The story of my life. Except there’ve been so many places I’ve looked it’s difficult to believe they were all wrong. Right?
In the beginning, I wasn’t looking at all. I met my first love and husband at a church event. When that ended, I had no idea where to look for love, although finding sex was WAY too easy. Dance clubs and bars were the obvious places. And of course, we have all been told bars are no place to meet the real thing.
Bars weren’t really a thing while I was married. I didn’t even drink anything but wine during the seven years of that marriage. My roommate ordered a beer for me during a ladies’ happy hour, and it took me over an hour to drink it. I didn’t drink beer that warm again until I traveled to England. I did drink cold beer though, when I became a regular in the bars in the Stockyards of Fort Worth, TX, dancing until 2:00 a.m. to country music. I danced holding my beer, or sat it on a table by the dance floor and picked it up to take a swig as my partner and I boot-scooted by. But I digress.
I met one guy there I dated for over a year. Although now that I think about it, he was dating my roommate first, until she stopped seeing him and he got me on the phone one day when he called. He was the one who taught me how to two-step in those Stockyards’ bars.
One guy I met at the White Elephant in the Stockyards was the door guy. He also made teeth as a career. He was amazingly sweet. I didn’t have sex with him because, at the time, my therapist had me convinced that if you had sex too soon with a “nice guy” you ran him off. Yeah. Not so much, I figured out later in life.
At one point, I simply asked him why he didn’t pursue me more. He said he thought he couldn’t “afford” me. At that point, I didn’t have money and neither had my husband while we were married and in school. I didn’t come from money. I can’t help it if I come across as classy. Nor would I necessarily want to be less classy, even while swigging Lone Star beer as I danced by him. He was the right face in the wrong place at the wrong time, maybe?
From there, it was guys I met on planes, at conferences, was set up with, or spotted through a car window. One was walking down the street in Austin as my friend and I drove by. I made eye contact at the stoplight, turned to her and said, “I want him,” and he followed us to the restaurant where we parked. We dated for over a year, stayed friends, and hung out again twenty years later for a bit in San Miguel de Allende.
I met my second husband while he and I were both auditioning for a play. I hadn’t been on stage since high school, and he was a part-time actor in local theater. In many ways, he was the right face in the right place. I’ll never be able to decide if it was the right time, although we had a good 9 or 10 years out of 11.
And then I was in my forties with a new baby, a new Master’s degree, a divorce, and a father of my son who I didn’t marry or stay with. I’d met him in the Plaza in Santa Fe, New Mexico, one of my favorite places on the planet.
Was he a wrong face? Not when I see his same facial expressions on my son’s face. My son also has his dimples and his height. Blake even outgrew him by an inch, at 6’5″. Since I’m 5’2″ Blake and I are both grateful for his dad. Which doesn’t even compare to the fact that he was the first and last man who wanted to have a baby with me. I’m eternally grateful to him for my wonderful son.
Once more into the fray. I spent one whole year dating people whom friends and family introduced to me. In fact, I’d put out the call for them to do just that.
A couple of them were cool, nice guys. For whatever reason, none worked out. I suspect my toddler played a small part. Guys my age weren’t all that eager to begin childrearing again. Did his being biracial make a difference with the white guys? Again, that’s something I’ll never know. Certainly, none were overtly or even covertly racist, or I wouldn’t have dated them in the first place.
It’s true that the one dude I met in a bar and had a resulting relationship with turned out to definitely be the wrong face in the wrong place, even though that lasted four years. Maybe the old advice of don’t meet someone in a bar is good advice after all. Except I’m pretty sure his being narcissistic, an excellent gas lighter, liar, and a constant cheater would be the same if I’d met him in church. Where I’d met my first love.
Now, and for the twenty years since that blew up? There’ve been dating apps. Joy of joys and talk about wrong faces and wrong places. I know, I know, people have found true love online. Some of my clients have, and one of my friends may be on that road as I write. Me though? The only place dating apps have led me to is a broken heart or two. One of those broken hearts was from a stable, interesting widower who was a retired teacher I met on a kink app. Yes, there’s a story there I’ll write soon. It has all the elements: kink, fetish, romance, grief, politics, race, you name it.
In between those two singed hearts, there have been clowns, spammers, and guys looking for sex only and on the first meeting, even from someone my age. The more things change the more they stay the same. I have made a couple of friends though. One is my hairdresser and one is my financial advisor. So there’s that.
What is the best way and the right places to meet potential romantic partners? Obviously, I have no idea. You’ll notice I’ve met mine in every place you can imagine.
So what I have discovered is there are no wrong places to look. There probably aren’t even wrong faces, although looking beneath the surface to the character is a far better plan than simple attraction. Every face of a person with whom you have a long-term relationship, children, a resulting friendship that’s short-term or forever, or from whom you learn and grow is the right face.
Sorry, Johnny Lee.
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Previously Published on medium
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