The Crab Chronicles

We Are on Fire

A few days ago I saw a news story that still haunts me. I cannot get it out of my mind. As reported in many news outlets including the Washington Post and the New York Times, 58 year old John Michael Watts, a veteran, set himself on fire on the steps of the state capitol building in downtown Atlanta, to draw attention to the mismanagement of veterans healthcare by the Veteran's Administration (VA) in this country. 

Mr. Watts is still in critical condition at the hospital, as far as I can tell. 

The next day, Wednesday, I watched a local news story about the Georgia State Troopers who saved the man's life. The first trooper to respond was in town visiting. He lives in Valdosta (a small town in south Georgia) and he was just driving by the capitol and saw the man sitting on the steps, engulfed in flames. The trooper immediately stopped, jumped out of his car, grabbed his fire extinguisher, and went to work. Another trooper drove by a minute later, stopped his car, and jumped out with his fire extinguisher -- which was fortunate since the first fire extinguisher was rapidly being emptied.

The second trooper rode in the ambulance with Mr. Watts, and spent 5 hours at Grady Hospital. He said on camera that he was praying for Mr. Watts. By that point in the story there were big tears in my eyes.

This story is personal to me for many reasons. 

My brother served a year in Iraq and came home a different person. He said after he got back nothing felt "normal" for a solid year afterwards -- not surprising, since we didn't see much of him that year. He relies on the VA for his healthcare now. Fortunately, he is very healthy and he is satisfied with the care he gets at the VA. 

The VA is a huge organization, though, and it's a government organization, so efficiency is not optimum. 

My friend Jon Jackson at Comfort Farms has developed a program to heal veterans because every day in America about 20 veterans commit suicide. 

Do they set themselves on fire at state capitols? Nope. They die less publicly, but they still die. 

We pride ourselves on being a country with great technology and innovation. We pride ourselves, as Americans, on being a country of compassion. So why aren't we doing better with our veterans? 

I don't know the answer to that. It's clearly a complex question with a complex solution. 

Veterans come back from war zones still in battle mode. They are trained to focus on the enemy, focus on eliminating threats. The conditions are harsh. The stress is intense. The service men and women who return from duty alive and seemingly whole are not really back, though. 

The war lives inside them, and makes their lives incredibly complicated. 

What more stressful environment can a human being be in than in a war? How can we expect them to just turn off that battle persona like a faucet? The answer is, we can't expect it and most of them can't do it. Many, like my brother, find their own way out of the mental quagmire with very little (or no) outside assistance. Not all do, however.

The recent suicides of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain have started a national conversation about suicide and that's good. We need to talk about it. There is so much shame surrounding suicide that conversations about it are hard.

My son has the name Sasha tattooed across his chest. Sasha was his much older brother in Kazakhstan who killed himself when Michael was 5 years old. Michael doesn't talk about it, but I know he thinks about Sasha every.single.day. Sasha was the only father figure my son ever knew. I suspect Michael's sensitivity and sweetness and compassion came from Sasha. 

I do not pretend to know much at all about psychology or psychotherapy. 

I have gone through some very tough things in my life, however, and I do know this: burying feelings, not talking about them, pretending they don't exist and everything is fine -- that strategy DOES NOT WORK.

Men fear being called weak. Suicide is seen by many to be a sign of weakness or cowardice. I am haunted by these questions:

How do we overcome those terrible misperceptions? 

How specifically do we battle suicide among our veterans?

I don't ever want to turn on the news again and see a veteran engulfed in flames because he is in despair.

I have a friend whose son committed suicide in front of her after his Air Force career ended. I don't want any mother, anywhere, to go through that again.

My friend Jon has faced suicide and overcome it. Take a few minutes and watch Jon's Ted Talk. The only thing that stopped Jon from killing himself a few years ago was his son walking in on him.

"When I got home there was nothing for me to do to utilize my skills and be engaged. I created Stag Vets. We are a bunch of problem solvers and... we decided to create Comfort Farms."

Jon understands better than anyone how a veteran is conditioned to be a warrior. As he says, for years soldiers hunt down and kill the enemy, but "We also come back with the memories of war and we just can't make that go away." Not knowing how to deal with those memories is toxic.

As Jon explains in the video, since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan started we have lost only around 5,000 people to combat deaths but we have lost 100,000 to suicide.

At Comfort Farms, Jon sees veterans find healing every day. "They show up disabled. They leave enabled."

Comfort Farms is not about being comfortable. Veterans on the farm battle Mother Nature every day. Comfort Farms was actually named after Jon's friend Kyle Comfort, who died in battle. It's a great name, though, because the farm represents a veteran being able to find a way back to the healing and comfort of family and civilian life. 

About 7 months ago I had my first phone conversation with Jon and I realized immediately that I was not just talking to a guy who started a little nonprofit. I was talking to an incredible person, a brilliant visionary. I have only known a few truly great and visionary people in my life, people who literally can transform lives. Jon Jackson is one of those people. 

You can learn more about Comfort Farms here. 

My friend Carlisle Kellam and I are trying to bring attention to Jon and and incredible work he does on Comfort Farms. We are making a documentary about Comfort Farms. If you want to be part of it, go here. Also check out the Facebook page for the movie. 

I pray that I will never turn on the news again and see where a veteran has committed suicide. There's only one way I know of to make that a reality, though -- help Jon build Comfort Farms into a go-to place for every veteran suffering from PTSD or TBI. I want to see Comfort Farms in every state in America.

I don't want any other mother to see her son or daughter come home from war and then be destroyed by war. 

Our country is on fire now. Until we solve the problem of veteran suicide, we are all, metaphorically, on fire. We need to put it out.

 

Female in America

Nine months ago something very important happened and I would bet that very few Americans noticed it. Saudi Arabia announced in September 2017 that women in that country would be allowed to drive, starting in June 2018. It was reported in the New York Times and by the BBC.

According to the NYT:

"Saudi Arabia, home to Islam’s holiest sites, is an absolute monarchy ruled according to Shariah law. Saudi officials and clerics have provided numerous explanations for the ban over the years. Some said that it was inappropriate in Saudi culture for women to drive, or that male drivers would not know how to handle having women in cars next to them. Others argued that allowing women to drive would lead to promiscuity and the collapse of the Saudi family. One cleric claimed — with no evidence — that driving harmed women’s ovaries."

I am very happy that women in Saudi Arabia are now allowed to drive. However, the news story I watched last night ended by pointing out that even today, women are not allowed to vote, travel, or marry without the permission of a male guardian. The Times article pointed out "Under these laws, women cannot travel abroad, work or undergo some medical procedures without the consent of their male “guardian,” often a father, a husband or even a son."

What is astonishing to me is not so much that this sort of thing exists in the 21st century, but the fact that men in America are oblivious to it. They honestly don't understand why a woman in America would be not just horrified but fearful of this kind of law. 

I am also concerned that America is becoming more like Saudi Arabia. That's truly scary.

Years ago when I was on dating sites and I met a man who liked to travel, and he wanted me to travel the world with him. He he was astonished when I said there were certain countries I would never visit because of the way women in those countries are treated. He kept saying "But I would be with you." I pointed out that if anything were to happen to him I would feel in great danger. I also pointed out that I wouldn't have fun visiting a country where women were treated as inferior to men. He truly couldn't understand my feelings. We argued for a while, but nothing I said to him got through. He even called me narrow-minded, at one point. (Needless to say, that relationship was over with that one phone call.)

That inability to put himself in my shoes is endemic in our society and leads to so much conflict. In essence, it's the root of the Black Lives Matter movement, the Occupy Wall Street Movement, and others. If you have never faced discrimination or mistreatment because of your gender or your race, you will find it impossible to really understand why those movements exist. 

The news story I watched last night about women driving in Saudi Arabia was sobering. 

In the article Six Things women in Saudi Arabia still can't do, the author points out that women who are abused by their male guardians cannot file a complaint against that person.

Further, "The dress code for women is governed by a strict interpretation of Islamic law and is enforced to varying degrees across the country. The majority of women wear an abaya – a long cloak – and a head scarf. The face does not necessarily need to be covered, “much to the chagrin of some hardliners”, says The Economist. But this does not stop the religious police from harassing women for exposing what they consider to be too much flesh or wearing too much make-up."

Imagine a society in which women walk around covered from head to toe in black cloth because otherwise they are viewed as indecent. Seeing women in hijab or abaya bothers me. I always wonder if the woman underneath would, if given the chance, leave that place and come to America and live in freedom if offered that opportunity? 

A woman was recently arrested in Saudi Arabia for wearing a miniskirt. Women still cannot swim in public. Their interactions with men are very limited, with most places having separate entrances for men and women. They also cannot try on clothes while shopping. They can't compete freely in sports. 

So I think it would be fair to say that religion is having a great influence on the laws in that country. Is that a good thing? What if that were to be true here? 

We're heading that way. 

The Supreme Court recently ruled that a bakery in Colorado could refuse to do business with a gay couple. Now, if you read the fine print, the case had a lot to do with how the Colorado Civil Rights Commission treated the baker. The baker also stated he would refuse to bake a Halloween cake because it violated his religious beliefs. 

Arguing the fine points is fine and I am not saying we shouldn't. However, the overarching message that has been broadcast far and wide has nothing to do with subtlety or nuance. The message is: it's okay for a business to discriminate against gay people. The door has opened a crack, but it is open. Bullies will force it to swing wide in the near future, I fear.

Religion should have nothing to do with law, because religion is entirely subjective.

 

So if the Supreme Court says it's okay to discriminate against gay people, who's to say that they won't defend a business that says they won't do business with a female? What about the couple in California facing charges for horrific child abuse -- if they say their religion told them to starve or beat their children, should the children be returned to them? 

Let that sink in. We are on a slippery slope now.

The question we need to be asking ourselves, as Americans, is really simple. Are gay people HUMAN? Are women HUMAN? Is someone black or Asian or mixed race HUMAN? Should all HUMANS be treated equally under the law? Equal pay? Equal access to public buildings, to jobs, etc.? 

That's the one thing that ties us all together, our humanity. 

Saying someone should be treated differently because they are gay, or female, or a child, or black or anything else is just not okay, in my view. That will never be okay.  

Weight Loss Ideas

Here's a little piece of trivia I will share with y'all, and I rarely talk about it, even with close friends: twice in my life I have lost over 100 lbs. The last time was from about 1999-2001. Lost 110 lbs. In my twenties when I was in graduate school I lost over 100 lbs. I don't recall the exact amount. 

When I was a kid I loved sports and I was pretty active. I loved tennis and swimming, and I liked to roller skate and play basketball in the driveway. I never walked up the stairs I ran. I skipped stairs. I walked fast. [below, me aged 6]

Of course, then I grew up and got more sedentary.

I inherited short fat legs and a fat fanny from my beloved Memaw, my grandmother. My other grandmother, who died before I was born, was tall and skinny. I didn't get any of these genes, although I was named for her.. 

The gene pool is a crazy thing, I often say.

Anyway, I am not now much of an athlete but I know it's important to MOVE. Don't just sit in a chair for hours. Bad for the back and the waistline. If you sit all day at work, get up every 30 minutes and just walk in place at your desk, for like 2 minutes. At lunch, walk for 10 minutes, even just around the hallways. Just MOVE.

Below, me and my cousin/BFF Lesleigh, when we were both pretty svelte, about 17 years ago. 

So I went to the doctor the other day for a physical. Everything was fine. Test results came in the mail yesterday. I need to up my Vitamin D consumption, and I will get that done. I am researching foods that have a good bit of vitamin D. Ironic. I am deficient in my name.

The doctor didn't fuss at me about my weight but I told her I was back on the program and would get the extra lbs. off. She has seen me do it before. 

BTW the currently popular "ketogenic" diet, Atkins, and plan old low carb are all pretty much the same thing. [You can learn more about the ketogenic diet here.]

There is a myth that low carb is unhealthy. Not necessarily. You can eat low carb and still be very healthy, although if you have naturally high cholesterol you will need to avoid a lot of bacon and butter, duh. Substitute good fats like olive oil and avocado. Honestly, I eat lots more healthy veggies on low carb than I do normally. 

So here are my suggestions. 

 

FOOD TIPS

I wanted to share some low carb tips I have learned over the years, through trial and error. 

One, make friends with cabbage. I hate chopping it so I buy bags of what is called coleslaw cabbage. You find it with the bagged salads, but on the top shelf for some weird reason, at least at Publix and Kroger. For lunch I like to saute 1-2 cups of it in olive oil, with a little chopped onion or onion powder, and add a good shake of soy sauce and garlic or garlic powder. Saute until soft. Add a piece of chicken and it's a good meal. Tastes a bit like an eggroll. 

Two, spaghetti squash is so yummy. You buy the squash and stick it on a cookie sheet and put it in the oven on 400 degrees for 30-40 minutes. Take it out and let it cool a bit. Slice it lengthwise. Pull out the big seeds and tough middle part -- the seeds look like pumpkin seeds. Take a fork and scrape the sides of the squash and strands of squash appear. I saute it in butter, olive oil, and some chopped onion, and throw in some cheese after about ten minutes. YUM. 

 

My friend Bronwyn has been doing Atkins now for months and has done super well. She is my current low carb guru. She has lost more than 80 lbs. -- and dealt with the death of her mom last fall, which was devastating and threw her off for a couple of months, but she got right back on track.

She has good tips. Just today she was suggesting kale chips. [I don't like kale normally but I might try it, down the road.]  She also suggested microwaving pepperoni slices until they are crisp, and using them as a chip. Also, cutting up slices of cheese and microwaving them until they are crisp. 

In the morning, instead of toast, I scramble a couple of eggs and either add a handful of spinach or a bit of grated cheese. I love eggs but they get boring. [BTW I have been eating eggs every day for years and my cholesterol is normal]

On low carb you tend to miss crunchy things like chips and fries. If you will saute spinach leaves in olive oil they get crunchy. Ditto for kale.

High protein snacks are crucial.

I get sliced turkey at the deli and snack on it. When I am bored with it I add cheese. I also snack on cheese but I try not to eat too much of it or it upsets my tummy. 

I love hummus with carrot sticks, too.

 

I have been doing pretty well for the past week, week 1, and I am down 6 lbs. Woo hoo! I still need to modify it a bit. I love love love sweets. That's my downfall. For this week I have kept chunks of cantaloupe in the fridge and when I wanted something sweet I ate a couple of chunks of cantaloupe. This really helped me. Hopefully next week I can live without the melon and without my 1 slice of bread a day. 

 

RANDOM TIPS

Here's what I have to remind myself and what I always tell everyone about dieting: figure out what works for YOU. Listen to your body. If you are miserable on low carb, like really miserable, maybe a different plan is better for you, like just counting calories, or increasing workouts. Weight Watchers didn't work for me but lots of folks swear by it. Check it out.

Exercise is important but you don't have to go nuts with it. Just walk 20 minutes a day, and gradually work up to more strenuous workouts. I have a dog. She has to be walked. That helps. Or take your BFF and go walk around the mall. Or go to the pool and walk up and down the pool.

I have read that if you exercise really hard for a couple of minutes, then moderately for 5-10 minutes, the interval thing really helps you burn more calories. 

Also, drink LOTS of water. I keep a plastic pitcher of water next to me all day and I sip on it literally all.day.long. You can add slices of fruit or lemon or something if you are bored with it. 

You can add a lot of empty calories by what you drink. I drink nothing but water and unsweet tea. Do NOT drink alcohol. No beer or wine especially -- they turn to sugar in your body. Don't drink diet sodas because I've read studies showing they actually are harmful for you and don't help.

Whatever diet you are on, modify it to suit you. Eat foods you like. COOK. Plan your meals and snacks. IF you plan you are more likely to succeed. 

I only weigh once a week. Otherwise I would go nutty. A weekly loss of 1-2 lbs is great. Don't get crazy. If you lose too fast you tend to gain it right back -- trust me, I know this.

 

SUMMARY

The important thing is to be in it for the long haul. If you fall off the wagon when you're out to eat or at a party, get back on the wagon immediately and don't let it completely derail you. 

I have a birthday coming up. Am I going to eat cake? Probably 1 piece. However, the next day I will be back on the program. 

above, me in 1991, with Dad and some friends -- I still have that dress somewhere. Love it. One day I will get it back on...

Books and Movies

My son is cleaning out his room and getting rid of all his childhood books. He brought in a big stack a few minutes ago and I nearly cried, seeing Stuart Little and Swiss Family Robinson and The Borrowers. 

So many happy hours of my childhood were spent living inside those book pages. 

One of my college professors (a film studies professor) was somewhat alarmed by how impassioned I got when talking about certain movies I loved. As a child and even into my late teen years I could jump into a story and lose myself completely. This was a good thing. It helped me unwind and was a little mental vacation.

Sometime in my 30's I realized that I did that, just lost myself in compelling stories. 

Needless to say, I want to stab people in movie theaters who talk. I don't, of course, but the temptation is there... 

I also realized early on that in my family books were going to save me. When we went on vacation we all carried our books. We read in the car. We read beside the pool. We read all.the.time.

I was astonished to grow up and discover people going on vacation without books. 

One of my favorite quotes is from the movie Shadowlands: We read to know we are not alone.

I actually had a therapist once who told me I read too much and it wasn't good for me. I stopped seeing her shortly after that.

The older I get the less I lose myself in anything and I must regretfully admit it's due to Words With Friends. I always have about 25 games going at any one time. My vocabulary is stretched and I play ruthlessly, and amazingly it brings my blood pressure DOWN, I learned the other day at the doctor's office. 

My mother asked me just today what I wanted for my birthday. My answer? Books, of course. 

Happy Birthday

When I was a little girl, there were two women who shaped my life more than anyone else, my mother and my grandmother Wilma Butler Hasty. She was born on June 3, 1899. 

My mother said yesterday "Tomorrow is mother's birthday. I am a little sad."

My grandmother was born at a really turbulent time in history, in a place where the aftereffects of the Civil War were still being felt. The South struggled economically for years. Black people suffered under the harsh Jim Crow laws of the late 19th century. Women had few choices in life.

Women couldn't vote. They didn't win that right until 1920. 

A woman who appeared in public wearing pants would have been shunned. 

Women were expected to get married and have children. Period. Women didn't go to law school or medical school. 

Women were virtually slaves to their reproductive systems because in America it was illegal to distribute birth control of any kind. So a healthy married woman would produce a child every year or two until her reproductive system stopped working or she died. My grandmother was the 7th child of about 14, 12 of whom lived to adulthood. She seldom had the attention of either of her parents because they simply had too much to do. (Note: I do not condemn big families, if that is what is chosen. Family size should be a choice.)

Yet, in the midst of all that, and in a crowd of siblings, Wilma Butler was her own unique self. 

right, Memaw in a tree

As a child, she got into lots of trouble with her sister Hazel, who was also a very strong-willed child. At age 11, Memaw would drive through the streets of Marietta steering a car, Hazel working the pedals. Memaw's dad owned a car dealership, at a time when nobody needed a license to drive.

After years of being tutored at home by governesses, Memaw demanded to go to high school, and graduated from Marietta High School -- at a time when Latin and Greek were required subjects. She then went to Bessie Tift College for several years. At Tift, she studied Home Economics and wrote poetry.

Memaw was the first woman in Marietta Georgia to bob her long thick hair. She also liked to dance the Charleston.

She married my grandfather, Bob Hasty, in 1923, and started travelling - Philadelphia, Chicago, all over the East Coast, everywhere the Philadelphia Athletics played. Then Papa's contract was sold and they had to go out to Oregon and California for several years, away from her family. She learned to cook just about anything with over a hot plate in a boarding house. 

Memaw would also take my uncle, an infant, and drive all the way home to Georgia, alone, to see her family, several times during those years. She always packed a hamper of food and a pistol. (There were no interstate highways in the 1920's, just FYI.)

(Editorial note: My mother wrote a wonderful blog called Working Mothers about a year ago, with her memories of Memaw.)

I didn't learn all that until I grew up, though. The lady I knew was old, but still fierce and brilliant and funny.

She liked to lean over and hold my little face and say "Elva, isn't she perfectly beautiful? She looks just like Princess Grace!"

right, Memaw and me, and my brother with Papa

My mom was sick a lot when I was small and I spent a lot of time with my grandmother. She influenced me a great deal, in ways I am still coming to understand decades later. 

One of the many ways she molded me was that she was very confident, and she never allowed anyone to throw her off her game or treat her badly. She knew what she wanted. I watched her talk to butchers in stores and she always said "I want a nice piece of beef ground THREE TIMES." If the meat wasn't to her liking she didn't buy it. If a vegetable or piece of fruit wasn't good, she didn't buy it.

If my room wasn't clean enough, I had to go back and start over. If my hands weren't clean enough, I re-washed them.

If something at a restaurant didn't suit her, she was vocal about it. "This coffee is COLD," she told a waiter, after dumping the contents of her cup in a water glass, ignoring the terrified look of the waiter at Howard Johnsons.

At her home, when dinner was done she got up and left the table. It was up to someone else to clean up. She had fixed the meal and as far as she was concerned, her work was DONE. Either her children or her husband cleaned up.

At 4'11, she had to be assertive and she had to be fierce. Tiny people must be that way, so the world doesn't run over them. Case in point: her older brothers would pick her up, as a child, and throw her in the swimming pool. She never learned to swim and she was afraid of water for the rest of her life. (However, she outlived all her brothers and became a confident, strong woman..) 

When I knew her, she epitomazed the word "lady." She came out of her room in the morning, she was fully dressed. I never saw her walk around the house in a bathrobe. She would start the day wearing a corset, a dress (or skirt and blouse), hose and heels. Hair fixed, makeup applied. 

 

I was fascinated seeing her scrub lipstick off her teeth with a kleenex.

She loved games but she played to win. She was a world champion at Chinese Checkers and Old Maid. [Never occurred to me as a kid that decades later those games would be considered politically incorrect, and I would be just fine with being an old maid...]

Memaw's purse was, like Mary Poppins' carpetbag, a mysterious and wonderful thing. From it, she produced Chiclets (chewing gum), crossword puzzle books, coins, kleenex, lipstick, a compact (for nose powdering), a small notebook with the correct birthdates and all clothing and shoe sizes of every grandchild, pencils, combs, and any number of other items. One never knew what would come out of that purse.

One rainy day, after my grandfather had died and Memaw was staying with us, my brother and I got into a lengthy game of Monopoly with Memaw. By the end of the afternoon she owned every property on the board worth having and my brother and I couldn't land anywhere without having to pay an exorbitant rent.

My brother was really upset, as I recall. He was writing IOUs and doing anything he could to wriggle out from under the ruthless real estate domination of Memaw, who in another lifetime was undoubtedly a very powerful man, probably an empire builder in England or Rome. She took no prisoners.

She was also, I reflected much later, the daughter of a man who owned a real estate office, and numerous other businesses in Cobb County Georgia.

Memaw was a gifted seamstress. She made all my school clothes for years, at a time when little girls had to wear dresses or skirts to school, and pants weren't allowed. (I was in 6th grade when that changed.) She also made most of my mother's clothes, including formal dresses.

She made little dresses for my barbie dolls.

She made aprons for her 6 sisters.

She saved buttons and thread, and we found a large cache of them when we cleaned out her house after she had a stroke.

right, Memaw as a young girl

 

When I was 14, Memaw had a massive stroke and she spent the final 15 years of her life in a nursing home, not remembering her children or grandchildren. 

It broke my heart to see her like that. The last time I saw her I was in college and I had driven over to Myrtle Beach to see my aunt and uncle. I visited Memaw at the nursing home. She was polite, but she had no idea who I was. I chatted for a minute and walked out and just started sobbing as soon as the door to the facility shut behind me. She was alive, yet not really alive.

Before that, though, she didn't live a half life. She LIVED.

I still think of her, every day, and I miss her. I am so grateful, though, that she was a big part of my life. After Mom and I moved in together in 2005 and we started talking about Memaw a lot, I came to know her better and to feel very blessed that she was my grandmother. 

Happy Birthday in heaven Memaw! Love you always!

 

Dating After 40: the Art of the Dealbreaker

When you're young and dating you're optimistic, romantic, energetic. You start out by "hanging out" and then you "hook up" and at some point you may well find yourself moving in with your honey, or even writing your own wedding vows. 

After age 40, it's a totally different story. Unless you've lived in a cave or a monastery, by 40 you've likely been married or at least had a long term relationship or two, and nothing is taken for granted. 

I remember laughing hysterically at a Sinbad routine in which he said "I can tell within the first twenty seconds, by the way she chews her food, if we have a chance in hell." 

That describes perfectly how it feels to date after 40. 

I participated in a Facebook discussion yesterday where a friend of mine was complaining that when he was married, his wife didn't leave him alone after he got home from work, and he needed the quiet time. I totally get that. When you have a stressful job and you get home all you want is to be left alone -- BTDT. It's a dealbreaker for many folks. 

So that got me to thinking, how does one handle dealbreakers? 

When I was in my twenties, dealbreakers were things like whether or not we liked the same kinds of movies, and if he still lived at home with his parents. By the time I was in my thirties I was very certain about what I liked and disliked and I had no trouble defining that.

In the movie The Ugly Truth, Katherine Heigl's character has a list and quizzes her date ruthlessly about himself, making him very uncomfortable. The first time I saw that movie I was silently cheering her on, thinking YOU GO GIRL!

The movies are to blame for some relationship issues sometimes, I think, but that's a subject for a different blog. Life is never like a movie, would be my premise. [I hear you saying "DUH" -- hush up.]

I did internet dating for a brief period of time, in my late 30's, and I had a definite dealbreaker list. I don't recall the entire list but here are some highlights:

Must like movies

Must love dogs

Must like living in Atlanta

Must be clean (regular showering and toothbrushing)

Must never make ugly remarks about my weight

 

And of course, the dealbreaker of all dealbreakers: MUST want children. Not just grudgingly agree to them in theory, nope. Must LOVE children. 

My dad and his brothers loved kids, and were all great with kids. Not perfect, but loving and attentive fathers. That's what I wanted. Any guy who said he wouldn't change a poopy diaper would've been kicked to the curb immediately.

One of my most serious relationships ended because he didn't want children. At that point I knew I was too old to likely give birth, but he wouldn't agree to adoption either. Needless to say, I was super annoyed when shortly after we broke up, he married a woman with children.

 

What I see so often in my peers over 40 who are dating, especially among the divorced guys, is great bitterness. With women, it tends to be more sadness from being hurt. With the guys, the anger and bitterness become a big part of who they are, and what they don't realize (sadly) is that the bitterness becomes a red flag for those of us who might want to go out with them. 

What's even worse is that the divorced guys will pull that cloak of bitterness around themselves and refuse to part with it before they will agree to go to counseling. The result? They stay bitter and single. They complain about being single. They complain about the lack of good women out there. 

Women sometimes do the same thing -- set the bar too high, and wallow in their misery. 

However, more often, women over 40 or 50 just shrug and say OK, so the dating pool is really shallow. I think I will spend more time with my friends, stay busy, and be happy anyway.

It's better than dating a Bitter Divorced Guy -- because you know at some point you will encounter one of his dealbreakers, or become annoyed by his attitude, and it will come to a crashing halt.

Case in point: my divorced brother breaks up with a woman immediately if she says she wants to get married. 

So here's my advice to all men and women over 40: ditch the dealbreakers. Oh you will still think of them, sure. Nobody is perfect. But take a hard look at those and say to yourself: why not ask if they will consider my way of thinking? Why not look at couples counseling? Will it kill me to be flexible here?

What I find more and more as I get older is that if I change the way I think about my life, my life changes for the better. Change my thoughts and my life changes. It's healing. 

Put another way: attitude is everything. 

If I see myself as a jaded, bitter person who can't find love then THAT becomes my reality. What we think about all the time becomes our reality. 

However, we CAN control our thoughts. My son disagrees with me here, but it's true. (Testosterone seems to interfere mightily with flexibility in thought, I've noticed. That's a subject for another blog though, or a Ph.D. dissertation.)

Here's a truism: if you want what you've never had, you have to do what you've never done. 

The tendency I've noticed among divorced men is they gather their shredded dignity around them and clad themselves in battle armor. The attitude seems to be "I will NOT be fooled again! I made a stupid mistake with that last woman but NEVER AGAIN!"

Yeah. How's that working out for you?

Dating after 40 is tricky and since I've done very little of it you might argue that I have no right to give advice. However, I have seen what does not work, so I feel certain I can at least give this advice: don't use dealbreakers. Don't be bitter. Don't set unrealistic expectations. 

Most importantly, don't look at every new relationship with eyes of skepticism. If you find yourself unable to shake that, seek counseling. There's no shame in that. Think of it as a tune up for your life, not an admission of failure. A good therapist will help you get a new perspective on life, and you will feel unburdened, lighter, better able to give and receive love.

I know, I've been there.