|
Finding love after 50. The website for middle aged singles and senior singles, providing information and dating advice for middle age dating and senior dating. This column's topic:
With or Without a Man
A single middle-aged woman we'll call Sheila explains why women should be prepared to take care of themselves. She's been married twice for a total of 26 years and has been
divorced three years.
She says her second husband was handsome, intelligent, well-educated, witty, and "terribly sexy." "I was the envy of every woman who met him," Sheila says, "but, he was not only
narcissistic, but very cruel."
Sheila says if she had checked him out financially before marrying him, she would have learned that he owed over $100,000 in back taxes. She eventually left him, but says it took her
quite a while to get over him. "I loved him in spite of myself," she says.
Then, she started looking for male companionship. "I'm a romantic. I love everything about men and marriage. I still cry when I see 'An Affair to Remember' or hear Nat King Cole sing
'Unforgettable,'" she says.
But soon Sheila had a wake-up call. "It finally dawned on me one day while I was out there looking for a man that life was passing me by," she says.
She enrolled in Yoga class, went back to college, joined a meditation group, a church, and does volunteer work when time allows. She doesn't watch
television. She mastered the Internet.
"Since I turned 50, I've never been happier. I'm grateful I have not lost my enthusiasm for life," says Sheila, "it recently hit her me that I've recovered from my divorce."
She's been without a man for three years, for which she says she's grateful. "I love my women friends, my peace and quiet, solitude and freedom," says
Sheila. "I don't want male companionship. I want a husband who shares core, fundamental beliefs with me and yet is different enough to keep things interesting. I want us to
have different interests and friends and time alone, and then, when we come back together, our relationship will be more interesting and better for the time apart."
Sheila added, "The odds are overwhelming that, for most of us women over 50, we're going to spend the rest of our lives pretty much alone as far as that kind of relationship goes.
This is our time to discover who we are and what we want to do the rest our lives."
Sheila feels that the men and women who are good candidates for marriage are the ones enjoying their lives and not making looking for a spouse one
of their primary activities.
"They're lonely at times but they realize that a significant other is not an antidote to loneliness and that marriage is not going to be the end of their lonely times," she says.
She said if any women want male companionship and the illusion that they're not alone, she'd be glad to send them her ex-husband's phone number. I doubt if there will be any
takers.
She says that women should quit whining and start living, "before they have neither a man-or a life."
| 