Senior dating tolerance – You cannot change people
By Tom P Blake – Finding Love after 50
Singles know that finding a compatible mate later in life is difficult. So when someone comes along who is perfect for us, we feel blessed. Take Joyce for example. She shared the many reasons why she likes the man she met online.
“We enjoy each other’s company, make each other laugh and support each other. He’s a great listener, always available, calls when he says he’s going to, invites my kids along each time we go out and even sent flowers (once).
“We travel weekends, bike ride, watch our local professional baseball and football teams, visit his mom and my parents, go to movies, play computer games, and do errands together.”
Joyce and her boyfriend don’t live together, but in April, when he had back surgery, he stayed at her home for three weeks so she could look after him.
Sounds like the type of relationship we’d all like to have. Well, maybe he could send flowers a little more often, but some guys are that way. So why is Joyce questioning the relationship?
Because there’s more to the story. Joyce said, “We hit a bump in the road early on. Last June, he accepted a wedding invite to go as a guest with a previous girlfriend—says he felt bad for her and didn’t want her to go alone. It put my antennae up. He never answers his cell phone when he’s with me. I started checking his cell phone on the sly.”
Joyce says she got “really, really, really” chewed up by members of her chat room for doing that. “But I had the opportunity and was protecting myself,” she said.
Joyce found out he was keeping in touch with the woman he took to the wedding, although he told Joyce he wasn’t, and there were three other women he was in contact with, one every day.
She said she also discovered another bump in the road: he enjoyed recreational drug use, even sold pot to friends. She broke up with him over that. When he promised he’d give that up for her, they reunited.
Now she finds out he still smokes pot and still provides it to his friends. And when he was staying with her while recuperating, late one night she had to run an errand. When she left, he was groggy from his medication, “in a stupor,” she says. When she got back, she checked his cell phone and found that five minutes after she’d left, he’d called one of the four women. Amazing what humans can do in a stupor.
Joyce says she longs for honesty from him. But she hasn’t confronted him again about his drug shenanigans or his contacting other women. “I don’t want more empty promises. He doesn’t take no for an answer easily. If I back off from seeing him, if I’m busy, eventually he will get it and leave me alone.” How’s that for tackling a problem head on?
Joyce has an appointment with her counselor to find out why she can’t stick up for herself. If she thought the members of her chat room were tough on her before, wait until they get her latest update. Let’s hope the counselor can help her. In her list of qualities in a mate, he is lacking in two. Are they senior dating deal breakers?