Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Third Degree of Separation.
Another day, another colleague trying to fix me up with a new man. Sigh.
Today, I just walked away. I just couldn’t stand to hear it anymore. Especially the advice on wearing a suit to meet them and not to mention my religion.
I realize that, eventually, the urge to find a mate will get stronger and I’ll start doing some serious looking. Right now, I’m wondering why anyone needs to fix me up with anyone. I know the men they’re talking about and those men know me. If those prospective suitors want badly enough to be with me or to get to know me better, then they’ll get off their butts and give me a call or email me or something. Conversely, I guess none of these “fix-you-upper men” have interested me enough for me to contact them.
Most likely—I’m realizing with a small degree of worry—I will have to move to find someone new that I’m compatible with. I made decisions to stay here, to stay in this house, to stay in my current job, based on what I thought was best for my daughters and not necessarily what was best for me. It would have been much easier to sell the house and just go else- where, start over, but I wanted some stability for the girls, some- thing not changing, and for them to keep their schools and their friends. And that meant that the day I filed for divorce, I needed to know that I intended to stay with the house and the girls.
Yet, the attachment to the house is not necessarily a for- ever thing. Anywhere I am can be home—I’ve proven that. But this house is an attachment I’ve made very important in building a safe place, a sanctuary, for my family, yet as Hurricane Katrina proved, maybe it’s not such a permanent thing in my life on the Gulf Coast. And eventually, I’ll probably leave it, especially if I’m to find new circles of friends and a decent ratio of compatible men.
Not that I have to be compatible in every way, but the opposites-attract thing isn’t so appealing when the opposition is so basic. I like opposition to be the type that’s grounding to my dreaminess. Practicality vs my head-in-the-clouds visionary mind. But not the kind of opposition that turns to oppression and throws a wet blanket over my fire and smothers my spark. Fire and water is too much an opposition. Fire and sulfur? That’s more like it.
The most likely location for me to find a compatible mate is probably in a university town. There’s usually enough of the intelligentsia around, it’s more open-minded and cutting edge, and there’s always good music. I’m open. Things could change here or I could discover a social group I don’t know about that thinks like I do. A long shot, considering how long I’ve lived here, but possible.
The prevailing attitudes here are staid and stodgy and conservative, and I don’t like being involved with guys I feel I can’t be myself with. Because I’m not going to put on a façade and I’m not going to fake anything. If I have to fake some- thing—anything—then I’m wasting what’s real. But I think a lot of men would prefer I fake my life as long as I can fit nicely into their view of the world and not challenge their status quo. They want me to be happy being what they want me to be, not who I am.
My colleagues are quick to point out—unsolicited—what I “need to do” to make a guy like me. I prefer someone who likes me not in spite of who I am, but because I’m me.
Why is that so much to ask?
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