I did not intend to write much here about my relationship with my wife or "the ex" if you wish. For several reasons: One is that I do not want to get into writing about what did and did not work in the marriage and why it had to end. That tends to be a "he said/she said" kind of story, and it would be grossly unfair to let one side come out and not the other. Another is that in throwing this part of my life a little bit open, there is a good chance that eventually she would read it (or worse: have someone summarize it to her - incorrectly). But this week, one aspect of it was suddenly taking up a large part of my life, and it seemed appropriate to touch a bit on it.
While we are not expecting to ever get together again, we are not pursuing a full-on divorce at this time, primarily because that would leave me with no health insurance. My wife works for a large company with an excellent health insurance plan, while I work for a very small company with no insurance. We all have wives with excellent health insurance coverage (one works for a hospital, one for the local school system and one for a major defense contractor) so it seemed unreasonable to spend money on a benefit package that we did not need. Well, here it is 6 years later, and one of us could use it. But signing the company up for a group plan that only one of the 3 employees intends to enroll in, is not too different from signing up for an individual policy, and when I tried that, I would told flat out that I am not insurable as an individual. I have type 2 diabetes, and I am taking a blood-pressure-lowering prescription drug as well as a cholesterol-lowering medication. If anyone were to insure me, they would want to exclude coverage of the diabetes and "any complications thereof", which would include heart disease and possibly any stroke. So it is simpler to just say no, which under California law they don't have to give a reason for. We are hoping that the wording of the policy defines the dependents elible for coverage as "the employee's spouse, minor children and children under 25 enrolled full-time at a higher learning institution". But we don't have the text, and we are not comfortable going to the personnel office to ask; it just might trigger a review that gets me kicked off the plan there and then. So we assume and "don't ask and don't tell".
But in the process of living our separate lives and paying for our daughter's Ivy League university tuition, we find that we both need to pull some money out of our respective houses. With interest rates at an all-time low, it would probably be prudent to refinance anyway in order to lower the payments. But 15 years ago, when we last refinanced, we rewrote the titles to both properties to make them jointly owned. At the time, we wanted to simplify any inheritance issues. Now we need to undo that; make the real estate our individual properties again, and make the loans individual with no co-signing. So this week, we have been visiting a family mediation lawyer, a loan officer and a title/escrow office to get the mountain of paperwork started.
The visit to the lawyer was interesting. This a woman, who is a friend of one of my wife's former boyfriends. She does not do partisan divorces, only uncontested separation agreements, and insists that if it cannot stay friendly, she will hand us off to two separate attorneys and hand her notes to both of them as she walks away. Wonderful attitude, but she has also found that with such a non-mercurial attitude to her law practice, she has had to take a day job with the government. We talked a bit about what we want to accomplish, and she sent us on our way with homework: Make a list of all assets and liabilities and how we want to divide them. That will take several evenings, mostly for me, since I am the custodian of most of the records. Besides the real estate, there are multiple IRA accounts at 6 different institutions, 5 or 6 credit cards, etc, etc. Some of those existed before we were married, and who knows what the balance was 20 years ago ? The most memorable moment of the evening was when the lawyer said "It sounds like your husband makes more money than you do; you may be entitled to alimony." For a second, the memory of every ugly divorce story I ever heard washed over me. None of which has anything to do with us. And then she said the reassuring words: "We have talked about those issues, and we don't see a need for that". The truth is that it was her decision to leave, not mine. I may have more retirement savings in my name, but not a ton more, and I am also closer to retirement and in worse health, so I may need more. We will talk it over when we have the list. Meanwhile, we need most of the same data for the mortgage loan applications.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
This feels like a lot of work ...
Using the Match.com online dating service feels much like a job selling life insurance. After two months of using the system, I still do not have enough data to present reliable statistics, but I have some preliminary data:
I have sent first contact emails to about 60 women. Of these, half never answered, and half of the rest replied back with a simple "Not interested", many of which were generated automatically when they clicked the "No Thanks" button on the email page. Half of the rest again replied with a longer, more personal version of "No". For those who are keeping track, those original 60 are now down to about 7. Let's round it off to 10%.
Out of those 7, 3 did not respond to the second email I sent, and 2 responded with a "Not interested" at that point. So after initiating 60 contacts over two months, I have still not actually met anybody, but I still have some hope for two that have indicated that they may eventually be willing to get together. Let's call that 3% of the initial contacts, and I think it is reasonable to project that 90% will disappear after the first in-person meeting, which will mean that it takes 300 initial contacts to get to one second meeting, or one "real first date" if you prefer.
With this knowledge, it is clear that I have not been putting nearly enough effort into the process, seeing that it took me 2 months to make 60 initial contacts. That's only one a day. In order to have at least 2 "first in-person meetings" per week, I would need to make 60 "first contact" emails per week, and still expect that it takes 2 months of that to get one "real first date". I'm not quite able to do that. I'm trying to do 5 a day, but frankly, I think I will run out of candidates before long at that rate.
I am still trying to find out if this is "normal" or if I am a particularly unattractive person. It may be that I am too old, too fat, too recently separated, too ugly or too weird. Or it may be that I have accidentally put myself in the very worst light as I have written my profile page. Certainly, I think that I have done my best to describe myself as a person with enough interesting life experiences to have conversation for more than one date; a person with broad interests in litterature, arts and society; and a person who is willing to challenge himself in interacting with the world. And if I have not screwed that up, then the conclusion may have to be that there are few women that actually want that in a partner, and those who do are in high demand, and have lots of men to choose between.
All I know for sure, is that there is a reason why I have never been attracted to a career in sales.
I have sent first contact emails to about 60 women. Of these, half never answered, and half of the rest replied back with a simple "Not interested", many of which were generated automatically when they clicked the "No Thanks" button on the email page. Half of the rest again replied with a longer, more personal version of "No". For those who are keeping track, those original 60 are now down to about 7. Let's round it off to 10%.
Out of those 7, 3 did not respond to the second email I sent, and 2 responded with a "Not interested" at that point. So after initiating 60 contacts over two months, I have still not actually met anybody, but I still have some hope for two that have indicated that they may eventually be willing to get together. Let's call that 3% of the initial contacts, and I think it is reasonable to project that 90% will disappear after the first in-person meeting, which will mean that it takes 300 initial contacts to get to one second meeting, or one "real first date" if you prefer.
With this knowledge, it is clear that I have not been putting nearly enough effort into the process, seeing that it took me 2 months to make 60 initial contacts. That's only one a day. In order to have at least 2 "first in-person meetings" per week, I would need to make 60 "first contact" emails per week, and still expect that it takes 2 months of that to get one "real first date". I'm not quite able to do that. I'm trying to do 5 a day, but frankly, I think I will run out of candidates before long at that rate.
I am still trying to find out if this is "normal" or if I am a particularly unattractive person. It may be that I am too old, too fat, too recently separated, too ugly or too weird. Or it may be that I have accidentally put myself in the very worst light as I have written my profile page. Certainly, I think that I have done my best to describe myself as a person with enough interesting life experiences to have conversation for more than one date; a person with broad interests in litterature, arts and society; and a person who is willing to challenge himself in interacting with the world. And if I have not screwed that up, then the conclusion may have to be that there are few women that actually want that in a partner, and those who do are in high demand, and have lots of men to choose between.
All I know for sure, is that there is a reason why I have never been attracted to a career in sales.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Laws of attraction ...
In my native Danish language, we have several contradicting proverbs:
- "Krage søger mage" (The crow will seek out his likeness)
- "Lige børn leger bedst" (Children of equal status play best together)
- "Modsætninger mødes"(Opposites attract)
I think the general lesson here is that you decide what you believe, and you will find evidence to support your beliefs.
I think in all relationships - from friendship and marriage to business partnerships - there must be some common ground that allows you to understand each other and build trust, and there must be some differences so that you will be challenged to evolve your thinking. I think these contrasting requirements play out at every level and every stage of engagement.
My business partner and I have some similarities: Roughly similar ages, both engineers, both immigrants from Europe, and arrived in Santa Barbara the same year. Both married "native girls", and obviously we are both engineers working in telecommunications. But we also have some differences: He is more athletic, I am more intellectual. He gets more focused and I am more of a generalist, looking for interconnections between systems. And when we do development projects, he is the one who jumps up and down with excitement over theis new thing he has figured out that we could do, while I am the grumpy old man explaining why it won't really work, and he figures out how to get around each of my objections. That does not mean that he is an optimist and I am a negative grouch: Those are important roles, and if either of us switched roles, the other one would have to switch too, so that the opposite role would be filled in. (My wife and I did that too, but we had much less of an understanding that both roles were important.)
So when I am browsing all the profile pages at Match.com, I find it hard to define what it is that I am looking for. I do think that I am looking for someone of roughly my own age, even if my male instinct pulls me towards the pretty young babes; those young ones surely are repulse by old men like me, and even if I could charm them with wealth and life experience (as used to be considered reasonable and respectable for older men to do) it couldn't possibly last. I also knoiw that I am looking for someone intelligent and assertive: "a hard headed woman" as Dylan sang. Someone who will keep me honest and put me in my place when I deserve it. "First rate people surround themselves with other first rate people. Second rate people surround themselves with third rate people so that they can feel superior to everyone else." I want to be a first rate person.
As I have looked at hundreds of profiles of women in the appropriate age range who live within 25 miles, and clicked "add to favorites" on dozens of pages that have possibilities, some patterns have emerged. There are several lawyers. A couple of nurses. Some academics. A few psychotherapists. And a handful of interior decorators. That last category REALLY took me by surprise.
The lawyers make sense: Smart people, busy with their work, needing help with relationships. Not surprising that they need to go to Match.com.
The nurses make sense too: Wonderful practical people with a positive attitude. There are very few of them on Match, but I would be attracted to them because they tend to be wonderful people.
The academics make sense in the same way: They tend to be happy people, mostly figure out how to marry their own kind, but when divorced and widowed in middle life, they are bewildered like myself; try the dating scene and get disgusted, and eventually find Match.
The psychotherapists are almost scary. I would never seek them out, I thought. But the ones I accidentally stumbled on, were such interesting people. And I can see how the profession would get in the way of "normal" ways of dating.
But the interior decorators make no sense to me why they should be here. My prejudicial stereotype says they are superficial people, obsessed with how people and things LOOK; if they are at all successful in their jobs, they are constantly exposed to wealthy, attractive clients that should be great hunting grounds. What are they doing on Match? - Of course the ones I have found worthy of looking at are not quite like that stereotype. They are women af artistic sensibility with vivid dreams of interesting places in the world, and eclectic thoughts about both the places they have seen, and the places they long for.
Still I am puzzled. I keep wondering if my stereotype was completely wrong, or it is just that there are so many interior decorators here that even a small subset of the group is a significant number of people?
- "Krage søger mage" (The crow will seek out his likeness)
- "Lige børn leger bedst" (Children of equal status play best together)
- "Modsætninger mødes"(Opposites attract)
I think the general lesson here is that you decide what you believe, and you will find evidence to support your beliefs.
I think in all relationships - from friendship and marriage to business partnerships - there must be some common ground that allows you to understand each other and build trust, and there must be some differences so that you will be challenged to evolve your thinking. I think these contrasting requirements play out at every level and every stage of engagement.
My business partner and I have some similarities: Roughly similar ages, both engineers, both immigrants from Europe, and arrived in Santa Barbara the same year. Both married "native girls", and obviously we are both engineers working in telecommunications. But we also have some differences: He is more athletic, I am more intellectual. He gets more focused and I am more of a generalist, looking for interconnections between systems. And when we do development projects, he is the one who jumps up and down with excitement over theis new thing he has figured out that we could do, while I am the grumpy old man explaining why it won't really work, and he figures out how to get around each of my objections. That does not mean that he is an optimist and I am a negative grouch: Those are important roles, and if either of us switched roles, the other one would have to switch too, so that the opposite role would be filled in. (My wife and I did that too, but we had much less of an understanding that both roles were important.)
So when I am browsing all the profile pages at Match.com, I find it hard to define what it is that I am looking for. I do think that I am looking for someone of roughly my own age, even if my male instinct pulls me towards the pretty young babes; those young ones surely are repulse by old men like me, and even if I could charm them with wealth and life experience (as used to be considered reasonable and respectable for older men to do) it couldn't possibly last. I also knoiw that I am looking for someone intelligent and assertive: "a hard headed woman" as Dylan sang. Someone who will keep me honest and put me in my place when I deserve it. "First rate people surround themselves with other first rate people. Second rate people surround themselves with third rate people so that they can feel superior to everyone else." I want to be a first rate person.
As I have looked at hundreds of profiles of women in the appropriate age range who live within 25 miles, and clicked "add to favorites" on dozens of pages that have possibilities, some patterns have emerged. There are several lawyers. A couple of nurses. Some academics. A few psychotherapists. And a handful of interior decorators. That last category REALLY took me by surprise.
The lawyers make sense: Smart people, busy with their work, needing help with relationships. Not surprising that they need to go to Match.com.
The nurses make sense too: Wonderful practical people with a positive attitude. There are very few of them on Match, but I would be attracted to them because they tend to be wonderful people.
The academics make sense in the same way: They tend to be happy people, mostly figure out how to marry their own kind, but when divorced and widowed in middle life, they are bewildered like myself; try the dating scene and get disgusted, and eventually find Match.
The psychotherapists are almost scary. I would never seek them out, I thought. But the ones I accidentally stumbled on, were such interesting people. And I can see how the profession would get in the way of "normal" ways of dating.
But the interior decorators make no sense to me why they should be here. My prejudicial stereotype says they are superficial people, obsessed with how people and things LOOK; if they are at all successful in their jobs, they are constantly exposed to wealthy, attractive clients that should be great hunting grounds. What are they doing on Match? - Of course the ones I have found worthy of looking at are not quite like that stereotype. They are women af artistic sensibility with vivid dreams of interesting places in the world, and eclectic thoughts about both the places they have seen, and the places they long for.
Still I am puzzled. I keep wondering if my stereotype was completely wrong, or it is just that there are so many interior decorators here that even a small subset of the group is a significant number of people?
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Making a fool of oneself ...
When my wife moved out, I suddenly felt very lonely. Like many men, I had much fewer friends than my wife has. I had let her handle our social life, and "our" friends were really *her* friends, and I was uncertain how many of them it was appropriate for me to contact. Of course, I had colleagues at work (although that was a very small circle, given that our business is quite literally "3 guys in a garage"), and I am a very active member in my church. But I had always put my marriage ahead of any outside friendships, and never been attracted to such "manly" pursuits as barcrawling or attending football games. Like the old jazz song says: "Don't get around much anymore". How does one "get back in circulation"?
So far, I have been expanding my church activities, going to the buddhist meditation circle and the men's group. Both of these have the potential to work towards building a circle of friends, but are unlikely to lead to meeting women to date.
Applying the engineer's mode of thinking, I have joined Match.com, a "social networking" website designed to introduce you to a pool of people interested in meeting new people to date. I feel like I have barely dipped my toes in that pool, so it is far too early to form any opinions on its effectiveness.
I did earlier try another such site, called Chemistry.com, which was a complete loss. It seemed designed to accommodate very fearful women, and provided no way to take active control and meet people. They would give you introductions to 5 other members of the appropriate gender, most of which lived at least an hour's driving away, and none of which ever responded to contact that I initiated, other than to say "No thanks". And in this system, that was the end of any opportunity to reach them. There was no way to search their database. So I got out of there. The Match.com system is much better designed. There are actually hundreds of people in the appropriate age range within the local area, and a good search function.
This moves you to the next hurdle: You have to put yourself out there, and be willing to face rejection. For those of us who have never been employed in a sales job, it takes some time to adjust to the 95%+ odds of rejection. I was never any good at this when I was young, and I must confess that it does not seem a whole lot easier at age 59 than it did at age 19 or 29.
I have observed that it is quite challenging to write a good personal profile. It should be truthful, and at the same time "put one's best foot forward". It is a great opportunity for self-examination: If I were the person I want to meet, and I saw this profile page, would I want to meet this person? And if the answer is "probably not", is that a problem with the person or with the description? Am am finding many parts of myself that seem in need of improvement. And ultimately, I think there is a great deal of hope in being able to see that.
I have also noticed that many people are doing obviously stupid things:
- One woman who gave her age as 50+ had pictures that portrayed a Russian blonde apparently no more than 25 years old. It would seem obvious that this can go nowhere: Any man attracted by the youthful portrayal would run away when discovering that the reality is different from the advertisement.
- I think the same applies to people who post no photos at all. I expect immediately that if they won't show themselves, they must have something to hide. In fact, I tend to study the pictures carefully and try to discern personality traits from the clothing people are wearing, or from the situations depicted in the photos: Vacation photos from Tahiti, or family pictures with their grown children.
- One woman (who also had no photo) had a main profile that said "I really do not believe in the idea of trying to describe myself in 200 words or less. And it should be fewer, not less." That was all she said. She must be wondering why nobody contacts her.
So far, I have been expanding my church activities, going to the buddhist meditation circle and the men's group. Both of these have the potential to work towards building a circle of friends, but are unlikely to lead to meeting women to date.
Applying the engineer's mode of thinking, I have joined Match.com, a "social networking" website designed to introduce you to a pool of people interested in meeting new people to date. I feel like I have barely dipped my toes in that pool, so it is far too early to form any opinions on its effectiveness.
I did earlier try another such site, called Chemistry.com, which was a complete loss. It seemed designed to accommodate very fearful women, and provided no way to take active control and meet people. They would give you introductions to 5 other members of the appropriate gender, most of which lived at least an hour's driving away, and none of which ever responded to contact that I initiated, other than to say "No thanks". And in this system, that was the end of any opportunity to reach them. There was no way to search their database. So I got out of there. The Match.com system is much better designed. There are actually hundreds of people in the appropriate age range within the local area, and a good search function.
This moves you to the next hurdle: You have to put yourself out there, and be willing to face rejection. For those of us who have never been employed in a sales job, it takes some time to adjust to the 95%+ odds of rejection. I was never any good at this when I was young, and I must confess that it does not seem a whole lot easier at age 59 than it did at age 19 or 29.
I have observed that it is quite challenging to write a good personal profile. It should be truthful, and at the same time "put one's best foot forward". It is a great opportunity for self-examination: If I were the person I want to meet, and I saw this profile page, would I want to meet this person? And if the answer is "probably not", is that a problem with the person or with the description? Am am finding many parts of myself that seem in need of improvement. And ultimately, I think there is a great deal of hope in being able to see that.
I have also noticed that many people are doing obviously stupid things:
- One woman who gave her age as 50+ had pictures that portrayed a Russian blonde apparently no more than 25 years old. It would seem obvious that this can go nowhere: Any man attracted by the youthful portrayal would run away when discovering that the reality is different from the advertisement.
- I think the same applies to people who post no photos at all. I expect immediately that if they won't show themselves, they must have something to hide. In fact, I tend to study the pictures carefully and try to discern personality traits from the clothing people are wearing, or from the situations depicted in the photos: Vacation photos from Tahiti, or family pictures with their grown children.
- One woman (who also had no photo) had a main profile that said "I really do not believe in the idea of trying to describe myself in 200 words or less. And it should be fewer, not less." That was all she said. She must be wondering why nobody contacts her.
On starting a blog ...
I have been online for more than 25 years, and while it has never been a goal of mine to be "published" and highly visible, I have also never seen any reason to hide my identity. It has always been important to me that I am one person, and I do not make any effort to project a different persona to different audiences. As the Internet has grown, things I have written have been readily visible to anyone who might be interested in them, and some things that I put up on my personal website because they were interesting to me, and I wanted to make the fruit of my personal research in that area available to others, have become often-cited references on their topic.
But as the Internet has become "mainstream", I am also finding that if I want to remain open about things that are significant to me, I am beginning to see a need to establish some privacy shields. It is not appropriate to have customers of my business mingling in my personal and family affairs, however "clean" they are, and however proud I am of most aspects of my personal life. So I am separating different circles of social contacts: My professional circle is on LinkedIn.com, while my close friends and my relatives are invited become "friends" on FaceBook.com (in several groups invited to share slightly different items). So when I decidedto try a period of blogging about my new life of dating after the end of a 22-year marriage, I decided that it would be most appropriate to do this in a way where it does not automatically get linked to my professional identity. If my close friends stumble upon it, they will obviously recognize me, but with any luck, it will not show up every time someone googles my name.
I am hoping this blog will allow me to interact with other people in similar circumstances, hopefully allowing us to wring some humor out of our hurts, to share some helpful hints, and reflect on what often seems as an insanity of social conventions.
But as the Internet has become "mainstream", I am also finding that if I want to remain open about things that are significant to me, I am beginning to see a need to establish some privacy shields. It is not appropriate to have customers of my business mingling in my personal and family affairs, however "clean" they are, and however proud I am of most aspects of my personal life. So I am separating different circles of social contacts: My professional circle is on LinkedIn.com, while my close friends and my relatives are invited become "friends" on FaceBook.com (in several groups invited to share slightly different items). So when I decidedto try a period of blogging about my new life of dating after the end of a 22-year marriage, I decided that it would be most appropriate to do this in a way where it does not automatically get linked to my professional identity. If my close friends stumble upon it, they will obviously recognize me, but with any luck, it will not show up every time someone googles my name.
I am hoping this blog will allow me to interact with other people in similar circumstances, hopefully allowing us to wring some humor out of our hurts, to share some helpful hints, and reflect on what often seems as an insanity of social conventions.
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