Sex and the Sixty: Susan Gets Online

Sex and the Sixty: Susan Gets Online

BLOGGER:  RENEE FISHER

Click here to read the first blog in the Sex in the Sixty Series – Sex and the Sixty: Online Dating

For those skeptics who might be thinking that my friend Susan’s poor results are because she hasn’t put enough of an effort into online dating, rest assured that she has been on most internet dating sites since the very first one (CaveMatch.com).  She has only excluded the ones that will result in the FBI confiscating her computer. Both eHarmony and chemistry.com have now told her they can do nothing more for her unless she “expands her search area.”  For Susan, this would mean either searching for men who are younger than her son, older than a Civil War veteran, or who are currently incarcerated.

After Susan is initially contacted by men on the various sites, she usually emails back and forth with them, using her personal email.  Sometimes a phone call or two is part of the scenario.

One man told her he lived on a boat and wrote a long email explaining that he lived with a gorgeous 18 year old Dane.  Susan assumed he was talking about a dog.  He wasn’t. Another man spent a lot of time writing to her about his fishing trip.  About the only fishing trip that ever held my attention for any length of time was the one in “Deliverance,” and this man’s email was longer than the “Deliverance” screenplay.

Susan sends me some of the emails that she gets. These are mostly from men who don’t have spell check on their computers:
“…let,s see,are there really any woman out there that are looking for true love, or are you all stell way to picky…”
“…she be my best friend, loving, caring, faithfull, understanding,be d/d free, clean about her self…”
“…i,m a BIG redskins fan, and have been sents 1969…”

One man, who seemed like a good prospect and who had a fair command of the English language, was very anxious to meet her in person.  A coffee date was arranged for the following weekend, and each day, he would tell Susan how he couldn’t wait for their meeting.  Then, a couple days before the weekend, he sent an email saying,
“I think it would be best if I canceled this Sunday…On Tuesday this week – it seems like a month ago – I met someone else online. We’ve yet to meet in person…but we spoke on the phone for an hour and a half – till her battery went dead….I’m amazed at how far, and how fast things have progressed.  Maybe we’ve each found the person we’re both looking for…the degree of emotional closeness has developed very fast.  Besides, I’m not good at trying to date two women at the same time.  So, I sincerely wish you the best. I continued talking to you about meeting because there was a certain momentum there. I really was eager to meet you in person.”

I asked Susan what the “momentum” was all about and why she thought his momentum with the other woman trumped hers.  All Susan could think of was that the other woman’s momentum was larger than hers.

Susan still has a lot of emails to sift through (something like 29 at last count), and I’ll be curious to see what she comes up with.  I’ve suggested some ground rules for her when she meets guys, like only meeting for coffee and limiting the meeting to one hour.  I figured that would minimize the damage.  As we’ll see in the next posting, I was wrong.  Very,very wrong.

Renee Fisher is a Realtor and writer who lives in the Washington, DC area.  She is the co-author of two award-winning books about life after 50www.invisiblenomore.com and is the DC Boomer Humor columnist forexaminer.com DC-Boomer-Humor-Examiner.

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Sex and the Sixty: Online Dating

Sex and the Sixty: Online Dating

BLOGGER:  RENEE FISHER

My friend Susan has had such a long, varied and rocky career as a dating single, that I, as one of her closest and dearest friends, listen to her tragic stories, and, as the caring, compassionate person I am, laugh myself sick.

It’s tough not to.  Susan seems to attract a lot of really interesting and unique men.  Some of them have “handles” that conjure up visions that make me a bit queasy:

pistolhead

riding cowboy

katlicker

dixiekraut

pistolpete

swabjock

Now for the actual words:

“I’m 62 but still active…”

Is he saying he is still sexually active or that he still has the ability to get out of bed in the morning?

“I haven’t been with a woman in eight years.”

If someone wrote that to me, I would immediately consult an attorney to find out which criminal offenses would result in an eight year prison term.

“Do ya judge the book by the appearance of the cover, or do ya open the cover to find out if the table of contents captures and peaks your interest enough to read more?”

Actually, I like to scan the index first, then check out the footnotes.  Sometimes, I read the jacket, but other times I flip right to the author’s biography at the end…

This one is from “Looking For Busty”: “I am an older, independent, very safe, straight man in good shape and I like very much the younger woman who is busty, local and in very good shape for extra-curricular activities.”

Hey LFB, there are about 10,000 other guys waiting in line for her also.  Good luck.

“I am looking for one woman, not two or more…”

I’m wondering about a person who has to clarify this.  Has he had negative experiences with trying to find a soul mate and instead being tricked into having group sex?

“I am a very outgoing person and I always see the glass as half full.  I’ve been told that I have a very humorist personality.”

This is also called the “Will Rogers Syndrome.”

“I’d like to volunteer this; I look and act a lot younger than I actually am.”

I’d like to volunteer this: 95% of people over the age of 45 would probably write exactly the same thing about themselves.  The other 5% would use capital letters when they write the words “a lot.”

A recent poem Susan received had these lines hidden among all the others that professed undying love:

“When someone is willing to do without,

So your life is complete”

This would stop me in my tracks.  This guy is either Bernie Madoff writing from his North Carolina jail cell or a man looking for someone to donate a kidney.

Susan was really excited when I told her I would write columns about her attempts at internet dating.

“You can be my blind author!” she exclaimed.

“I think you meant ‘ghost writer’,” I said.

Oh boy, are we going to have fun with this one.

Renee Fisher is a Realtor and writer who lives in the Washington, DC area.  She is the co-author of two award-winning books about life after 50www.invisiblenomore.com and is the DC Boomer Humor columnist forexaminer.com DC-Boomer-Humor-Examiner.

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HOW TO MANAGE TIME: A LESSON FROM POKER

HOW TO MANAGE TIME:  A LESSON FROM POKER

BLOGGER:  BEN PIERSON

My brother has been a professional poker player since about 2002, when the dot-com tech magazine he worked for began going out of business.  Aside from helping him avoid the grind of an 8-6 job (are there really 9-5s anymore?), poker has provided him the means to found a (now) successful literary arts magazine, Canteen (www.canteenmag.com).  In addition to publishing unique pieces from well known writers, Canteen also runs an after school literary program up in Harlem in conjunction with StreetSquash.

My brother plays poker mostly on the internet, not over the table.*  Unlike playing in Atlantic City, Las Vegas, or a card room in Brooklyn, being an internet player means that 24hrs a day, 7 days a week, you can simply turn on a computer and find tens of thousands of people to play against.  This creates an interesting quandary.   Aside from its addictive nature, poker starts creating a framework of economic cost for your life. e.g., If I go to bed now, the girlfriend will be happy and I’ll get three extra hours sleep; but those three hours will cost me an average of X dollars, and is that really worth it? The price of a movie is no longer $10, but $1,000 in economic cost. The extra value derived from the movie/happy girlfriend is nebulous compared to the more concrete value of electronic money in your poker account. 

In recent years my brother has found a good middle ground for managing his time, controlling his work schedule instead of being controlled by it.  I think this comes in part from the success he’s had over the years and in part from the extraordinary levels of stress that comes with the job.  But getting to this more balanced point took a lot of work, a lot of missed movies and a lot of failures.

What are we 8-6ers supposed to do to manage our time – to accomplish that work/life balance?

I used to write 10-20 item to-do lists.  The list would sit there and, weeks later, barely a dent would have been made.  Life is stressful enough without this list serving as a constant reminder of things I had yet to do.  This method was a huge mistake.   In all facets of your life, don’t create a system which produces too much stress.  If you do find you’re dealing with too much stress, change something.  Please read the posts in “Healthy” by Robert Bornstein, starting with http://blog.imagineage.com/coping-with-stress-in-troubling-times/ .  Dr. Bornstein is one of the leading Doctors in the field of stress and his advice – when followed even to a small extent – can lead to a better quality of life and longer life (not too shabby).  The other posts are fantastic as well, so don’t be shy!

Now I write much shorter lists… maybe 2-3 items down.  If I’m feeling frisky, I’ll even schedule times to do them.  For example on Monday night I’ll put into my schedule:

–Tuesday at 10am, call the bank to order new checks

-12pm, order flowers for my mother’s birthday (and tell my brother it’s all set)

–2pm take a book to the gym and do 40 minutes of cardio (my therapist suggests scheduling an actual time for the gym, so I’m more prone to go; this has helped a lot).

–7pm, check http://blog.imagineage.com/ and read the latest posts

I’ve found that this way of writing shorter, more manageable lists has not only increased the rate at which I achieve these tasks, but significantly decreased the amount of stress associated with the whole process. 

What are some of the tricks you use?  While this method might work for me – for now – something completely different might work for you.  Please share – I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Some suggestions I’ve received already:

• Create a filing system.  Buy specific three ring binders (and a hole puncher) to keep your ‘subjects’ ordered.  The hole puncher part allows you to rearrange things on your lists, easily moving things forwards or backwards, or adding in tabs for subsections
• Scheduling specific times during the day to do XYZ activity – several people mentioned this has proven successful for them
• “Getting Things Done: the art of stress free productivity” by David Allen (http://tinyurl.com/385oqs)
• “The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch, a former UVA professor.  Very moving personal story which speaks to doing the most with your time – Randy had only a few months to live after being diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer (http://tinyurl.com/6475uc) 

Most importantly the theme to this should be finding a process that alleviates stress, not creates it.  Also, you must take actionable steps.  No need to overhaul everything right this second, but take some baby steps forward and the results should speak for themselves.  What do you think?

*Ironically, my brother views his infrequent trips to Vegas as more of a vacation than anything else.  You see, in Vegas he can only sit at one table and play one hand at a time.  The dealer takes a while to shuffle and thus you’ll be playing perhaps 30-40 hands per hour.  On the internet my brother can play at 3, 4, 5, 8 tables and with computer shuffling each table plays closer to 80 hands per hour.  Thus sitting at home (or wherever in the world he may be) he can average 300 – 600 hands per hour instead of a paltry 40.

To find out more about Ben, click here to read his bio.

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