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RETIREMENT & LIFESTYLE PLANNING | |
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| ISSUE - 18 - SUMMER 2003 | |
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Peter Gill explores the minefields for mature males in the mating game.
It had taken Andy weeks to work up the courage to go into a bar by himself. He had accepted the discomfort that would come with sitting alone and rehearsed the long-lost skills of starting conversations with strangers.
With potentially interesting company to his left and right, and his first drink in hand, Andy was just starting to relax into the evening. It might not be the night that the separated 40-something would find a new partner, but it was shaping up as an enjoyable break from his self-imposed exile.
And then it happened. “Hi Andy – here with all your friends?” boomed an acquaintance, who didn’t even stop for a chat. It may have been a ham-fisted attempt at humour with no malice intended but the effect was numbing. With shattered confidence, Andy went home and resumed his life as a recluse.
This scenario, played out in a large regional city, says much about the challenges of being a male in your forties looking for companionship or even a new partner in life. Some opt for the anonymity of a bar or club where they can at least enjoy the music, while others, like Peter in Sydney, explore other means of meeting people, from singles’ dinners and dance parties to Internet dating. The consistent factor in any approach is that it is a journey fraught with false starts, wrong turns and emotional cul-de-sacs.
Andy can laugh at the bar story now but at the time it was symptomatic of his life in the wake of the break-up of a seven-year marriage that left him “devastated”. Gregarious, well educated and worldly, Andy was shocked to find himself in a life with few doors to the future. Three years of marriage counselling and negotiations over finances and custody of his daughter had left him disillusioned with a huge hole in his confidence.
“I was pretty reclusive for two solid years so in practice I didn’t have the chance of finding a partner or even having any vaguely intimate sort of relationship – like sitting down and drinking a glass of wine with a woman.”
“I was unable to even get out of the house, let alone to go about finding someone– it was akin to depression. I could get through the week, but Friday would come around and I would say to myself: ?I will go out tomorrow.’ And then I wouldn’t, so it became self-perpetuating.”
Andy says the nature of Australia’s culture with its general lack of overt affection and touching, reinforces this personal isolation.
“In Australia after a break-up, in the absence of family, you could go five to 10 years and not touch a human being, not a kiss nor an embrace. In Latin countries you might kiss every woman in the room two or three times on the cheek or vice versa. You could get 20 years of Australian kisses in one day – and that’s just when you arrive at a party! I don’t think we should undervalue that spontaneous affection.”
Another feature of the difficulties faced by many men is the relative lack of support networks. Andy shares the view of some other observers that the Family Court system “has an overt and obvious prejudice towards males – it’s a soul-destroying process for a man, with no support whatsoever”.
Andy was finally able to break out of his situation by identifying what he really enjoyed in life and acting on it – taking a five week trip of “music, movement, dance, and sensuality” in Cuba and Israel. Suitably “shaken up” on his return to Australia, he stepped away from his self-employed event management business and took up teaching adults, mostly international students.
“You have to identify where you shine as yourself and then have the courage to find a way to make that happen – whether that means changing career, where you live, or what you do. If it’s dancing, enrol in a dancing class; if it’s hiking, go out and join a hiking club; if it’s films, start going to the movies regularly. Identify what it is and make it happen.”
Other relationships (relatively short so far) have followed as Andy has taken back control of his life and his outlook is optimistic. While noting that communication is a large part of successful relation-ships, there is no guaranteed formula for happiness. But Andy agrees with his lawyer who, despite years of dealing with the conse-quences of broken relationships, says simply: “Go for love.”
In Sydney, Peter has taken a different course in his search for the right chemistry in a relationship. At 47 years of age, with two marriages of 10 years and three years respectively behind him, the self-employed businessman has used a number of the services available to singles.
“For the older person, once you’ve gone through the necessary healing process after a marriage break-up, you have to get off your butt and get out there. Nobody wants to be by themselves at 50,” Peter said.
Peter found singles services offering varying degrees of potential and success, each dependent on your personal disposition. He met several women through Dinner for Six dinner dates although none progressed beyond a second rendezvous. Meeting at affordable restaurants, knowing only the names and occupations of one’s dining companions, Peter said Dinner for Six was “a very good way to meet other adults without going through all the introductory chit-chat.”
He also met two women through Baby Boomers’ Balls, large dinner-dance events staged annually by the Red Cross in which men and women are computer matched to share at least the dinner aspect of the evening. One of those meetings developed into a four-year relationship.
Engaging a dating agency – with payment made for six introductions – was less satisfactory for Peter who found the experience “almost desperate, it didn’t have the right sort of gel to it”.
Peter also explored the Meeting Point column of a Sydney newspaper and found he had a far greater response when recording his own details and thoughts on a partner, than when he followed up the listings of others. He also uncovered a logistical problem.
“I had something like 156 mess-ages within 48 hours from one entry and I rang half a dozen of them. Where I came a cropper is that I went out with the second woman I contacted a number of times over a few weeks and it was then too late to follow up the others.”
With the advent of Internet sites Peter says “the meeting game” has become easier and more pragmatic because people can test their initial responses to potential partners by looking at photographs and reading profiles.
So what has been the outcome for someone who has used many of the singles’ services available? Well, fate played a hand. In a shopping centre far from home, Peter bumped into his primary school sweetheart – “the first girl I ever kissed”. Over coffee, Peter’s friend revealed she was separated, dinner followed, and they have been together ever since.
“It’s now four months down the track and the chemistry is there. It was pure chance that we met, just uncanny. So I believe in fate – this lady and I were meant to be together.”
And that, as they say, is a happy ending.
MORE:
Contact
Dinner for Six
Web www.events4singles.com/dinner_for_six.htmRSVP
Web www.rsvp.com.auMeeting Point
Look in The Daily Telegraph in SydneyWeb www.blinkdating.com.au
Web www.speeddatingsites.com
Web www.friend.com.au
Web www.manhood.com.auBOOKS:
A Man’s Field Guide to Dating, Robert A. Wray, netImage, 1999
How to Succeed With Women, Ron Louis & David Copeland, Prentice Hall Press, 1998
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Copyright Retirement Publishing Pty Ltd 2001 -- ISSN 1031-6620 ACN 088 049 218
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