Ann Anderson Evans https://annandersonevans.com/ Wed, 13 Mar 2024 12:46:41 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://annandersonevans.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/cropped-aae-fallback-smaller-32x32.png Ann Anderson Evans https://annandersonevans.com/ 32 32 OK Cupid Is Entertaining and Saves You Time https://annandersonevans.com/ok-cupid-is-entertaining-and-saves-you-time/ https://annandersonevans.com/ok-cupid-is-entertaining-and-saves-you-time/#respond Tue, 12 Mar 2024 21:07:49 +0000 https://annandersonevans.com/?p=7436 OK Cupid wastes less of your precious time learning attributes and preferences that you might not get to for a long time on a connection you make on Match.com.

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Depressingly, in the way that doing any kind of business is depressing these days, OK Cupid was acquired by the parent company of Match.com, so they’re just niches in the same internet dating company, using the same methods to maximize profit. Both sites are sometimes difficult to manipulate; it often feels you’re slinging your hellos into the air. All dating sites could be easier to use.

Despite their corporate kinship, the experience on each is different. While Match.com specializes in photos and summaries, OK Cupid presents several founts of information: age (required), photograph, Self Summary, a list of particulars such as height, place of residence, marital status, body type, religion, kind of person you’re looking for, and finally, a person’s answers to an exhaustive list of questions. Other than age, you can choose what information to provide.

You have to give your birth date when you sign up and have no choice about whether to include it on your profile. The ages of the people you are given to review fall within the range you have designated. Most Men Looking for Women would not include 82-year-old women in their range, so if you’re 82, as I am, you’d better be prepared to be the one to reach out. On Match.com, several men reached out to me, despite my age; none did on OK Cupid.

Next in the hierarchy of attention is the photograph. I’d be interested to know the response rate to profiles with no photograph; they seem essential. I’m scared by ones where the man glares at you and intrigued by photos with ambiance. A man says he likes the outdoors and there he is on top of a mountain. Some photos are strange; one photo showed a man lovingly kissing an attractive adult woman on the cheek. His fawning expression felt creepy, so I deemed the woman his daughter. Showing yourself with your dog is appealing, though if you have a Mastiff, you might miss out on the Papillon lovers; still the Papillon lovers will have to find out at some point. As a writer, I probably should have posted a picture of me writing, but I don’t have one and creating one would be such an ordeal.

A quick overview of salient facts is next: gender, sexual orientation, monogamous or not, height, weight, race, political position, languages spoken, education level, employment status, religion, astrological sign, smoker, drinker, Marijuana, pets, kids, what you’re looking for (long-term, hook-up, etc.—you can choose more than one). It takes only a few seconds to take in this snapshot. You don’t have to provide all the information, but I wonder how productive it is to withhold it. Won’t people you’re interested in find out anyway?

Next comes the entertaining part. OK Cupid provides dozens of questions to answer, from “Does the US need stricter gun control,” and “Are you registered to vote,” to “Kissing in Paris or Kissing in a tent in the woods,” “Do you like scary movies?” and “Do you put ice in your wine?” By the time you’ve perused his answers and compared them with yours, you learn not only about him, but also about yourself. Why did you choose kissing in Paris over kissing in a tent? Is it true that you don’t often find yourself worrying about things you have no control over? What would a relationship be like with someone who doesn’t agree with you about vaccinations, or climate change, or God? Do you PASS this guy or give it a chance? It is, as I said, entertaining to sift through these scenarios.

At the bottom of the profile page is a box: Agree, Disagree, Find Out. (Find Out is a list of questions he’s answered that you have not answered.) You’ve been given the percentage of agreement with each man at the top of the page, but it’s worthwhile seeing exactly where you agree and disagree. Some apparently trivial preferences could be deal-breaking: vegan, likes reggae, has pet rats, and, for me, loves the seashore (summers would be martyrdom with someone who loves the seashore.) By the time you’ve been through the offerings on the profile pages and LIKE someone or write him a sentence or two on OK Cupid, there’s lots to talk about.

OK Cupid wastes less of your precious time learning attributes and preferences that you might not get to for a long time on a connection you make on Match.com.

My book group thinks I should go on Tindr, but I don’t know if I could stand it. I’ll think about it.

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Internet Dating Then (2004) and Now (2024) https://annandersonevans.com/internet-dating-then-2004-and-now-2024/ https://annandersonevans.com/internet-dating-then-2004-and-now-2024/#respond Sat, 02 Mar 2024 15:15:00 +0000 https://annandersonevans.com/?p=7425 The fundamental question remains—do you want to know the truth, or do you want to pretend that life is as you would like it to be?

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In 2004, Internet dating was a baby I was scared to pick up. It was barely walking. But I wasn’t meeting anyone anywhere else, so I signed up for Classical Music Lovers Exchange (cmle.com). How dangerous could Mozart lovers be? It netted me my first date in 12 years, or, if you reach back to before I was married, 22 years. He was a psychologist who analyzed me all through dinner. His schedule was spectacularly incompatible with mine, but when he proposed taking me to the opera, I found that my own schedule had been beefed up with activities so I wouldn’t’ be lonely, and I wouldn’t be available for a month. It was a start.

yahoo.com was free, so I tried that. I think it was after reading dozens of mens’ profiles on Yahoo that I discovered that men and women are pretty much the same. They want someone to listen to them and to talk to, some sex, and respect. I downgraded “having something in common” to secondary status.

Match.com was the big time; organized, clear, and easy to navigate. There were hundreds, thousands, of “men looking for women” all over the world. A person could drown in there. I met a man with whom I had a lovely, loose relationship for a year, had coffee, dates, phone calls and email exchanges with yet others.

My favorite was craigslist, mostly a cesspool, but it had one big advantage; there were no instructions. A man had to make up his posting all by himself, which allowed creative men to sparkle.  One man said he’d be “bird watching in Central Park at 11:00 tomorrow morning.” The birds were not avian.  Clever. “Zimbabwe coming to New York” led me to the dearest of my internet connections, one which ended in my spending a month in Harare, Zimbabwe.

And there was eharmony, which wasn’t interested in me because their true goal, I was told, was getting Christians to have sexual intercourse within the confines of marriage.

I learned more than I’d expected from my two years of internet dating: men are just like women, except for a few details; younger men like older women (I was 62); there are a zillion men out there; best to navigate your way through the blast of sexual innuendo or worse that heralds every new contact—the real conversation starts after the blast ends; I see no point at all in phone sex or email sex, but a lot of people do; and, finally, though it’s a little scary to step out into that big world, it yields fascinating dividends and sometimes a partner.

The business world began taking notice. My nephew made a fair living for 15 years with a blog that charted online dating enterprises.

I got married and, blessedly, did not have to concern myself with dating sites…I hoped ever again. But I am now a widow almost four years past my loss. Internet dating had surprised me at 62; what could it teach me at 81?

Big business has taken over. There are emails inviting you to spend more money every damn day, upgrade this, buy that, boost yourself, have your profile featured. The focus has come off the lives of the individuals who would like to find a mate and is fully, annoyingly, inappropriately on the bottom line of the corporations running the sites. They have scraped up every possible way of making a buck off you.

The people on the sites are very familiar with the internet, unlike in 2004, and have learned to game it. The prize is mostly quick, non-binding sex. Men who bait their profiles with their desire for a loving relationship are ready to drive two hours to fuck you. Tonight.

We all know what animals men are. But oh my, what animals women are! The men who contacted me were unabashed in asking to spend the night, tonight, which led me to the conclusion that women must have taught them that this was acceptable. I repeat—having a total stranger spend the night in your house, tonight, was acceptable.

Following this a little further, I harked back to something I realized in 2004. I was now able, if I chose, to have sex the way men have sex. Casual was okay. Once was okay. If somebody felt like bashing you as a “loose woman,” a “slut,” a “whore,” ineligible for consideration as a wife if you had sex on the first date, they kept their disdain to themselves because the audience for such disdain was disappearing. Heck, when I was growing up the rule was no kisses until the third date.

In my opinion, women’s sexual liberation is the result of improved contraception, including the morning-after pill ,which erases poor decisions, the availability of divorce, which has uncovered the unsatisfactory nature of at least half of America’s marriages, making people less keen to pledge themselves to a single person, the anonymity of the internet, which protects savvy women from catastrophe, and the fact that more self-sufficient women answer to no-one.

By 2024, our American community has hatched a full generation of women who are claiming the right to have sex the way men have sex, and men are taking advantage of it. Can’t blame them. I’m surprised that women aren’t more careful, though. They are more vulnerable to physical abuse and rape, and many can get pregnant. 

I wasn’t on Match.com for long ; it was too depressing. There was a fair number of younger men who were interested in “getting together,” with an 81-year-old woman, which surprised me as much today as it did in 2004. I’m afraid I disappointed one younger man who I think was expecting older women to be less trouble than women his age.

The man from Kentucky thousands of miles away (I live in Vermont) who “wants to talk” is the same man who “wanted to talk” in 2004.

So I’m signing off Match.com, but still recommend it. If you think life is tidy and well ordered, just a glimpse will shake you into a saner perspective. I remember reading many years ago that one in ten Americans was homosexual. I’d ride down in a crowded New York City elevator and look around wondering which one it was. After glimpsing the intimate lives (not only sex, but their aspirations, their disappointments, their eccentricities) of my fellow Americans, I look around my very respectable neighborhood today and wonder….

The fundamental question remains—do you want to know the truth, or do you want to pretend that life is as you would like it to be?

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More 81 on Match.com https://annandersonevans.com/more-81-on-match-com/ https://annandersonevans.com/more-81-on-match-com/#respond Fri, 23 Feb 2024 15:11:35 +0000 https://annandersonevans.com/?p=7410 I imagine this man is only one-tenth as callous in person as he is online.

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After my astonishing interaction with the emergency room doctor from New Hampshire, (see previous blog post) the next man who contacted me on Match.com was an architect supervising a big construction project in Vermont.  His introduction included “please don’t tell me I’m too young” (he was 68, 13 years younger than I). The rest of the introductions bear only modest repeating: “you sound interesting,” “you’re dogs will love mine,” “I’m fascinated by you. You make me feel warm all over.” It’s so easy to make guys feel warm all over!

After the mild introductions, he suggested that he and the girls (his two dogs) drive down for Thursday and Friday.  They could be here by 4:00 on Thursday. “If you can put us up fine. If not, I’ll find a hotel in the neighborhood.” Kudos for mentioning the hotel, but put up a total stranger and his two dogs overnight?

The ease with which both the doctor and the architect proposed an overnight suggests there is a sufficient number of women who provide a B&B with Benefits without knowing anything about the guy. To be fair, the population is dispersed over a lot of territory in Vermont and drives can be long. (What do they do in Texas?)

FYI: I had by now dismissed any idea of ever meeting this guy, but went ahead with my experiment. I tried a new tactic. A Thursday-Friday slumber party wasn’t an option, but maybe he and the girls would like to come down earlier some day so we could spend some time together. I wanted to test whether he was truly viewing me as an unpaid prostitute or did he have some inkling that I was a human being?

It was Tuesday, and I wrote him that my writing group and my book group were both coming to my house that afternoon, and I was concerned about the behavior of my puppy. Mr. Architect wished me luck with my puppy.

The the next morning, I continued our get-to-know-you campaign. “I’m working on my book, and a friend has written a beautiful piece about her meadow that I’m commenting on.” Hey, this is what I do with my days, what I’m interested in, what I consider my profession.

His response: “You know how to keep yourself entertained.”

Does he consider that he’s “entertaining” himself when he goes to the construction site he’s supervising? I imagine that this man is only one-tenth as callous in person as he is online. And that’s the point, really. Words and behavior that would never be acceptable in person are thrown around online without consideration of how they might fall.

In going back to review our conversations for this blog, I see that he’s online this morning. He and the emergency room doctor and, by extrapolation, hundreds or thousands of other men, are throwing out a net knowing that sooner or later, they’ll catch a fish. Their prey is not fish; it’s an easy one-nighter with a woman they barely know, whose photograph they pray is recent.

Bill Maher laments the Incel desperation of American males, and has said more than once that if men are having trouble finding mates, they should “Just talk to her! Get to know her!” The facile connections made online have made it easy to ignore that good advice. And women might consider insisting on some acknowledgment of their humanity before they turn over their house to a stranger.

It’s bad for my soul to be treated like a prostitute, even if I never get near the man involved, and I’m signing off Match.com. I’m sure there is a treasure trove of other stories there, but it’s too sad to watch.

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Eighty-One and on Match.com https://annandersonevans.com/eighty-one-and-on-match-com/ https://annandersonevans.com/eighty-one-and-on-match-com/#respond Sun, 18 Feb 2024 22:27:35 +0000 https://annandersonevans.com/?p=7403 I'll leave it to readers to react to this post in their own ways.

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In 2004, I signed onto match.com with my actual age, 62, and a recent picture. Internet dating was just becoming popular and felt risky and daunting. I thought I’d be too old to find matches, but invitations showed up daily, many from younger men. I met my future husband on salon.com a couple of years later.

Now I’m 81 and widowed. I live in Vermont, which doesn’t have the millions of people who are on match.com in New York, but on a lark or more like an experiment, I signed up, again with my correct age and a recent photo. Just as at 62, I doubted I would find (or even want) a partner, still, I’ve hoped since I was about 15 to find a dancing partner, and that wish has thus far gone unfulfilled. Mainly, I was interested in knowing how people were finding each other these days.

An emergency room doctor showed up in my whatever window that is. He knew how to spell and liked my profile.

After our first brief exchange, he asked whether my “feminine side was still working at 81″ and said he was “affectionate,” and had a “boy thing going on.” In my previous experience with internet dating, all men, whether old, young, educated or not, began with a forceful sexual volley. (Thank you to the few exceptions.) I became accustomed to listening until they got over that and the conversation could begin. How interesting that after all the cultural changes in the last 20 years, the world remained so much the same.

We spoke on the phone but I had to go into a meeting and only had time to learn that we both played the piano. He said he’d call back at 5:00.

Instead of a call, I got this: Hi Ann:-) so I’m going to text you rather than say this because I know I’ll be too embarrassed on the phone. As you may have gathered, I have the strong boy needs thing going on. I haven’t been with anybody since December. I’m quite eager. Let me ask you a crazy question. If the answer is no I understand. If I gave you all my information… My full name… Where I work… Etc.… And definitely agreed to see you several times not just once… is there any chance you would have me over tonight?! I know that’s kind of a crazy question, but I don’t know, you seem pretty cool. I’m a decent guy. A good doctor and daddy. Healthy head to toe. It’s your call. And we can talk some more too. I just thought I would throw it out there.

Some of the weirdest propositions I’ve ever heard have come from doctors. They seem to feel unable to articulate the stress they’re under. He sounded a little off the rails, so instead of texting him back, I called him. “We have to talk. Why did you ask to stay overnight?”

His schedule for the next week was very tight, he said, this was his only “window of opportunity,” and if he drove here, a two-hour drive, he couldn’t be expected to drive back home the same night.

The anonymity of the internet allows a person to delve into conversations like this without worrying about being murdered, so I delved.

“What happened to the December lady?”

She was a starving artist “five foot two, nice little figure.” He enjoyed having sex with her, but her house was a mess, her car was a dump. They drifted apart. There was also the hot 76-year-old retired teacher, the woman with a condo in Killington, and other women over the years since his divorce.

He had our relationship all figured out. “Because of your age, we’d be friends. And, I don’t know if you’d ever do this, but if you had a friend who was 20 years younger, maybe you could steer her my way, and in the meantime, you’d have me. Only once every couple of weeks, it’s too far away for much more than that. I can guaranty you that I’ve only been out with educated, healthy people, nurses, teachers, women like that. So you don’t have to worry about any of that.”

After talking a little more, he said, “So it sounds like you’re not going to take me up on the overnight.”

“That’s correct.”

“Maybe we can meet during the day sometime next week so you can scope me out. I can be free in the day, and I’m assuming you’re retired.” He dropped in another sweetener, his last name.

I told him my last name and my pen name as well. “I am not retired. My second book just came out, and I have two more in the works. I work every day.”

We parted cordially, but he texted me an hour or so after we hung up:  Boy, I guess I better be careful what I say to you. You’re gonna write about it on your blog!

Yes. I am.

I am overflowing with commentary about this exchange, but will leave it to readers to react in their own ways. I was tempted to respond to his final note telling him not to worry, I wouldn’t use his name and where he lived, though there’s a starving artist, a hot 76-year-old retired teacher, and a woman with a condo in Killington who might find this familiar.

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Limerence, the Insanity of Crushes https://annandersonevans.com/limerence-the-insanity-of-crushes/ https://annandersonevans.com/limerence-the-insanity-of-crushes/#respond Mon, 29 Jan 2024 16:39:11 +0000 https://annandersonevans.com/?p=7391 No shroud can erase our romantic fantasies.

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Have you ever been incapacitated by unreasonable, overwhelming attraction to someone? I have. I once had a crush on Ariel Sharon.

In her book, Love and Limerence, Dr. Dorothy Tennov coined the term “limerence” to mean both that first phase of true love when one’s beloved can do no wrong and also the aptly named “crush.” People who suffer from limerence are called “limerents.” I wonder if there are people who aren’t limerents at some point.

In his beautiful book, An Unexpected Light, Jason Elliot writes about the appeal of jewelry jingling on the covered bodies of Afghan women wearing burkas passing him in the street. Seeing the woman’s face and body might prove disappointing, but one can build a fantasy on a jingle. No shroud can erase our romantic fantasies. A mysterious “Dr L,” a British doctor, has taken on the subject after an episode of limerence that threatened his happy marriage. He writes “Many limerents find themselves carried along on a wave of euphoria, and only realise how deeply they’ve succumbed once it’s too late.” Sound familiar?

I’ll take for example the tee shirt of a woman attending a Trump rally, it had a circle with a downward-pointing arrow and the text, “Grab this.” Do you think that at some future date she will regret her enthusiasm for sexual molestation? Limerents plaster their own fantasies on the LO, the Limerent Object. Trump is a good example of national limerentization. Though he has no platform, he is the redeemer. Audiences are transfixed by sneers and ramblings that would be repulsive around their dinner table.

Dr L calls limerence “person addiction,” a condition familiar to anyone who has fallen in love. Neuroscientists wonder exactly what penetrates the brain of the beholder that can hijack the dopamine factory, overriding logical thinking. Maybe Mother Nature realized that in order to guaranty that humans would procreate, she had to invent a magic potion that would cause people to lose their minds.

For some, and count me in, it can be a major disruption in one’s natural order, ultimately a painful disappointment. The going story is that this happens only in the young, but destructive infatuation can strike throughout our life.

Mastering limerence is a mighty battle, a civil war between two parts of our own selves. Defeating or controlling it teaches lessons in self control and self understanding that are well worth learning. Like Pavlov’s dogs, we are conditioned by rewards, and the rewards of dopamine-heightened sensitivity, excitement, and drive are hard to refuse. A Catholic Monsignor once said to me, “There are many rewards to celibacy,” a fact I could agree with after being celibate for twelve years. But many priests sacrifice their professional and personal lives in order to enjoy the rewards of limerence. The Dalai Lama claims not to be bothered by desire, but can we agree that he is an exception? The human body is capable of many miracles. It can create new neurological pathways after a stroke and new arterial pathways after a heart attack. Why could it not create, with patient, grueling training, pathways for dopamine that bypass the explosive limerent centers of the brain?

Dr L claims that there are ways of coping with the power of limerence. Most importantly, actions can influence thought. The most important action is NC, No Contact. This reinforces the decision to step back, disrupts the limerent behavior patterns, gives mental freedom and a sense of decisiveness and agency to the limerent. One man snaps a rubber band against his wrist every time his mind wanders to contemplation of the LO; reward is thus replaced with discipline. No daydreaming, no playing future conversations in your head, no imagining situations where you might run into each other……SNAP. SNAP. Dr. L also advises telling somebody about your condition, if not the LO, then a trusted friend. The next step is what he calls “future proofing” yourself. Identify the limerence triggers. I am apparently drawn to the strong silent type, while in “real life” I’m drawn to the opposite. Learn to recognize the first glimmer of limerence, so you can turn away before the match flares into fire.

After becoming familiar with your limerent tendencies, live a purposeful life, day after day. Limerence is reactive, living a purposeful life is active. DO something. Dr L suggests that the strongest prophylactic and cure is claiming the strength to make the decisions that shape our lives.

Limerents Anonymous anyone?

For more information: https://livingwithlimerence.com, and Love and Limerence, by Dr. Dorothy Tennov.

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Long Live Menopause! https://annandersonevans.com/long-live-menopause/ https://annandersonevans.com/long-live-menopause/#respond Thu, 25 Jan 2024 15:07:04 +0000 https://annandersonevans.com/?p=7385 It's a second chance at life. Long live menopause!

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I recall only two instances from my childhood when I was instructed about mature womanhood. The first was a presentation by the school nurse when I was ten. She parceled out a few tidbits of interesting news, may have presented a general graphic of women’s insides, and ended by reminding us to always brush our tongues when we brushed our teeth. The dental advice is what stuck with me.

Eventually I got more information, but it was quite a while before I learned that menstruation was temporary. The heart of my knowledge about menopause became that on one blessed day I would no longer get my period.

As the blessed day approached, I gained 50 intractable pounds and established my tether to pharmacies as my cholesterol and blood pressure were brought under control. Fortunately, I didn’t have hot flashes, sleepless nights, irritability, or depression. The fibromyalgia that hobbled me for 18 years seemed to have other causes, though I suppose it might have been related.

These were serious bumps in the road, and I don’t want to minimize the struggles that many women have related to menopause, but for most, a sustained push to lose weight and establish a new set of good habits can re-establish balance.

In centuries past, far fewer women had those opportunities.

One colonial American woman wrote a friend about her upcoming childbirth, calling it “the greatest of earthly miserys,” another wrote of “that evel hour I loock forward to with dread.” One woman wrote a farewell letter to a friend: “How soon, my Dear, death may my steps attend, How soon’t be thy lot to lose thy friend.”

Three women on the Mayflower were pregnant: Elizabeth Hopkins, Susanna White, and Mary Norris Allerton. Mary Allerton and her baby both died in childbirth shortly after landing, Elizabeth Hopkins’s child died before his second birthday, and Peregrine White lived into his 80s. This distribution of death was not unusual; one in ten children didn’t make it to adulthood. One in eight women died in childbirth, suffering exhaustion, dehydration, infection, hemorrhage, or convulsions.

Today, we can celebrate our good fortune in living longer, and also the liberating aspects of post-menopausal life.

A post-menopausal woman can go anywhere at any time, without fearing discomfort, kinks in the supply chain of menstrual materials, or consulting a calendar.

Without fear of pregnancy, a woman can approach sex the way men do. She can have sex with whomever she pleases, limited only by her chosen vows, her moral compass, and STD risk. I regret never having a long marriage, but can imagine what it must be like after decades of discipline and restraint to throw off the habitual fear of pregnancy and have sex at will. On a sailboat or the beach, the porch, in the pool, morning, noon, or night, near home or far away, planned or unexpected.

It’s a second chance at life. Long live menopause!

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MAY-DECEMBER (lose the Cougar) https://annandersonevans.com/may-december-lose-the-cougar/ https://annandersonevans.com/may-december-lose-the-cougar/#respond Sun, 21 Jan 2024 14:15:07 +0000 https://annandersonevans.com/?p=7377 In 2003, the very beginning of online dating, I created my profile as a wild experiment. I posted an up-to-date photo and my true age, 60. Most of the men who contacted me spoke in tongues about what they wanted, but Ken, a 37-year-old policeman was clear. He wanted a “friend with benefits” I askedContinue reading "MAY-DECEMBER (lose the Cougar)"

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In 2003, the very beginning of online dating, I created my profile as a wild experiment. I posted an up-to-date photo and my true age, 60. Most of the men who contacted me spoke in tongues about what they wanted, but Ken, a 37-year-old policeman was clear. He wanted a “friend with benefits” I asked him to define the term and he said, “You’re friends but you also get laid. Who doesn’t want to get laid from time to time?” Yes, that was exactly what I wanted.

“Why did you choose me?” I asked. “Haven’t you heard that men like younger women?”

“You guys know what you want. You’re not always worried about your hair and don’t want to know when we’re getting married.”  He patted the bed. “Besides, once you make it this far, it doesn’t matter.”

Ken’s hard-working mother had worked hard to raise him. Out of high school, he drove a bread truck, among other things, and then became a policeman. From him, I learned how hard-scrabble people look at life. They have nothing to back them up, so they need sound strategies and courage. I came to appreciate the family resources I had that could bail me out and realized how soft-headed I’d been about many of my decisions. When it came to street wisdom and guts, the kind that save you from yourself, Ken learned more driving a bread truck than I learned in college.

Our arrangement was meant to get us both through a time that otherwise would be lonely and arid. I was “conducting a research project,” as my friend Carolyn called it, dating different men, reading the profiles of hundreds, answering their emails and phone calls, learning lessons I wished I had learned long ago.

Ken aspired to having a wife and family, and a year after we met, he told me that he’d run into an old girlfriend at a party, the one he’d always loved. Two months later he told me they were getting married, and our liaison ended. I was sad for a while.

On the eve of his wedding, he called me at 2:30am in his cups. He went on for quite a while. “Ann, I can’t do this. I don’t want to go through with this.”

“Dear Ken, this is what you said you always wanted, to have a family, and in particular to have a family with this particular woman. You’ve got what you wanted. Go take it.”

The last time we were in touch, he was leaving to pick up his wife for their 13th wedding anniversary dinner. Their kids were with their grandmother. I had been happily married for a while, too.

Older women are thought to be “No trouble. No drama.” That may be true superficially, but get past the surface and there are wounds, loss, and survival. There may also be defiance of norms they’d been forced to obey, people they ‘d been forced to endure. They well may have rid themselves of inhibitions (aided by the free gift of no fear of pregnancy) that limited them when they were younger. They absolutely don’t deserve to be reduced to the word “cougar.”

In one episode of the television series, Masters of Sex, Dr. Masters presents his research findings to a room full of doctors, all male in his era. He tells them that despite the myth-making about males, women are the sexual champions. They can have sex all day long and all life long (barring an impediment of course). The doctors are so outraged by the bursting of their bubble that they start to walk out and by the end of the talk, the room is half empty.

In May-December liaisons, the older woman is receptive to a younger lover, of course, but the younger lover is also attracted to her. Her wisdom, experience, and calm make him comfortable, though sometimes a long-buried monster appears. The young man can learn from that, too.

I feel pretty sure that the older women around me when I was growing up, widows all, who seemed sterile and sexless, had strategies for fun and pleasure that were well hidden. I was almost 50 when I learned that my great aunt, who died when I was 30, had had a relationship after her sainted husband died with a man who lived in Little Falls .

In centuries past, it was fashionable to pretend that young women maintained their virginity until marriage. Blessedly, that myth has been shattered. Now it’s time to shatter the myth that older women grow desperate and melancholy as they grow older, turning to young men to save them from their despair. It’s just as likely to be the other way around.

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Fiction and Non-fiction: Spinning Facts Into Gold https://annandersonevans.com/fiction-and-non-fiction-spinning-facts-into-gold/ https://annandersonevans.com/fiction-and-non-fiction-spinning-facts-into-gold/#respond Thu, 11 Jan 2024 19:44:36 +0000 https://annandersonevans.com/?p=7370 When I began writing my first memoir I was under the impression that other people would find my story spellbinding—woman begins dating again after two divorces, discovers that dating at 60 is not like dating at 18. I was wrong. My first critics, though kind, were bored. Elmore Leonard’s writing advice, “Just cut out theContinue reading "Fiction and Non-fiction: Spinning Facts Into Gold"

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When I began writing my first memoir I was under the impression that other people would find my story spellbinding—woman begins dating again after two divorces, discovers that dating at 60 is not like dating at 18.

I was wrong. My first critics, though kind, were bored. Elmore Leonard’s writing advice, “Just cut out the boring stuff,” became a steep challenge. While my life seemed pretty interesting to me at the time, it bored the heck out of everybody else.

It took years of revision, review, and rethinking to realize that I was not sharing a story, I was writing a story.

There are some differences between fictional stories and memoirs but not to readers; a story holds their interest, or it doesn’t.

If Ernest Hemingway had written a “memoir” about his time serving in Italy in the Great War, or in the Spanish Civil War, or fishing off of Cuba, he would have telescoped his true experiences and fashioned them into an engrossing story that wasn’t so different from A Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises, or The Old Man and the Sea. Nobody but Hemingway himself could know which of his facts and people were real and which were transformed and renamed by his imagination. He was following the first rule of some writing experts: Write what you know. The places and characters in Hemingway’s books are real. Who can doubt that Gadsby was real?

All writers have to write about what they know. What would they have to say about things and people they know nothing about? If War and Peace had been written by a serf on Tolstoi’s lands, it would have been a different book because the people serfs consort with and their daily activities are different than Tolstoi’s.

Fictional characters must be recognizable; both Anna Karenina and Hester Prynne reflect the sum of human beings Tolstoi and Hawthorne knew. My late husband Terry was a science fiction fan and urged me to read Ursula LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, which takes place on another planet. My reaction (please forgive me) was “It’s just exaggerated human beings with different weather.”

For the reader, there is one standard. Is it a good story?

For the writer, writing fiction and non-fiction are different experiences.

In memoir, the voice must be consistent with the author’s. She can’t pretend to be Russian when she’s French. She can fiddle around, mix up the chronology or have herself viewing the world drunk and then sober, but the voice must be consistent and true. To sustain that voice, the writer must have a pretty good idea of what kind of person she is, and if the rest of you are like me, your idea of yourself is transient, dependent on who’s in the room and what the assignment was. I have discovered, for example, that in spite of my serious nature, I have a sense of humor. Gotta let that fly or it wouldn’t be me.

The fiction writer can tell the story of a woman birthing a child whose father, Sasquatch, is beating at the hospital doors, so enamored of his newborn child that he will finally reveal himself publicly. The author of Sasquatch Unveiled can be an omniscient narrator, revealing both what the woman is thinking and doing and what Sasquatch is thinking and doing. A memoirist can’t do that.

I’ve been interested for a long time in Bible stories. They were probably told as true; there was a King David, a Jesus, there were real Corinthians. These spare tales are expropriated by people living thousands of years after the original figures lived, and applied to today’s events. Gaza is David against Goliath. In the religious service the day after George W. Bush was inaugurated, the minister invoked the appearance of a bellicose King David. This is fact spun into fiction spun into personal belief.

Critics jump to wild conclusions about the personal lives of fiction writers because they are sure that buried in their fictional characters and events are revelations about the writer him or herself. But if Lolita had been a memoir, Vladimir Nabokov would have gone to jail. Heaven knows what experiences he had or observed that gave Lolita is authenticity.

A memoirist must be prepared to take responsibility for the actions and opinions expressed in her book in a way a fiction writer does not. How interesting that Henry Miller, whose fictional writings might suggest that he was obsessed with sex, is described in the context of his personal life in the memoir of Anaïs Nin. He comes across as a little flaky, but just another guy at the dinner table. It is what he has observed in others that is important in his work, not necessarily what he does.

The greatest memoir I have ever read is What The Stones Remember, by the Canadian poet, Patrick Lane. He uses his words to pierce the veil and enter into the kingdom of meaning. He’s giving the reader the true facts of his life, but they are weighted and inspiring. That is perfection.

Walt Whitman presents himself as a memoirist in Leaves of Grass:

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,

I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass

He calls the grass, “the handkerchief of the Lord” and “the beautiful uncut hair of graves.” He isn’t describing grass, he’s allowing you to bring your spirit and soul to something ordinary, grass. He invites the reader to see the magic of real life.

While I am not the equal of either Patrick Lane or Walt Whitman, I can look to them as the fulfillment of my ultimate aspiration to use memoir to present a set of true events and characters in language rich enough to invite the reader to soak up a greater meaning than simple description of my life. A memoir can be a mystery, perhaps an invitation to wonder, a challenge to pedestrian thinking, or a revelation of the spirit of an age, a society, or a person…or something else.

The memoirist faces the challenge of spinning the dross of material facts into the gold of a good story that can vie with a made-up one for vivacity and elegance.

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Blue Angels: Times When I Needed a Policeman https://annandersonevans.com/blue-angels-times-when-i-needed-a-policeman/ https://annandersonevans.com/blue-angels-times-when-i-needed-a-policeman/#respond Thu, 04 Jan 2024 15:11:44 +0000 https://annandersonevans.com/?p=7359 Once, I misread a sign directing cars around a construction site and found myself driving against an empty oncoming traffic lane, the only one available to me, at least as I had interpreted the sign. When I saw the flashing red light of a police car behind me, I realized I might have made aContinue reading "Blue Angels: Times When I Needed a Policeman"

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Once, I misread a sign directing cars around a construction site and found myself driving against an empty oncoming traffic lane, the only one available to me, at least as I had interpreted the sign. When I saw the flashing red light of a police car behind me, I realized I might have made a mistake. The officer came to stand at my car window red-faced and screaming at me, “What kind of idiot are you! You could get someone killed! People like you shouldn’t be on the road!” He didn’t give me a chance to tell him the sign was ambiguous, which information might have prevented the two cars behind me from also misinterpreting the sign.

So there’s that kind of cop, and I’ve read about worse.

Another time, I went to the police station to report that someone had lunged at me with a kitchen knife. They said they couldn’t do anything until I was hurt (or dead, of course). I was hoping there was a law here like the one I’d learned about in Greece where you report threats, the police make a note, and if there are three complaints, they pay a little visit. They at least attempt to prevent injury and death.

The fault in this case lay not with the police, but with the laws they were working under.

But I’m writing here about two times I needed a policeman, really needed a policeman. These moments came at times of crisis and remain vivid in my memory.

The first time was when I lived, with my children, on the second floor of a large Victorian house belonging to my friend Margaret. Her son Alex was schizophrenic and spent most of his adult life either in the hospital or in jail, but when he got out, he headed home to his mom…and me. He usually walked home from the hospital fifteen miles away. He’d been arrested once walking naked down the Garden State Parkway.

Margaret explained that she always had to wait until Alex did something dramatic enough to call the police about, then he would go back to the hospital and start a new cycle of medication-not taking medication-going back to the hospital or, if Alex had his way, to jail.

When he got out of hand, there was no avenue of communication with him. As far as we knew, he was never violent toward a fellow human being, but acted erratically: a lit cigarette in the wastebasket, a chair thrown across the kitchen. The most dangerous episode was when he used the disability money accumulated while he was in the hospital to buy a jalopy. He swerved back and forth driving down the street and ran over a neighbor’s rose bushes when careening across his lawn. I called Motor Vehicles who said they had no grounds to take away his license. We were relieved to hear that the car had been towed away after being parked illegally.

The police knew about Alex and each time Margaret called, they came ready for trouble, but tried “come along with us” first. Alex never resisted. Even in his disarranged brain, he knew the score. Margaret and I would not have had the means to help him or to protect ourselves and the house.

He died at 35, walking down the middle of a road at night dressed in black. A driver hit him at full speed, killing him instantly. The police were the first on the scene and had to manage the distraught driver whose first glimpse of Alex was of his neck breaking when he hit the windshield. The police tamed the scene until the medics arrived. Think of the broad range of knowledge and skill required to spontaneously handle, daily, a crisis like this one that most of us never see or hear about, much less experience.

My sweetest memory is of the two policemen who arrived after I found the body of my husband, who had died of suicide. They stood as silent sentinels in my living room as the EMTs, the coroner, the detective, the chaplain, and the social worker came and went. They directed traffic, explained the situation, kept watch over me. I was sitting on the living room couch a stunned statue, but if I’d collapsed in a hysterical ball, they would have been there to catch me.

When I asked them, “Does this happen often?” the older one said, “Yes. Quite often.”

The younger one gave me particulars. “Yesterday we were at the house of a young man who OD’d. Twenty-five years old, wife and kids, had been clean for two years.” He let me know I wasn’t the only person in town who would be grieving a suicide.

I don’t know these two mens’ names. They were “the older/younger one,” and “the fat/thin one.” They were there on the angelic, anonymous mission of watching over me, of organizing and doing the things I didn’t have the means to do myself. I wonder if sometimes they recognize me on the street, standing upright, going about my business. If so, they probably won’t say hello.

This post is my way of thanking them, and all the other police helpers who get us through our worst moments. I imagine that our struggles sometimes show up in their dreams.

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Managing Grief and Loss Over the Holidays https://annandersonevans.com/managing-grief-and-loss-over-the-holidays/ https://annandersonevans.com/managing-grief-and-loss-over-the-holidays/#respond Thu, 02 Nov 2023 14:43:32 +0000 https://annandersonevans.com/?p=7193 Ways to handle holiday grief: avoid anticipatory grief, serve others, embrace a larger context, make it a time of memorial and mourning.

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Over my long and checkered life, I have many times been alone over the holidays. As this holiday season comes up, I will again be without my husband Terry, who took his life in 2020. I’ve found several ways to enjoy the holidays despite this loss: mitigate “anticipatory grief,” serve others, put myself in a larger context, and make the holiday a time of memorial and mourning.

Anticipatory grief is phantom dread of a certain event. I learned the term from a Buddhist priest when I was pre-mourning the death of my aging dog. “Don’t indulge in anticipatory grief,” he advised. Pre-grieving means that instead of suffering once, you suffer for weeks or months. As an antidote, the priest suggested that I cultivate awareness of this feeling so I could stop for a moment to acknowledge that today something else was happening. Anticipatory grief would weaken my todays. Having established this awareness practice before my dog died, I can now transfer it to other situations. Grief, in any case, has its own calendar, over which you have no control. You might inexplicably feel fine on Christmas. Living with “I don’t know” is difficult, but in reality, you don’t know what will happen on any future date.

Mitigating grief by serving others is advice you might hear in many places, from the church to the doctor’s office. Service is valuable not only because you help others, but it also affirms that you have something to give. That something depends on you.  I have sung in choirs that brought beauty to others on Christmas Eve, some people go caroling or feed underserved communities. You might have another talent to share. You knit or bake—I would have loved someone to help me wrap Christmas presents; mine are always dog-eared and messy. Babysit or dogsit for a neighbor or family member who would benefit from time away from household duties. Some people invite “waifs,” as one friend puts it, to their table. My family hosted a Mexican exchange couple, others invite new immigrants, travelers, or people at a loose end. You can host a holiday party for friends or neighbors. Opportunities for service abound.

My first Christmas away from home was in Laguna Beach, California, in 1960 The barren hillsides looked odd decorated with Christmas lights, and Christmas dinner was Beef Stroganoff. It all felt terribly wrong. How interesting that the rest of the world isn’t the same as me! About 30% of the world’s population is Christian, but Christians even diverge among themselves about how they celebrate Christmas, and Jesus himself never saw a reindeer. In Greece, Easter is the big family holiday; Christmas is not a big deal. In England, they celebrate on Boxing Day, the day after Christmas. I spent one Christmas in Jerusalem and could see the lights of Bethlehem in the distance, but everyone around me was Jewish and went to work as usual, only dimly aware that it was Christmas. A vast majority of the world’s population has never heard of American Thanksgiving. Different calendars deem different days the New Year. The Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, begins ten days of observation ending in Yom Kippur, a solemn day of atonement, the Balinese celebrate their New Year in silence, the Chinese New Year is celebrated over 15 days, there is a Hindu New Year, a Muslim New Year, and each is celebrated differently. In Spain they eat twelve grapes at each stroke of the clock. Putting yourself, physically or mentally, in a larger context leads to the knowledge that you are not alone; there are a couple of billion people for whom this is an ordinary day. There are people in your own town who are not celebrating. Over Thanksgiving one year, I asked my eighteen students to list what they had eaten for Thanksgiving. No two menus were the same, and one Ecuadorian immigrant said she and her mother hadn’t celebrated at all. “There are just the two of us and we don’t know how to celebrate Thanksgiving.”

Maybe you don’t feel like celebrating; you’re still grieving, or loneliness has you beat. Set the quiet, distraction-free holiday as an opportunity for mourning and memorial. One Thanksgiving, I fasted. My memorial music is Bach’s double-violin concertos, yours will be something else. Candles, peace and quiet, music, even darkness can provide an atmosphere in which you honor your loss and remember. Embracing grief is not accepting defeat. If you’re sad, you’re sad. Being around people who are noisy and laughing forces you to do the same, while it may be healthier for you to create a place where you can touch your true feelings. Once, I was on the elevator in my building with an older woman who was holding a nicely wrapped small package. “Are you delivering a Christmas present?” I asked. She looked at me mischievously, smiling. “No. This is a Christmas present from my husband. He died thirty years ago, but every Christmas he’d get me a nice little present. So every year I buy myself a nice little present. I put it under the Christmas tree and pretend it’s from him.” That ritual somehow gave her peace and, given her mischievous smile, a measure of joy.

However you get there, I wish you peace and a measure of happiness over the holidays.

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