Incident, Part II

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(LS Ratio: 4:6 Mood: Well, I guess 4,000 words is 4,000 words, whether it went in the novel or not)

We need to talk.

I started reading The Art of Conversation by Catherine Blyth back in January, and I haven't picked it up since the 27th of that month. But she led it off with an amazing essay that discusses just how much we are losing the art of discourse, of exchanging ideas.

It's just the sheer communication of what's in your head that we need to have for a healthy society, if even just to purge issues from our individual systems. That's what blogs are good at: it's the freest and most public form of therapy out there.

But there's a risk there for the bloggers, a big one, especially in personal reflection journals like this one in which the authors choose to let anyone in the world with access to the web read them. Especially if those same authors are hoping that one of those readers may be the ones they've been searching and waiting for their whole lives.

I asked in Part I of this blog, how long can one remain damaged by the events that happen to them?

Certain things stay with you. Deaths, divorces, affairs, injuries, battles, embarassments: these all qualify. And they define you, send you off on life tangents that you never expected, or necessarily wanted.

I suppose it's your choice to mitigate the damage as best you can, especially as far as indifidelity and divorce is concerned. I've now met three people in my experience - all in their fifties and sixties, mind you - who went through similar things that I went through and who, even as long as thirty years afterwards are still suffering from the fallout.

Of course, I chose differently. And journalling is a great way to work things out.

But now that you've put it out there, you've represented yourself in a certain way. And for some potential mates, that's the biggest turnoff you can have. Too often, damage stops being something that you experience, and starts being something that's completely in the eye of the beholder. And that's just plain unfair.

My second question: if you find someone you're interested in pursuing, how much do you allow their baggage to determine whether or not they're worth pursuing?

Unwritten fear (well, until now): My twin soul finds me, the perfect person for me that I'm just over the moon about, but she breaks it off as soon as she finds out I'm divorced. Despite the fact I really do feel good the vast majority of the time and that I am demonstrably awesome, she finds out I've been single for six months, or reads my blog history and finds out this has been my main area of focus for most entries, and though the writings were authentic at the time I put fingers to keyboard, and even though she understands that yesterday's reality isn't necessarily today's, she decides to break it off and look for someone undamaged. Only because that's what the "rules" say to do.

Marry Him?

This is what many women in my age range do, according to Lori Gottlieb, author of Marry Him (thanks again for that book, Julius!). She sat down with three groups of single women for informal discussions. First group was in their twenties, second in their thirties to forties, and third in their fifties.

A few random findings, which I may have noted before, came out of Gottlieb's discussions, and I've also thrown in some forum material I've read on my own time that correspond to her findings:

- Women in their twenties are, by and large, relationship-retarded. When it comes to what to expect in mates, they're still prancing about in some kind of GQ, postfeminist dreamland. Men are to be funny, but not "too funny" (that makes them goofballs and not very attractive); very successful, own their own houses by 25, have high paying jobs, but not be addicted to work; be buff, but not a meathead; have twenty inch penises when flaccid, but not think with them; be "handsome", but not "magazine handsome"; must "be taller than me when I'm in heels", etc.. One girl even dumped her guy after three dates because, despite the great rapport they had, "he hasn't seen Casablanca. My ideal man would have already seen Casablanca".

- Women in their thirties to forties, meanwhile, have become more realistic, but are still caught in a consumer mentality. Worse than that, if they haven't already been married or divorced by now, they are getting desperate because these are their last prime childbearing years and they're looking for validation, finding themselves in vicious cycles of bad relationships in which they get progressively more and more bitter. In Gottlieb's group, they are pining over the guys they had dated in their twenties, but dumped for the same superficial reasons listed above. They've realized the qualities they initially overlooked in those "shy guys" or the "beta males" that didn't attract them a decade ago - expressions of emotional vulnerability, willingness to just let someone else lead, be poorer, but doing something that you love - are now the qualities that they're desperate to find in single men in their age group. When Gottlieb asked her thirty-to-fortysomething focus group where those guys were now, the collective response: "they're all married".*

(*Okay, fair point: not every girl in quarter-life will be an idiot and overlook perfectly good men, meaning that, from a strictly statistical basis alone, the odds are good that the type of girl I'm attracted to will also have the foresight to see what an awesome lifemate I and other guys like me would actually be. And unlike some other women, they wouldn't allow one bad summer to ruin things forever).

- Women in their fifties and sixties, finally, are the most experienced, and if they're still single, they have completely foregone physical requirements as the primary consideration and now look solely at personality and spirit. Then again, as someone in a Globe article recently pointed out, we can't delude ourselves into thinking that that "sixty is the new forty" because, well, "wrinkly sex isn't all that appealing". Either that, or they've just plain given up and resigned themselves to living their retirement years without romance.

This is a huge digression from "damage" and "baggage", I know, but the one common factor is that the older you get, the less likely you're going to care about a potential mates' "incidents". Unless they're letting it negatively impact their daily tasks such that you're forced to deal with it everyday, or the psychological effects are such that they're still in major therapy of some kind, there's no reason why we should avoid perfectly functional, generally happy, well-balanced, modestly handsome and successful human beings as romantic partners, just because of what they've been through.

And yet, too many 27 to 31 year old women - the potential mates in my desired age range - continue to do just that to 27 to 31 year old men.

What To Consider With Divorced Twentysomething Guys

So let's talk about my "incident", my quote-unquote "damage": being divorced. For many of the women I'm attracted to, my being "divorced" may as well be a scarlet letter. No matter what, they'll feel I'm a used car, and this bothers me, not gonna lie, because I'm a real catch, and I'm not the only one.

There's a whole book called How to Get Divorced by 30 that's all about "starter-marriages". Apparently, that's what I had, even if it didn't start that way. This is apparently a new thing that people are doing: getting married as early as 23 years old, having the princess wedding, living together until 28 or 29, and then splitting, often for the worst fucking reasons you can imagine. ("He won't stop watching TV". "She nags all the time". "He plays too much golf.").

But that's not what I intended. It's not what a lot of guys in my boat - 29 and divorced - wanted. And yes, some divorced guys do deserve to be divorced: they're abusive, non-functional, manipulative, cheaters, or worse. I know that if I was on my game last summer, I'd still be married, though I didn't deserve how it happened to me.

But what should also occur to 27 to 31 year old women meeting a divorced guy like me is the following.

If he's divorced, it means that, once upon a time, at least one girl thought he was special enough to lock down for life. That means there's more to him than what you might be seeing. Get to know him better: you'll be delighted at what you find.

If he's divorced, it means that he made his share of mistakes, but once upon a time, he wanted to be with one girl for life. That means he's got something to his character that, if you're not looking for it now, you're going to regret not taking hold of it when you're fortysomething and lonely. Because it means that if he's into you, he'll be into you for the long run.

If he's divorced, it means that he learned the hard way the importance of knowing what he really wants versus what he doesn't want. No matter how dense or how much of a meathead the man, the percentage of men in the male population who are so learning-impaired that they make the same mistakes twice is smaller than what you'd like to believe. That means that if he's into you, you really are what he wants.

If he's divorced, he is one half of the equation of why it went wrong, but he's only half. That means you can't completely blame him or put the whole blame on his shoulders. It doesn't necessarily mean he's not good at maintaining relatoinships: it may, in fact, mean that some other girl simply didn't see the value in him that you do. Don't punish him for her blindness.

If he's divorced, he's experienced doing the "husbandly" things, like making you laugh, taking care of you when you're sick, or walking your five imaginary dogs*. You definitely want that.

(*yes, I used a Mosbyism)

And finally, if he's divorced, he's had a life experience that, like it or not, have given him more depth, more clarity, more maturity, and - though you can't see it - has made him more likely to be passionate, caring, romantic, nurturing, funny, and life-affirming than what you'd find in someone who's never been there, never took the risk, never fell in love, and never learned.

In short, the divorced quarter life man may very well have had to go through hell to become the man of your dreams. The very least you can do is let him take you to coffee.

The Bottom Line


I guess this is still one more way of purging the last obstacles to success from my system. And yes, I know women will have their own complaints about quarter-life men, but that's for you to discuss from your experience if you want. This is mine.

It's important I write this out and share this with you, because despite what I've been through, I still believe in soul mates, and there is that realization that the One is going to meet me and be with me no matter what my baggage is. Simply put, if destiny has that in store for us, then the baggage and damage won't be obstacles.

And this isn't just me: I know too many good men in my age group out there who haven't been snapped up by women with the foresight to see that they are, in fact, all they've wanted.

I'll say that again: guys like me are, in fact, what you've always wanted.

Quarter-life ladies, consider this food for thought, because as long as you don't see our value, we all lose, and lose huge.

That's it for now. Long entry I know: if you've made it this far, props.

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