the way it was, to learn to be perfectly fine with myself and build my life the way I wanted it, fulfilling, following my dreams and creating a life that would make me happy – without a mate. I also told myself that the person I would want to meet would show up while I was doing what made me happy and likely he’d be doing the same things. My prayer was that I would be able to recognize him when he appeared. One thing I knew for certain wasn’t how I wanted him to look physically, but how I wanted to feel when I was with him. I couldn’t define it in words, but I knew intuitively that I would know when I know.
My girlfriend wanted to introduce me to this guy two years ago. She once said to me, “I want you to meet my friend. I think you two would be really good together.” I said, sure, that sounds great, but it never happened. I continued to date some other guys, and although they were close to what I thought I was looking for, that feeling was not there. There was always something missing.
Finally, several weeks ago, this same friend still wanted to introduce me to her friend – he was still single and available. I told her a bit more emphatically this time, “Set it up!” And she did. We went out on a double date and at the end of that evening, after I got a really memorable hug from him, the words went through my head: “Now that’s what I’m talking about.”
I’ve been cautiously optimistic about my new romance. Every time I see him, I become less cautious and more optimistic – and my feelings are growing. So much that we both just changed our Facebook status to reflect that we are officially “in a relationship”.
Girls, I’m 50 years old now. And I feel like I’m just now hitting the prime of my life and the whole world is ahead of me. I am hopeful and happy and I’m living proof that age is just a number, and that old adage of when you quit looking… um, yeah, it’s true.
Oh, and my friend? Yeah, she was right.
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