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Getting Naked Again:
Dating, Romance, Sex, and Love When You've Been Divorced, Widowed, Dumped, or Distracted
CHAPTER ONE
Reentry
or
Would I Sleep with Eisenhower?
It was all very unlikely. She was standing in the hallway of
the Marriott Marquis Hotel, wearing cute wrinkled Nick
& Nora cotton pajamas, the white ones with the cherries printed
on them and the small ruffles at the wrists and ankles. She was
deciding whether to knock on the door of a friendly colleague
who, earlier in the conference, had patted her calf in a suggestive
manner but allowed her to retire to her hotel room alone. He
had seemed interested, definitely interested, though he had done
no more than extend an indirect invitation and wait to see if she
would RSVP.
But she was fifty-six years old, and it was more than twenty five
years since she had responded to a calf rub offered by a man
other than her now ex-husband. Still, that husband had been, for
the last two years, rubbing someone else’s considerably younger
calf—and wasn’t it ever going to be her turn again? That was the
question that got her up, out of her hotel room, and into this
awkward moment of indecision in a hotel hallway. Apparently,
if it were ever to be her turn again, if she were ever going to kiss
someone again, smile up at, hold hands with, not to mention the
rest, well, something would be required of her. The new lover,
new boyfriend, new companion, new man was not going to be
delivered effortlessly into her life. At some point, she would have
to knock.
So will you.
Because, however it happened, you’re back out there floating
in single space. Whether you have been cast back out by painful
circumstance, or you are finally back after years of hiding out, at
this moment you are romantically unattached and on your own.
And, by whatever process that has brought you to this brink, you
are considering a return to the game.
That game would be the timeworn, thrilling, and terrible
drama of flirtation, sex, and love; of courtship and romance; of
getta-guy, getta-girl, or get gotten. How consciously and therefore
how successfully you replay the game is the subject of this
book. First you have to decide to knock.
You may be, at this moment in your life, very far from that
hallway. Perhaps you are still frozen in the grip of a loss, staggering
after a death or a betrayal. And even if your recovery from
these wounds has brought you as far as this door, you may still
be paralyzed in its face. The sexual and emotional experience
available across the threshold is still far outside your picture of
yourself. But you are considering a move in that direction.
On the other hand, had it been a different version of you in
the hallway, you might never have retreated to your room to
think it over. You may be one of those who threw herself over
that threshold and out of those damn pajamas twenty minutes
after your last relationship ended. (Or, to be on the safe side,
twenty minutes before.) You are trading partners, changing stories,
and eager to avoid a hole in your heart or in your life. You
have leapt headlong into courtship, perhaps without some of the
strategies you’ll need to make it turn out better this time.
Most of us are somewhere between these two positions—wishing
to reconnect in some important way, longing to have a little fun
or a lot of sex or a great companion, but anxious, discouraged, or
cynical about the possibility of happily ever after. Much as we have
not given up on the fantasy of romance, affection, and love, we are
undone at the prospect of reengaging in the tiresome and hurtful
dating game that carries with it these rewards. Eventually, though,
most of us wrestle with the reality: It’s the only game in town.
All of us who are single—whether widowed or divorced,
dumped or thankfully detached, or just newly resurfaced after
the distractions of motherhood, career, or both—stand at the
same anxious precipice. Must I, will I get back into the game of
courtship? Would I want to? Can I bear its rigors? Is it worth it?
Am I still a contender? Can I do it any better this time? Or at all?
And, since it definitely requires two to play, where do I go to find
someone with whom to get up a game?
These are legitimate questions at any age, but they can be showstoppers
after, say, forty-six. That’s when we add the fretful salsa of
age to our always conflicted feelings about dating. True, an amazing
number of thirty-two-year-olds have been known to convince themselves
that it is already too late. Old is not a belief confined to the
“mature” woman or man. Too late is a destructive thought, whether
at thirty-five or at eighty, but an awful lot of us over forty or fifty run
it through our brains anyway.
For the moment, you are at your tennis club contemplating
the decent-looking retiree across the dining room—single, sixty-
eight, wearing whites and a knee brace—and you think, “Jeez,
wouldn’t that be like sleeping with Eisenhower?” It’s a thought
that could send you right off to babysit full-time for your own
grandchildren, confining yourself to book groups and community
service—all perfectly fi ne occupations if they are satisfying
enough for you. But some of us stop to recall that, as it turned
out, Eisenhower had someone on the side after Mamie apparently
lost interest. We take another look across the dining room
and see past the knee brace. We decide to knock.
Woman in Transition
Whether you are poised hesitantly at this brink or you’ve
thrown yourself relentlessly, determinedly into the online, blind date,
hookup bars middle of the middle-aged dating world, you
are at a life stage you might think of as reentry. Reentry is a tricky
time, and it requires more preparation and self-awareness than
merely how best to market yourself with a great computer profile.
(Though such advice helps—no question about it.) If you
are looking for a safe and happy landing, reentry needs some
solid-state understanding of the process and a damn good heat
shield.
That is the purpose of this book. For one reason or another,
you unexpectedly find yourself in the untethered universe of
single life. To move from that romantic free fall toward a loving
connection, you will have to navigate an intensely emotional,
uncertain, and unsettling period of time.
The internal forces that will drive you during this period—
your own individual fears and longings, your lifelong romantic
patterns, and your acute reentry needs—are powerful, un-
expected, and erratic. It would help to have some meaningful
self-knowledge to steer a safe course. Yet your capacity for introspection
and self-awareness may well have atrophied during your
marriage or motherhood, when you focused so much on taking
care of other people that you lost close touch with yourself.
Now here you are, thrown back on that self you may no
longer know well, negotiating your own mixed feelings while
you are recovering from emotional loss. Just catching up with
your inner life could be a full-time preoccupation. But many
of us are tempted to skip this inner step entirely. The outer
drama of e-mail flirtation, social competition, and actual foreplay
can be so compelling, confusing, or aversive that we miss
a clear picture of ourselves because we are too busy watching
the show.
That show, the interpersonal soap opera of dating, will involve
meeting, assessing, kissing, touching, wooing, and negotiating
with some stranger. And his children. Plus his friends.
Not to mention his ex-wife, past girlfriends, medical history,
financial fetishes, sexual aspirations, political biases, and his
odd habit of saving string and old Playboy magazines because
he still believes the collection is valuable.
Anywhere along this rocky way you might dismiss him, which
will exhaust and discourage you, even though you are the one to
do the dumping. Or he might reject you—which will sting even
if you had already decided you didn’t want him. All told, it’s
hard to believe that any one of us could refer to such a potentially
brutal interaction as a game, nor that sane and self-sufficient
adults would enter into it. But we do. And we must, because at
the other end of reentry is connection, and that’s worth a lot of
shake, rattle, and roll.
Actually, truth told, you will probably have to engage in bits
and pieces of this process more than once, perhaps with many
strangers, in order to develop one serious, solid, and cherished
bond with a person who will undoubtedly turn out to be flawed,
because in the end we all are. And then you will have the struggle
to compromise and love him anyway. But by this time you
will be long past the awkward uncertainty of getting naked again
and into the serious relationship for which there are many other
books written—some of which I’ve written myself.
Right now, though, you are at the precarious and interesting
beginning. Between the relationship you’ve left behind and the
new person with whom you will connect, there is an internal
process and an interpersonal one. You can get better at both.
The internal process of getting naked again involves a personal
evolution. Understanding and furthering that evolution—
its dynamics, conflicts, and their successful resolution—is the
subject of part I of this book. It is also its deeper purpose. Certainly
we date again because it’s a drag to sit home on Saturday
night; because it’s nice to have a man to dance with at weddings,
to open jars, or to intervene with the car mechanic; or because
they sometimes pay and that’s a plus (though the cost of hair and
makeup and shoes usually evens out this benefit). But expedience
is not the only reason we return again and again to courtship,
decked in hope and dread and fresh Botox.
Romantic life is really nothing more than a playing field; increasing
your capacity to give and receive love is the prize. A
sexual reawakening, some very good laughs, and the sheer pleasure
of telling your girlfriends the tale are the side benefits. And
happiness—packaged as quiet contentment, studded with emotional
sizzle, and grounded in a sense of connection—is the
point. To enjoy these fresh emotional heights, though, you will
need more than a suitable partner. You need an evolving sense
of yourself.
Most of us who get naked again start by shedding or losing a
partner. We go from attached to alone, but that change of outward
status takes awhile to percolate through to the soul. Naked
can feel very chilly, and some of us rush to shelter in a quick new
relationship, create a career onslaught, or take temporary, even
necessary cover in the lives of our children. (A daughter’s divorce
can, for example, distract you from the pain of your own.) But
wherever you hurry to hide out, the change of identity will creep
up. It’s best to be ready for it.
Even if you just stand bravely stripped and single in the world,
it will still take some time to integrate the idea that this is you,
meeting a strange man for coffee; you, handing cuff links to a man
not your husband as you two dress after sex for a theater curtain;
you, slow dancing at a resort party with a man who miraculously
appears to have an erection. All the while the woman who lives
in your mind’s eye is still married, a mother, a wife, a granny.
Who are you now? Who will you become? Or more likely, if it’s
fear whispering the questions instead of excitement—what’s to
become of you?
Victorian as the thought is, it does capture the sometimes
overwhelming sense of uncertainty that accompanies the transition
from some safe harbor to the unsheltered world of single
life. Over time, if you pay attention and press through the obstacles
to change, this becomes you, free to decide whether to spend
the money on the new roof or the trip to Africa; you, removing
the dead mouse from the kitchen floor because there’s no one
else there to do it and you know what, it’s doable; you, deciding
to stay, move, buy, rent, with only your adult children to natter
at you about your decision; you, slipping your business card into
some guy’s pocket because at this point, why the hell not?
Getting Naked Again is about evolving into an adult single
woman after you’ve defined yourself as part of a whole. It’s about
partnering again, if that’s what you hope for, and about taking
your clothes off in front of someone again, even if that’s what
you fear. It’s about revealing yourself—your heart, your soul,
your quirks and calcified habits, your physical droops, maternal
missteps, crammed closets, and/or empty retirement funds—to
fresh judging eyes. It’s about acting in your own self-interest,
especially when your heart is steering you off the cliff of love, or
when your fear has you dug deep behind a barricade of reasons.
It’s about doing all of this with a smile on your face and a
strong and clear sense of yourself, recognizing:
- How the injuries and frustrations of your previous relationship
shape your next one.
- Which mistaken fantasies and beliefs you may be nurturing.
- The signs that you are ready to reconnect.
- Which of the two great reentry fears drives you.
- Your most productive mind-set for dating.
In the end, like it or not, dating, commitment, and love are
less about whom you meet and more about who you are. Part I
of Getting Naked Again focuses on understanding who you are
and catching up with the woman you’ve become.
None of that introspection is easy, especially because you’ll
be seriously distracted. Though it may be rough, getting naked
again is also an emotional rush. After all, you are not only going
back to the game of romance; you are also returning mentally
to the last time you played it. Circumstances have thrown you
back on your own, to an earlier solitary time in your life. You
are suddenly without cover, open to the cruelty of the seven second
judgment, the evaporating e-mail friend. You are back
to thinking about what to wear with an eye to how it unzips.
Back to contemplating eyelash batting, phone-call waiting, and
hope followed by crash followed by delicious, exuberant hope
again.
In other words, you might be feeling the same wild mood
swings and jailbreak giddiness you felt when you first left home.
If you are coming back to life after a freezing grief, or a decade
of grim marital endurance, you might just zip up a bustier, strap
on your four-inch heels, and wallow in being young again for as
long as you can.
But even if dating rituals make you feel temporarily twenty—
with all its sexual thrill and shaky self-worth—it’s still smart to
use your grown-up head to steer by. True, everyone goes back
into the game in his or her own way, but there are common
success and failure patterns from which you can learn. There
are basic dating and relationship skills in which we could all
use a refresher. More important, there are mistakes you can
avoid, pitfalls to steer around if only you could see them coming.
And, just as every satellite needs to align itself properly to
assure a successful reentry, you will need to adjust your attitude
to best survive the atmosphere of romance. Part II of Getting
Naked Again, Interpersonal Expertise, reviews each of the central
questions:
- What’s the best meet-and-mate advice offered by people
who have been out there and succeeded?
- Who picks, who pays, who calls, who seduces in adult
courtship these days?
- How do you manage your girlfriends, their husbands, the
social world, and altered family expectations when you
turn single?
- What are the four classic transitional relationships and
what emotional needs do they satisfy?
- How can you recognize, and correct, your own emotional
regressions?
This might all sound like much ado about something that
depends primarily on luck and the right social connections. In
fact, most of us, whether we are dating at twenty-seven or seventy,
tend to obsess about the question “Where do I go to meet
someone?” and ignore the rest. After all, meeting someone is
the necessary if not sufficient condition to a romance, and if
you believe that no one is out there, then what good is knowing
the best way to proceed? Too, “Where do I meet someone?”
resonates with the cherished romantic belief that meeting the
right person is everything, that when it’s right it’s right, that
love solves problems.
Meeting is a critical part of the process. Whom you are willing
to meet, how open you are to meeting, to connecting, to
risking the rejection that so often follows meeting, how willing
you are to do the picking, how much you rely on being the one
picked—all of these are crucial relationship variables for you to
examine and reevaluate.
You can’t ignore the meet-who-where question. But frankly,
if you focus exclusively on it—that is, if you don’t look beyond
the reasonable advice to
—join clubs, ask friends for introductions, pursue your hobbies,
be friendly, go where the boys are, but only if you’re
sure you wanna be there, to take up golf or tennis or Internet
matches, to try Elderhostel travel or Silver Seniors
or Gorgeous Grandmas or some other equally chirpily
named group you are apt to put out a great deal of effort with very little return.
After all that work, with little love to share, you will naturally
come to believe that there is no one out there, all the good ones
are taken, no one you want will ever want you. In other words,
without thinking more deeply about what you are doing, you
could easily end up with all the self-limiting convictions that
make so many of us retire to our sweat suits and curl up with our
cats. Getting naked again, you’ve determined, was a bust.
Meeting someone is a numbers game, as you’ve been told.
But it is also more than a numbers game. It is bringing the right
mind, body, and spirit to that numbers game. You are, after all,
reentering after a long relationship followed by a brutal divorce
(and they are pretty much all brutal, just each in its exquisitely
individual way). Or you are gathering your strength to reengage
after the death of a longtime partner—whether it was a partner
you adored or one you tolerated and, if it was a long marriage,
you surely felt some of each.
These losses might have been recent, in the last weeks or
years. Or they might have been long ago, and you ignored the
possibility of romance in favor of your career, your parenting
responsibilities, your destructive addictions or elevating preoccupations.
Whatever your individual pattern, when you reenter
the game after age forty or so, you are different this time around.
Your mind, your body, your emotional attitude will probably
need a little conscious work, some weeding, some turning of the
mental soil, before anything new can really take root.
It’s not all about whom you meet. Getting naked again is,
first, foremost, and maybe in the end most important, all about
who you are when you meet him. And that depends, at least in
part, on what sent you back out there.
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