I had to rid myself of men to raise my son. That’s not really accurate. I was a single mom and have raised my, now nineteen year old, son by myself. I really don’t have much family and those nineteen years consisted of supporting and trying to raise a good man. That didn’t leave time for a relationship and at some point I guess I just relinquished the idea that that was going to happen in the chaos that was my life.

Now I am at place in where I want some support myself. Most single men my age have been married. I have never been married. It has been my experience that most men who have been married and are now finding themselves single for the first time in ten or more years aren’t looking for a relationship. They are looking to have fun. They don’t want anything serious and they don’t want what I find myself pining for. This is really the best summation of what I have been grappling.

I have never been in a relationship that has lasted longer than eighteen months and I can honestly say that none of my physical relationships with men were anything I would categorize as healthy or stable. The irony in all this is that now that I desire something of a more mature relationship I find myself back in the pool with a bunch of men who are attempting to recapture the lives they had in their teens and early twenties. This leaves me to deal with the fact that I may very well find the dating scene very similar to the one I was in when I left it. This is a little unnerving to me.

I really thought that people in my age demographic would all be looking for the same thing. I realize now that that was naive of me. I hoped that dating would be simpler and that we would all be more direct and clear from the get go. I hoped that mutual attraction and interest would be enough to start a relationship. Unfortunately, I am finding that that is not the case. I was hoping to find that, in this time in our lives, men would be more upfront and honest without having to be prompted.

I also find that I am quite often hit on by men who are quite a bit younger than me.  I am often asked out by guys in their mid-twenties.  I worry about these men because they haven’t had children or been married and I am in different place in my life.  If a relationship were to develop as a result of my dating someone younger I would be unwilling to do everything over.  I don’t want any more children and this will likely be an issue at some point.  Some of my friends in their mid-twenties have also noted that it is frustrating that men their age seem interested in women my age.  But that works both ways.  I often see men in their late thirties and early forties dating women who are in their twenties. 

The situation is frustrating.  I am still trying to figure out what to do.  I have been casually dating but at some point soon I want to move past that into something more meaningful.