Like any guy over 60 - or any single guy approaching 60 - I was first of all pissed off that I was single at this age. I mean I had planned to stay married until my black-hearted wife had me shoveled off the floor and tossed into the oven so she could then put it on Clean Cycle. Be married, happily married to a cold, black-hearted creature who resembled nothing so much as her own mother: That was the plan, but it exploded one day when the woman declared she no longer required my services. That was two-and-a-half years ago.

I don't want to spend any time on that. It's the new reality I'm going to attempt to help you to envisage. This is for both men and women, it involves you both. I have always been a guy who went for younger women. My wife was 13 years my junior, and my girlfriend before that, a relationship that lasted over three years, was 20 years younger than I. But when I began closing in on this frightening and fabled age, I found myself in new waters, and I wasn't necessarily prepared for what I found.

I had a couple of abortive relationships with two women who were quite a bit younger than I. Both of these two women had made it known to me - in time honored tradition - that they were single and interested. They gave me their phone numbers, cell and home, one actually batted her eyes at me. One was fifteen years younger and Australian, the other was twenty-two years younger and American. In both instances, there was no issue about age; that is, until I told them what my age was. Then, both became agitated and started distancing themselves from me. The Australian girl was the much sweeter of the two and the much more affectionate. The American girl was a real borderline madwoman. In both cases, once the situation stabilized, it was only a matter of time before they scuttled off. But the Australian talked at some length about how she was entering perimenopause, the Big PM. She felt that perimenopause was fucking with her body so much that she found that almost everything was uncomfortable at some point. I was most gracious about this, very understanding and compassionate. I came back home and there were maybe two exchanges in email before that relationship was put to bed. The American girl thing was just clipped off quickly and stomped on so it couldn't get up again.

I got an earful from some older girls I knew (and there is a constant din in the health magazines, on TV, newspapers, all over the Net about this) who told me I should quit hanging around the younger girls and go out with someone "closer to your age." Initially, this advice pissed me off. I looked at girls "my age" and to tell you the truth, I had zero interest in any of them except as friends, and friends I have plenty of. I am not looking for more friends. But, over time, I began to take the suggestion more seriously. And so I found myself stretching, watching older girls, thinking about how much I really did like my older girl pals, and I said, well, why not? I am beginning to really enjoy older girls, and I know that I can become romantically involved with one. No sooner had I done this (I had prayed to God for two big aids in the search: that my eyes would literally change, that they would see the image of a 55-year-old girl and my brain - this is the toughest part and the one I needed God for the most - would process these older girls as attractive and desirable). I prayed for this quite seriously. I figured that younger women were quickly becoming rarer and rarer even though I did have another girl friend in Sydney who was much younger than the one who was in PM. I never made any move to enjoy her on a romantic basis as I was being true to the perimeno-girl. Wrong move. The younger girl was unencumbered and not in any stage of menopause. Oh, well. Next trip.

My prayers also included this: Dear God, you know that I have a hard time getting out into the community, I have a hard time socializing and finding someone through the normal corridors of chance like bars, church, social gatherings, single clubs, etc. So I said, God, look…if you would be so kind, could you bring me a girl? An older girl whom I could love and cherish? I would not make the same mistakes I have made in the past. I have learned. I have grown. And guess what? God did it. He actually did it, he brought me a girl.

This girl - Nan for the sake of anonymity - was a girl I had known in a previous life, back when a lot of us hung around the L.A. art scene. This girl had partied with our group from time to time, and she had had a crush on one of our number, too. That didn't happen to be me, however, so I was surprised to get a message from another of our old pals who said, Nan was here and asked after you twice. Twice. Me? She was never interested in me. Well, she seemed pretty interested in you now.

POW! That was soooo cool. So I found out how to reach her by email and wrote her. Two days later she called me, and we began to get to know one another by phone and email. She even proposed to come and visit in August. It was all very cool. She has a son, only 14-years-old, but I was perfectly amenable. No problem for me. I never hesitated to tell her that she could bring Tommy with her when she came for a visit. I amazed myself; I was having a wonderful time getting to know a terrific girl, the oldest girl, btw, I had ever even contemplated getting romantically and sexually involved with in my life. And I was genuinely thrilled and happy. Charged up.

You might be asking, well, how come you were so charged up? What was her deal, after all? Well, here is why I went out on a limb for Nan: she very quickly, by the second or third email, was signing off, "Love, Nan". Just like that. No time at all. She made it quite clear that she was looking at me in a way that seemed to single me out as special. But it wasn't based just on that. She also had taken to addressing me, on the phone, as dear, dear heart, sweetie, sweetheart, etc. Well, I was flattered and excited by that, and I returned her affectionate gestures in kind - but not right away. I sent at least 8 emails without any "Love" stuff at the bottom, I stuck to more proper decorum by just saying, Yours, or Cheers or nothing. But I did succumb eventually (she kept on writing Love without a thought). We were soon saying, well, let's talk later sweetie, or how was your day today dearheart? I was solidly interested in her life, I asked her a lot and told her a lot. She was great to talk to, smart, quick, funny; I wanted a good, solid relationship based on good solid open sharing. And then - you guessed it - something happened.

Now I think I might have gotten a little too ahead of the game. I took the affectionate diminutives and the Love signoff to heart. After all, these are not things I toss around lightly, they are not commonly used by me for someone I just met. I am not promiscuous with love talk, I cherish it and believe it. I'm usually more guarded, but her use of them to me, saying Hi, sweetie when we spoke on the phone, etc. seems to have taken down my guard. In retrospect, it shouldn't have; it should have alerted me to the fact that this woman had been - in her earlier incarnations - a tease. Now it seems not to dawn on women that, as we all age, being a tease no longer works. As the estrogen levels subside, the ability to be a coquette sinks with them. And I was just standing there, dumb and blind as ever when, yeah, everything changed all of a sudden.

I hadn't noticed, but she wasn't calling me anymore. I was doing all the calling. She had stopped days ago. But I wasn't worried. We were on the same wavelength, weren't we? We were communicating beautifully. But something was wrong. If you have read my marriage dissolution blog (for some reason I cannot get this link to work, but the marriage dissolution blog does shed more light on this. If I can't get it to work I'll publish that blog at the end of this page*) which prefaces my Australian Trip blog you will know about my history of failing to notice when something was wrong. I don't know it is until I get whacked in the face by it. Then I become excessively pessimistic. I am, unfortunately, too right about that. So this thing began eating at me. It got kind of painful. How could that happen that soon? Especially with No Sex. That was key to me. I've always maintained that as long as there is No Sex yet, the breakup of a relationship can't hurt that much. And generally speaking, yeah, that is right. But that doesn't mean that there is no pain at all. There is quite a bit of it, in fact, and it's startling - and a little worse than it should be just because I'm so offended that there is any pain at all - plus, this pain is all on me. I am angry that I hurt at all. I'm angry with myself for allowing myself to be in pain over something as trivial as a one-week email exchange between myself and a chick in fucking menopause?

Well, it was miserable, and I got a shooting pain in my stomach that just would not go away. What was wrong was this: I was doing all the desiring, and she was beginning to back away. Classic lover/beloved stuff only way too soon and with very little reason at all. The sweet talk was still there, but something I had said in one of my emails, something about being infatuated with her, had alarmed her, and this morning I just asked her point-blank to tell me what was going on. So Nan, an articulate girl, sets about talking about her situation: Tommy was a teenager, and at her (Nan's) age (low to mid-50's) it was a bit harder than it might have been younger. She really should have done this years ago and now been free to begin this third phase of life. But that wasn't the case. So she had a huge priority in her life, and I was very flexible and willing to take that on.

Then she said that she wasn't really that interested in having a relationship right now, not just because of her son, but because of - OK, now…guys only: M-E-N-O-P-A-U-S-E!. Let's hear it for menopause! Destroyer of lives, of sex drives, of friendships, and all around excuse-generator for any woman wanting to reverse a previously intended and arranged time and energy break for a special addition to her heart. But see, her heart was now full. I argued for the expanded heart, but she said, it's expanded all the way out. I made every possible case for having a companion, a partner, a friend, a lover, a cuddler, an intellectual peer in one's life. And then, after I kept doing this I could tell…the menopause thing was now being used as a club to keep me off, and in the middle of this it struck me: here these old bitches were telling me to stop the old behavior, the chasing of young pussy, etc., and give an older girl a shot. What do I do? I fall for it! Hook line and sinker! What a fucking idiot. Menopause is the new whip, the club to batter men all over again with how much the woman is suffering with this very sneaky condition which all but strikes her down to her knees from time to time. So not only does this woman - a woman whom I had not seen in 30 years and whom I had not thought of at all in that time - comes back into my life, starts talking sweet, we make plans for her to come visit (now she is saying, if I can, my son - you fill in the blank) and now she is like a completely different person.

To say it hurt is an understatement. I felt like a fool, an idiot, for having fallen once again for something that was said in some menopause-created blackout, an emotional graveyard filled with the bones of men who have just gone away and died, like old elephants, in a bone yard of horribly bruised, vulnerable egos and acutely sensitive feelings (something women falsely claim they wish men had more of - hey, bitch, I'd like to see a little more sensitivity coming from women, how's that? Make some sense to you? Yeah, you with the little battery-operated fan in your face, I'm talking to you!) which has just been dragged - with much "I'm sorry if you misunderstood me, I really like you as a friend, and I would like to explore this further, but if you want something more (that was the fucking idea, Ms. Menopause), "…I just don't know if I can do that. I mean, my estrogen all but stopped flowing and that makes me no longer interested much in sex," (Gents, before you buy this thread, read any woman's magazine that has an article on menopause in it: Ten-to-one that article talks about that particular aspect of menopause as being a myth! A goddamn myth! And these magazines are selling this shit hard. They're saying that "many women who are in or past menopause have very healthy libidos, strong sex drives, etc. blah blah blah" Just see for yourselves then contrast that horsecrap with the real situation on the ground), and Nan just keeps me running. I'm exhausted. This from the girl who breezed into my life, deliberately stirred shit up, got me to fall for the sweet talk and sweet lies, and then just dumped me, for all practical purposes.

This happened tonight, and the entire affair - remember, we have not seen each other, she lives in Southern Cal and I live in Northern Cal - has run its course from July 21st to July 30th. That's not a record for me, but it is a sober record (I am a friend of Bill's). And I don't mind admitting: I feel the sting. This was mean. This was a trick. And the only way I can square this behavior with Nan is to let myself fall back on the menopause excuse. I am going to say that Nan is not a bad girl. She's not someone who deliberately set out to cream me for reasons unknown (I mean, did I hump and dump a friend of hers thirty years ago? And she is getting me back now?). Menopause made her do it. Yes, you heard it right: Menopause made her do it!

Why am I allowing her to get off the hook here? Why am I letting her use the new Baby Boomer one-size-fits-all excuse, menopause to describe what is actually irresponsible behavior? Because I don't want to think she is mean and cruel enough to have done this on purpose to make me suffer. But Hold...Did not mine own belived tricking wife treat me thus and was I not a solid sap/for buying into her bullcrappe? Hmmm. Methinks I'm but an ass.

Sad, isn't it? Yeah.

But all is not lost. I now know that I no longer have to listen to these old females reprimanding me for not going out with older girls, right? I can just blast their asses back down in their seats with a few references to this character-reforming experience. I can eyeball women in their forties again with the purpose of striking up something enjoyable with absolutely no guilt. And if I hear the word meno-anything, or perimeno-anything, I am out of there no looking back.

Addendum: What about Nan? And what about the fact I was supposed to call her last night but didn't? Well, the call was an option: She and I had had this long talk as explained above, just this afternoon. She had told me her side of the story, fully explained in this blog entry. I had told her mine (that is another 2000 words, believe me) when she had to go to the automobile dealership to get her car which was in the shop being prepared for her trip to San Diego today to go to her wheat grass camping experience. She will be there for I forget how long. Then she picks up her daughter from her camp and then they go to Washington. I think. I confess to fading out because of what she told me and how much it had hurt. The insinuation was that I had misinterpreted what she had said, but for those of you who've stuck to this blog and read this whole entry know that I do not believe it was a misinterpretation. I think it was a volte face, an about face. And I am giving her the benefit of the doubt with menopause as the culprit.

Anyway, she had to leave and get her car. We were not finished. The conversation got cut off (I haven't mentioned this: she often had put me on hold in our conversations. I didn't mind at all until this shift in attitude towards me surfaced. Then it pissed me off). Well, yes, I had more to say, and she graciously offered me this crumb: Ned, if you need to talk more after I get my car, then by all means, call me back later. Get that guys? I said to her, do you want to continue this conversation? And she said, which I now realized she had said before, if you think you need to say more, by all means…In other words, she was trying to make me understand that she didn't need to talk on the phone anymore with me. It was all on me. She would patiently listen. So, as anyone - girls and boys - knows, I never called. There was no purpose to it. It would just have hurt me more. And it would have bored her. It turns out, as many veteran dumpees will recognize, not calling was the move to make. In fact, it was really the only move. Any other act, calling, emailing, any of that would have been just ugly.

So here it is: Nan is gone on a two-week thing. I won't be talking to her. She said that she still wanted to come up here to see me only now it had to pass all kinds of time constraints, Tommy's needs etc. I said, Nan, by all means, bring Tommy. You guys can have my room and I will take the guest bedroom. And I MEANT IT. Good God, how did that happen? Anyway, If there are any women out there reading this blog, tell me, how many men do you know that are that kind, honest, open, willing, and desirous of a woman and are willing to make at least some effort to do what they need done to make it happen. And then how many women do you know who will shit on the guy for saying all this? It's all true, and it's all happening right now.

Nan will not read this. She doesn't know that I have this blog. And even if she does, I can't see anything in it that is deliberately hurtful, just my own words about something that started out with such promise and just petered out to nothing within days. And Nan, if you see this and recognize yourself, think it over a bit. Everything you said today was virtually directly opposite of what was going on just seven days ago. I have the emails. My main contention here is that menopause misleads women, makes them talk out of their heads. So that seems to have the unintended consequence of making said women mislead men. What other explanation do you have? The only other one is the innate evil of womankind. That in every woman there is this twist in her DNA, an extra allele, something that makes her literally try to hurt men, or to hurt a particular man even when she barely knows him.

ekw

*Because I cannot make the link to the marriage dissolution page, I am going to simply add it here:

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this. I figured I would. This is essentially a do-over. Last time I was in Australia, after a great month down there, 200 new bird species, innumerable good times, eating Vegemite for the first time (mmmmm), the Australian pie which is a small meat and potato (or various other things) backed into a small pie you eat with your hands. I love those damn things. And I held a koala bear in my arms. A baby, of course. The big ones would as soon slice out your trachea with claws so sharp you wouldn't even feel the cut at first. No thanks.

The ending of the last one was horrible. I was sick, in a hotel in Sydney. I was waiting for my flight to San Francisco. I had about three days there. I had been communicating with my wife regularly by cell phone. All was fine, loving, great. Then I called her from Sydney to tell her I was there and I.d be home Thursday. Something was wrong in her voice. When we hung up I had that bad feeling, you know the one. The one where there is a sudden, gnawing uneasiness, an emptiness that appears from nowhere, your skin prickles, your breathing changes, all bad feelings that you simply have to get rid of? That one. So I called back.

From that moment my life changed irrevocably. That phone call stands out as the most horrible one in my memory. It issued a stream of hot lava, a pile of hot coals, directly into my stomach. The feeling spread throughout my whole body, and it stunned me utterly. When I asked my wife what was wrong, that I had detected something in her voice that I had never heard before and that was shy I was calling back, she began to cry, and in a small, high voice, she said, "Neddy, I'm divorcing you."

I didn't really hear it the first time. What?

Sweetie, I didn't hear that.

"I'm divorcing you." My body suddenly swamped with a hot, bad, prickly feeling. My throat constricted. I was just stammering. Why? Why? Wait, honey, we need to talk about this. No. I've made up my mind. I'm sorry. I am already filling out the forms. Connie is helping me.

Connie was her sister. It's not her real name. I don't want to bring her into this. I am furious with her, of course, for leaping into this and getting the forms and helping my wife do this. I feel that she acted like a vulture. I still think that she was. It hurt me in another way because I loved my sister-in-law a lot. It was another betrayal.

Beyond that, you have to understand that we - my wife and I - had what I believed was a good marriage. Together for 17 years. We had had couples counseling twice, but not for several years. There were problems. But we had some things which need to get solved. I was sure we could do that with a therapist. And even if not, even if, after therapy, Donna was still set on the divorce, at least I would have had some form of closure on this. I even said to her that it would help me understand better what had happened. But she was scared that she would be "talked into" going back to the marriage. I said that wasn't the purpose of counseling. But she was a brick wall. Adamant. And so, that is the story.

The story of what happened to me in the aftermath - a lot of emotional grief which anyone who has been dumped will recognize (and which my ex-wife, who has never been dumped, will not) - and a house fire which removed from me everything which did not go in the divorce, found me battered beyond belief and a recipient of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. But that long road to recovery is too long for this post. Another time, perhaps.