Tag: nyc

Reality Check

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Yeah, I watched Sex in the City.  Not first run, ’cause I don’t have cable, but in reruns.    One of the episodes that made an impression on me is when Carrie was hired to teach a Learning Annex class on where to meet men.  Hundreds of women show up, and of course she has nothing new or insightful to tell them.  I can relate to the women in that audience in a way that I never could to the 4 characters on the show.  They represented the real single women of Manhattan. They didn’t have thousands of dollars to spend on designer clothes and shoes and bags and they didn’t get invited to trendy night club openings.  But they were there, trying, willing to try anything, even willing to shell out a few bucks and humiliate themselves by showing up at a Learning Annex class because they were tired of being single.  They didn’t see single-ness as a great adventure, to be chronicled in a weekly column or blogged about.  They were lonely.

I’ve been pretty lucky as far as single women in New York go.  I’m not freakishly shy (unless I have to walk into a party alone – that one still gets me every time) and I don’t have any weird hang-ups about online dating and so I date a lot. Less than I used to, sure, because I’ve passed the deadly age of 35 and I refuse to lie about my age and well, for a lot of guys I’ve passed my expiration date.  But still, a lot. There are literally thousands of straight, smart, attractive single guys in New York.  Of course, most of them either just want to get laid or can’t figure out what they want but are perfectly happy to jerk you around until they figure it out.  I put the odds of meeting one of the few good ones, one of the ones worth trying to build a life with at somewhere around 1 in 50.  A girl’s got to kiss a lot of frogs.
I’ve already kissed more than my fair share and then some.

Hierarchy

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Writing in response to my Circling Back Around entry a few days back, cjwss suggested that I come up with some kind of hierarchy of categories, as right now I am assessing every guy I go out with as an applicant for future life partner status.

So first, some clarification from me.  I absolutely am looking at each date as a potential life partner.  I do not want to waste another night/week/month/year of my life with a guy who might be perfectly nice, might be great in bed, might be funny (add in whatever other positive attributes you like) but in the end is not ever going to turn into a real bf or significant LTR.  I AM OLD.  I REPEAT, I AM OLD.  And I’m tired of sleeping alone.  I know, from experience that I am happier when I have a partner.  I am looking for someone to be a partner for a long haul, maybe not the long haul (not too sure I believe in the whole happily ever after thing) but a good long time.
I am not desperate.  My biological clock isn’t driving me nuts.  I do not waste countless hours wishing I had a guy and dreaming about my perfect man and imagining my fantasy wedding.  I know that according to the media that I am supposed to be and do all of those things, but that’s not me.  Not even a little.  I just know what I want, what’s going to make me happiest at this point in my life and I’m willing to put in a little effort towards finding it.  I know most people believe that you can’t look for love, and that might very well be true, but I’m certainly not going to find it sitting alone in my apartment with a good book (which is probably what I’d be doing most of those nights if I wasn’t dating).
I have gone through long stretches of time where my head was in other things (usually work) and I was perfectly happy to have the not-serious bf who I knew was never going to turn into anything.  And as I have written about before, I have had, and still have fuckbuddies for when I am in between relationships.
I guess what I’m saying is that I’ve always had that hierarchy.  It’s existed in my life for as long as I can remember.  There are the 1s (fuckbuddies) who are good for sex and short conversation and would never get to spend the night, not in a million years.  There are the 2s (guys I’ve dated knowing full well it was never going to turn into anything) who might be fun for dinner, movies or parties, in addition to sex, and heck they can stay the night if they don’t snore too much. Then there are the 3s.  The 1s and the 2s are easy to find, especially in NYC.  Not so with the 3s. The 3s are the guys you take home to your family, who help you fix your broken furniture, who keep you warm on cold nights.
I don’t care how many dates I have to go on to find one, that’s what I want, one of those elusive 3s.  I’ve had my fill of the others for now.  Maybe I’ll change my mind sometime in the future if my current search continues to go poorly.  Who knows?  But for now I’m sticking to my guns.  3 or nothing at all.

Waking Up With Someone

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I can’t imagine living somewhere that didn’t have seasons. I love it when the leaves change colors. I love the cool spring nights. I love the snow. I even love the sticky New York summers, when I need to hang out by the river to stay cool.

But I do hate how cold the mornings are in the winter. These last couple of weeks have been the first really cold weeks. Each day, I pull my covers around myself tightly as my alarm goes off in the morning and think, “damn, I hate waking up alone”. ‘Cause you see, someone lying next to me, cuddling, would keep me warm. That’s not the only thing that someone would be good for, mind you, but with the mornings as cold as they are, that’s what I’m thinking about first.

Let me be crystal clear here, I am super picky about who is allowed to spend the night in my bed. Fuck buddies don’t get to spend the night. Not even if I’ve known them for years (which happens to he the case for one of them). Not casual flings either. Not even potential bfs. The only guys I spend the night with are bonafide boyfriends. That means I have already decided that this is someone I care a lot about. He’s no longer auditioning for a role in my life. He’s earned it.

I wasn’t always so much of a hardass about this. I’ve taken the walk of shame more than a couple of times (The walk of shame, for those of you who’ve never heard the phrase is when you spend the night with someone you weren’t planning to, maybe because you just picked them up. You spend the night at their place w/o any of your stuff and wake up w/o toothbrush, hairbrush or any grooming products and have to go home in last nights clothes looking like something the cat spit up.) And I’ve let guys I didn’t know too well spend the night at my place. Then it hit me a few years ago. Fucking is about fun, but sleeping with someone , and waking up with them was actually about intimacy and that why couldn’t I just be clear about having one w/o the other. Have my cake and eat it too. So I have sex when I want to with whom I want to (not just any random person, you know anyone I felt attracted to and wanted to meet and fuck for whatever reason – I don’t consider that random as I’m kind of picky) but only SLEEP with my boyfriends.

It’s nearing a year since my last LTR imploded. That’s a really long time to be sleeping alone. I’ve gone longer, sure. But still, it’s a really long time. It feels like a really long time. And the fact that it’s so freaking cold right now and I wake up every morning wishing for that body next to me, it’s not helping things.

Waking Up With Someone

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I can’t imagine living somewhere that didn’t have seasons. I love it when the leaves change colors. I love the cool spring nights. I love the snow. I even love the sticky New York summers, when I need to hang out by the river to stay cool.

But I do hate how cold the mornings are in the winter. These last couple of weeks have been the first really cold weeks. Each day, I pull my covers around myself tightly as my alarm goes off in the morning and think, “damn, I hate waking up alone”. ‘Cause you see, someone lying next to me, cuddling, would keep me warm. That’s not the only thing that someone would be good for, mind you, but with the mornings as cold as they are, that’s what I’m thinking about first.

Let me be crystal clear here, I am super picky about who is allowed to spend the night in my bed. Fuck buddies don’t get to spend the night. Not even if I’ve known them for years (which happens to he the case for one of them). Not casual flings either. Not even potential bfs. The only guys I spend the night with are bonafide boyfriends. That means I have already decided that this is someone I care a lot about. He’s no longer auditioning for a role in my life. He’s earned it.

I wasn’t always so much of a hardass about this. I’ve taken the walk of shame more than a couple of times (The walk of shame, for those of you who’ve never heard the phrase is when you spend the night with someone you weren’t planning to, maybe because you just picked them up. You spend the night at their place w/o any of your stuff and wake up w/o toothbrush, hairbrush or any grooming products and have to go home in last nights clothes looking like something the cat spit up.) And I’ve let guys I didn’t know too well spend the night at my place. Then it hit me a few years ago. Fucking is about fun, but sleeping with someone and waking up with them was actually about intimacy and that why couldn’t I just be clear about having one w/o the other. Have my cake and eat it too. So I have sex when I want to with whom I want to (not just any random person, you know anyone I felt attracted to and wanted to fuck for whatever reason – I don’t consider that random as I’m kind of picky) but only SLEEP with my boyfriends.

It’s nearing a year since my last LTR imploded. That’s a really long time to be sleeping alone. I’ve gone longer, sure. But still, it’s a really long time. It feels like a really long time. And the fact that it’s so freaking cold right now and I wake up every morning wishing for that body next to me, it’s not helping things.

Mishaps Happen and the Magic of 3

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So I had to cancel my date tonight. I live in one of those wonderful old buildings in NYC that everything thinks is charming. And it is. Except that the plumbing is old, too, and several times a winter we are without heat and hot water for hours at a time. It was that way when I woke up this morning and I just blew it off and assumed it would be fixed when I got home. It wasn’t. I called the super to find out that the repairman was “on his way” (why just then and not earlier?). Anyway, I REALLY didn’t want to go out and meet this guy with dirty hair.

It wasn’t an excuse either. This was someone I wanted to meet. Really wanted to meet. Was actually looking forward to meeting. It’s not my fault I live in a building with a crappy boiler (well I guess it is my fault, but moving in NYC is out of the question).

He acted cool about it and said it was fine if we rescheduled, but we don’t have an actual day/time so I’m still not sure he doesn’t think I’m blowing him off. Oh well, there’s nothing I can do about it if he thinks that. Though I did send him a cute, “wish we were having drinks now” text a little while ago. We’ll see.

Ugh. Just not my day, I guess.

And now for a completely different topic, a lovely man I men on twitter (you know who you are) thinks he knows the perfect guy for me. A friend of his. So ‘set-up SINgleGIRL’ is back on. That other set up from that other blogger seems to have disappeared. But just so you all know, I’m still here and I’ll still game. I think Mr. Potential has potential and all, but we’re a long way from me being his GF. Lots of dating left to do.

And now for our last topic of the day (topic number 3) -Thank You. Thank you for reading my blog. I know that on any given day the majority of my readers are returning readers, people who come back over and over. I so appreciate you and your interest in my writing and my life. Writing this blog had brought me unexpected pleasure and for that I am thankful. I don’t know if I would find it quite so enjoyable if no one were reading and commenting. There’s something about the reader interaction that I find really neat (neat? ).

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