from l to r, James Schneider, friend

 

Fourth in a series. Here’s Part 1, about how I’m using a hookup app to find husband material, here’s Part 2, where I learn a life lesson from my worst date ever, and here is Part 3, where I try to break my bad dating habit a lot of people have. 

Also, here’s the Date With Myself, and Happy Valentine’s Cray.

“The one amazing thing about being single for so long…” he typed, then paused, hands poised over the keyboard. Mike stayed this way for several hours, then muttered “Ah, fuck it”, shut the computer off, and went out to go to a dive bar. “Jesus, take the wheel” he muttered into the first of eighteen whiskeys.

Ok, slight exaggeration: I’m trying not to be as profane lately, so I just said “Ah, darn it.” I think this past year and a half of being single, the longest time in my life I’ve ever been single (NOT THAT I AM COUNTING OR ANYTHING), has made me more insecure and full of self-loathing self-aware and introspective than ever before. With that has come some pretty great epiphanies about what makes me tick, and has helped me step back and break (or indulge in) patterns in the guys I date.

One pattern I realized made me aware of the phenomena that’s becoming common in the dating world, that of dating someone much older or much younger. I’m starting to chalk this up to learned behavior and formative influences, patterned on a male figure that’s important to everyone, everywhere. It’s not our first boyfriends, or our bestie in middle school. It’s the first man we ever loved: it’s our fathers.

I mentioned briefly in the first post of the Brother’s Keeper series how I realized that I tend to date guys younger than me. I speculated that it was because I had a strong bond with my big brother, who died suddenly when I was 18. While not my father (of course), he was a strong presence in my life, and when he passed away, I felt that I was symbolically ushered into his role in my family. I think this has manifested itself by me mostly dating men younger than me. Although I’m not sure if I actually like them or I just want to give them a fashion makeover. Thank God for the rising tide against flip-flops.

But there’s another side to this story, these younger guys I’ve dated. Because obviously they’re looking for an older presence in their lives, and without fail, when I ask about their backgrounds, their dad is always missing. Always. Take Rick for example. He was a bartender with dark, strong features and a killer kiss. From the minute we met I was sweatin’ his D. He was a seemingly mature 25, and we bonded quickly and easily, had lots in common. I asked about his family, and it turned out his dad had left them when he was young. He acknowledged that this probably formed his attraction to older men. We went on three dates, and then he left for New York. I texted him after he was back, and he replied with friendly banter, so I asked for another date.

Nothing. Crickets. Literally, gay crickets crawled out of my phone and serenaded me. Huh? Hmm. Okay, move along, nothing to see here.

I’ve told the story of my ex Kevin before, but I didn’t mention that he was 24 when we met, 5 years ago. Yes, I made him grow a beard before we dated regularly. I’m not proud of this, but honestly if you saw him clean-shaven you’d understand why I wanted to make him look a bit older. He looks all of 15 when he’s freshly shorn: TOO YOUNG. I asked him recently what attracts him to the guys he has dated, and in his case age isn’t really an issue. His relationship with his dad is recently repaired, but admits that if someone has traits that remind him of his mother, he steers clear. He has a lot of self-awareness, and I’m glad we’re still close friends.

And then Miles, who wore his issues with his father on his sleeve, obvious to everyone but him. Every time I would try to engage him in conversation about his dad his face would cloud over, the answers would turn clipped, and the conversation would steer elsewhere. These are the guys to watch out for, no matter their age. These are the ones who refuse to confront the issues they have with their fathers, or even discuss their past. Maybe they only know how to run away from the people who care about them, because that’s what they learned early on: men leave. That is what they do. Strangely enough, these are the guys I keep being the most attracted to, but I have to stop. I can’t fix them, only they can. And only if they want to.

As for me, I have a great dad…but yeah, I’m still a bag of crazy. Still, I’m pretty lucky, from the sound of it. Yes, he was very stoic and unemotional when I was in my formative years, and that probably influenced my own stoicism (and maybe even stubbornness) when dating. No, his marriage to my mom wasn’t perfect, but they both stuck it out until I graduated high school before separating, and I now realize that this may have formed me more than I know. I love the shit out of him (and my mom, who, as the sole reader of this blog, better get a shout-out), and I see him in me more and more as I grow up. He is “future me”, and I’ll be happy if I become even a tenth of the man he is.

Yeah, I know that indulging in my impulse to date younger guys is emotionally risky, and “Kevin” aside, it hasn’t been going well. Like a couple of the guys above, some of them tend to vanish into thin air, get bored very quickly, and sometimes lack even basic communication skills to articulate what they’re looking for. But this is true of guys at any age, and maybe it’s not the age difference that causes this gulf, but the emotional difference.

It’s a recurring emotional touchstone of these posts that “we become the love that we have known”. I think their perspective, these broken boys searching for answers, comes from only seeing failed models of relationships. Seeing that example early on in their formative years maybe makes them too cynical when something -or someone- great is staring them in the face, and that’s insane. It’s 50 shades of cray.

In any relationship, there’s always barriers to cross, be it barriers of age, of language, or distance, of ideology, of expectations. We’re all at our best when we’re living in the moment, and present for the person in front of us. That’s really when those barriers vanish. But some things you can’t hurdle, like experience, like living a life full of stories that you can’t wait to tell. Living a life where you realize that each connection you make with a romantic partner is precious, and that love and chemistry don’t grow on trees…that you have to work at it. It takes effort. That lesson is learned just by living, and maybe a huge part of that is seeing what love looks like, by the people who raised us.

Age is just a number, until it isn’t.

If you love healthy doses of self-deprecation and narcissism, read the previous entries:  Part 1, about how I’m using a hookup app to find husband material,  Part 2, where I learn a life lesson from my worst date ever, and Part 3, where I try to break my bad dating habit a lot of people have. 

Also, here’s the Date With Myself, and Happy Valentine’s Cray.