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Monday, Nov 23, 2009
Dear Mr. Blue,
I am 27, finally coming out of three years of depression, and I've met this wonderful man, 44, retired and financially secure, who plans to write a book and buy a house on the beach and marry someday. He is sweet, tender, passionate, and makes me feel like the most beautiful and desired woman on this planet. I think I am falling in love with him; he is already in love with me and said, "I want to take care of you and make you feel safe with me." What's the problem? He is divorced, with four daughters ranging from 15 to 25, and he is diabetic. I don't have much experience with men and I am hesitant about starting a relationship with him. I've had to take care of other people all my life, and now that I am finally coming out on my own, I don't want to be thrown into a dependent relationship ever again. What do you think I should do?
Dazed and Confused
Dear Dazed,
Only you know. But as we say in the Midwest, you could do worse. A guy who can make you feel beautiful and desired is not all bad. The girls will not want you for a mother. And diabetes is a highly manageable disease. And at 44, the gentleman is hardly on the verge of physical collapse. So this sounds like an offer to consider. Of course it all depends on the beach. Stinson Beach? Daytona Beach? Omaha Beach? And what sort of book? I'd be wary of anyone writing a book about How to Retire Before You're 45 or some other self-help book. A humorist, of course, would be your best bet -- a book like Laffs Galore or Funny Fotos of Katz in Hatz is a good indicator of a guy's stability and independence -- and certain kinds of novelists could be good (stay away from the lit'ry ones, but mystery writers and sci-fi are OK). With poets, you're taking a big chance, especially with lousy poets. I could go on, but won't.
Dear Mr. Blue,
Today is my 27th birthday, and I am getting tired of being single. I'm decent-looking (according to friends), kind, a good cook, I own my own company and am a generally very well-rounded, highly intelligent man. That said, in the past 10 years, I have been in only one relationship and for less than one year.
The pattern is that I form very close friendships with smart, attractive woman and fall madly in love with them, but they see me as a "friend" and only in a platonic light. They laugh and say something like, "But you're like my brother," and in many cases we then grow distant. Or they ask my advice about men they are interested in -- what can be more depressing than that? Especially when they tell me they like me better than they like him.
So what am I to do? I want to learn what I was supposed to have learned in high school -- let alone the sexual experimentation that I should have done in college.
I dress in style, am clean shaven, hold doors open for women, bring flowers when I meet them at the airport, so what more do I do? And how to get women to be both friends and lovers?
Perplexed
Dear Perplexed,
All the easy questions you could have asked me and you had to come up with this. Well, what can I say? Romance is an imaginative art, like acting, and a man with an impressive résumé like yours (Has Own Business, Cooks, Opens Doors, Shaves) nonetheless has to audition for the job, the same as any nobody. You have to demonstrate stability (women don't go for men who argue with lampposts), and you have to show that certain élan, that je ne sais quoi, that sense of mystery and playfulness and wit that thrills a woman. Many a woman has overlooked a guy's instability because he had that power to thrill her. You, up to this point, have focused too hard on stability and brotherhood and palship and become Dear Old Bob who Megan and Lindsay and Deirdre and Caitlin all love to talk to and complain to about their boyfriends. You need to work on the mystery part. This is no big secret. You let a woman know that you are a romantic guy by touching her back and the back of her neck. Here's how. You and Caitlin are standing outside the Café des Romance, waiting for Deirdre, and you put your arm around her, like a pal might do, and as you talk to her about this and that, your finger lightly traces around her wings and down her spine from her neck to her lower back in a light and graceful and suggestive way, paying particular attention to her neck, and she gets the message subliminally: You're not just Old Bob, you are also Roberto the Magnificent. Kissing comes after that, which is an expressive art all by itself, and then comes what you would've learned in high school but which will be even more fun now.
