A SUNDAY SELF-CARE SABBATICAL FROM THE SHITFEST
We're allowed to take breaks from the politics, you know
(I promise we’ll get back to all of the fiery fuckery in my next piece. I have other things on my mind along with the current garbage fire, and they need some attention too)
So…I have been single forever. FOREVER.
Okay, for twelve years. Same diff.
My marriage ended in 2005, the same year I fell for the guy I still call the love of my life. He’s younger than I am—twelve and a half years younger, to be exact—and the nearly seven years we spent together coincided with my dream radio job, so I was the kind of happy that scared the shit out of me.
It’s all too good, I would tell myself. And I was right.
I lost the dream job in 2009, then the best relationship I’ll ever have with a man just three years later.
My ex-bf used to call me his “little handful.” I don’t mean to be a lot, but I guess I’m a lot. Because no one else has attempted to “handle” me since, and I can’t blame them because I know myself.
I’ve tried, of course. No one lasted longer than six weeks, no matter how well I screened them. I turned 50 in 2019 and got to enjoy going through menopause during a pandemic, so let’s just say it’s been well over a minute since I’ve had any action. Or wanted any.
Like, sometimes I expect to get a text from my long-neglected vibrator: U OK? Is it me?
No, sweetie, it’s totally me.
Yeah, I’m one of those lucky women whose libido went bye-bye along with my cycle. Without going into too much detail (hey, my mom reads this thing), I went from an enthusiastic participant to someone who now looks away when people so much as kiss on a TV show I’m watching. Eccch.
Maybe if I’d already been partnered up when the menses ceased, I wouldn’t have had such an extreme change, because I’d have someone here who knew me well and could remind me that there were things I liked about being intimately touched.
Instead, now I’m all “Ewww, mouths germs gross!” in response to any and all thoughts of having my face—and particularly my olfactory senses—anywhere near a fella’s undercarriage, if you catch my drift.
Before my asexual spinsterhood set in, I would see couples everywhere and covet their connections. I didn’t particularly care if they were happy or not, I just had questions:
How did you find each other?
And then once you found each other, how did you get past all of the “are we together or are we just casual” weirdness until you felt secure that it would last?
How do you manage all of the things, because I’ve literally forgotten how to Relationship?
I can look at couples now and see how they make sense together. I can be overjoyed that they’ve found each other. I am besotted with Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce and how in love they are. My older son and his girlfriend are radiantly in love and it brings me endless joy. I know lots of couples socially and at no time do I wish I had the husband for mine own.
Being single and living alone for twelve years will do a lot of things to a person. There have been bouts of severe loneliness, wishing there was someone here to hold me when life gets unnecessarily hard or just needing someone to reach things from a high shelf. There isn’t someone who knows me like my ex-bf did and I doubt there ever will be. Every so often I’ll look at one of the dating apps and get so discouraged and disgusted that I delete it again within a minute.
I don’t want someone around all the time. I joke with my other single friends that if the Universe ever put a date-worthy man in my path, he’d have to be okay with never having sex along with never living together. Sharing a bathroom with a man again is just too unimaginably gross, considering I don’t even like sharing my bathroom with my cats (as clean as I keep things). And I haven’t slept in a bed with a man in YEARS. I can’t even sleep in the same bed with my mom when she visits.
I AM A PRINCESS NOW.
I like my stuff where it is and I like doing my stuff my way without an audience asking me why I do my stuff the way I do it.
But I’m 55. I worry about falling and hitting my head or something and no one realizes they haven’t heard from me in a few days and then it’s a scene where my cats are curled up next to me on the living room floor, occasionally nibbling at me because they can’t open the fridge or the cabinet to get at their food.
I mean, I don’t worry about that too much. But I still think about getting older alone. I have a wonderful group of friends I can rely on, but they have lives. Sometimes I wish I had a regular Plus One so I don’t have to go anywhere alone if I don’t feel like it.
And then he could go home to his house after giving me a nice hug goodnight. That seems fine, right? Then no one has to worry about farting in front of anyone else or morning breath and no one has to hide their obsessive weird skin maintenance routines.
I look at myself and think, Who would want this? Who would want to take me to doctor’s appointments and watch me fall apart over the next however long we’d have together? Who could I possibly stand doing that for?
I look at other couples and think, If I was meant to have that, I’d have it.
I think things like, Some people get to be tall. Some people get to be rich. Some people get to have love. I’m just not one of those people.
A guy a friend of mine dated a couple of summers ago sized me up after just a few minutes of chatting. “I bet you scare the shit out of men in Portland,” he said.
“I used to,” I replied. “But now I’m just dead inside.”
“Nah,” he shot back. “You’re not dead inside. You’re just dormant. You need the right guy to wake you up.”
Dormant.
I liked the way that sounded. It was kind of sexy.
It was also completely wrong, because my libido remains somnambulant. The Universe isn’t delivering anyone, and I’m fine with it 99.99999999% of the time.
However, the Universe seems to be delivering to others, and I’m trying to decide if I want to see it hopefully for myself or just be proud of myself for being able to genuinely be happy for other people without wishing I had what they do.
This brings me to two recent real-life love stories that have caught my attention as I’m tirelessly promoting my fictional rock and roll love story, The Sound of Settling. Aside from each story involving a famous person falling in love with a not-famous person, similar to Lila and Grady, they also involve women not much older than I am.
The first one is about Valerie Bertinelli, a lifelong Shero of mine who’s lived in the spotlight forever. After two marriages that had left her convinced she would never find love again, she did—at age 63.
When I found out that her new man was someone I sort of know—I’ve been following Hoarse Whisperer on Twitter since 2016—I squealed with delight. Mike has also been through it himself, and he’s written extensively about how their initial tentative Instagram DM’s led to love.
Their pictures together are adorable. I love this relationship. I couldn’t be happier for them and I wish them a lifetime of laughter and love.
The other story is about another lifelong Shero, Paulina Porizkova, 58. I was never a supermodel person, mainly because I grew up a short fat girl, but Paulina was different because she never seemed to care about being a model. I remember reading an early article about her that was conducted at NYC’s famous Empire Diner, and she asked her waitress, “What is the most fatteningest thing on the menu?”
I immediately began girlcrushing, and that’s never stopped.
After the devastating loss of her husband Ric Ocasek in 2019 while they were going through a painful separation, Paulina did what most single women do. She went on the dating apps and had the same experiences we all have. “I got rejected, I got ghosted,” she told the TODAY Show a few months ago.
And then last year, she met TV writer Jeff Greenstein on Raya, an app I’m not rich or famous enough to join. Their Instagrams are a joy to follow. They travel all over the world together and have the kind of joie de vivre you can feel from their photos.
These are life goals. These are couple goals.
For other people. Just not for me.
Seriously, I don’t think another boyfriend for me is a thing. I don’t think he exists.
But I’d be so happy to be proven wrong. Maybe Valerie and Mike or Paulina and Jeff have nice cute funny smart single male friends of an appropriate age who can deal with a strong and independent woman. IT NEVER HURTS TO ASK, YOU GUYS.
*sighs*
(PS, please buy my book, I put all the love I know I deserve into Lila and Grady’s love story)
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Tara, I was going to write a long post to you but it still reduces down to just this:
Believe that love waits for you. You are worth it but not all gorgeous gems will fit into a dozen different rings. Some are so unique that there is just one design that shows the absolute beauty of that precious stone. You are that gem.
I buy your book (the early one that'll be worth tons when you get way famous) I bought your Kindle edition, I donate monthly. If only I were twenty years younger...... Anyway, I understand.