‘I Found My Soul Mate’
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article by
Amy Keyishian, Special to LifeScript
Published April 23, 2009
Relationship success means finding Mr. Right and living happily ever after. LifeScript talked with two women who found their soul mates. They have a fairytale ending, but getting there wasn’t. It took some hard work and unusual approaches. Here are their stories…
Lois Barth
Age: Over 40
Seven years ago, New York resident Barth was sick of being single, so she signed up for a dating Web site. The result: 35 dates in 90 days – sometimes as many as three a week! After a dizzying ordeal, the comic-turned-life coach met Charlie and has been happily partnered ever since. Here’s her story:
Had you ever been married or engaged?
No. I had lived with men, but was never engaged or married.
What was your longest relationship before Charlie?
I’ve had, I guess, six significant relationships before Charlie. The longest was 4-1/2 years.
What was the most challenging part of being single?
I kept meeting the same type of person 17 different times. I like to joke that the names were changed to protect the guilty — myself. It was so frustrating to meet one unavailable man after another until I realized – hello! – there’s a common denominator and that’s me.
All the near-misses, not having the tools to put two and two together and finding the tools to change things – that was my biggest challenge.
Why do you think you hadn’t met your life partner before this?
I hadn’t addressed the part of myself that was unavailable, and I didn’t get that I really deserved a partner who was crazy about me and treated me as I deserved to be treated. I thought I had to settle.
What inspired your dating experiment?
I just decided to treat dating as a classroom – life as laboratory. I wanted to use dating to find out about myself and who I am. I decided to join an online dating site and just go for it.
You can be miserably single and miserably married. Or you can be happily single and happily married. It’s up to you to adjust your attitude and enjoy the process, whatever it is.
What did you learn about yourself?
Do the work on yourself. Create a vision of what you want in your relationship. But be prepared, because nine times out of 10, it will look nothing like what you expected.
Charlie isn’t my “type,” and that’s what I learned: Hold on to your vision, but let go of your pictures.
Was Charlie one of the 24 guys?
No. Charlie was my mother’s best friend’s dentist. She slipped him my number, but he put it away and didn’t make the call.
Meanwhile, I was on my dating escapade. By the time I was at the end of the 90-day period, I was totally burned out. “No more dates,” I told myself.
This was six months after he’d gotten my number. He was single too and thinking it was time to try going out with someone new. That was the day he called me. Perfect timing.
I went out with about 24 guys in total, but some of them I saw a few times. It added up to 35 dates in the 90-day trial membership. It was pretty intense.
Any memorably bad dates?
I went out with a guy who was just a disaster. In the first place, he kept putting off the date. The second time he postponed, it was because his mother’s house had burned down.
When I asked him how she was doing, he said, “She’s so negative. Me, me, me, my house burned down, it’s all about me.”
At the end of dinner, he whipped out a calculator so he could be sure he wouldn’t pay for the extra cheese I’d asked for. And then, as a grand finale, he said I really wasn’t his type, so he couldn’t promise he’d call me. Yep, that was the worst.
What did you learn about dating during the experiment?
I learned that if you have a sense of humor and compassion, dating is so much easier. If you can be playful about dating, you have a much better time.
One guy was nervous, so he was bragging about his accomplishments. Then he suddenly stopped and said, “I sound like a blowhard,” and started feeling really embarrassed.
I put my hand on his and said, “No, you sound like you’re interviewing me for the job of being your girlfriend – but we haven’t even seen each other’s resumes!”
Suddenly, we relaxed and had fun.
What advice or tips would you give to other single women over 40?
It’s very different for women over 40. By and large, they’re so world-weary that they’re sometimes unknowingly rude – to stave off possible disappointments. It’s great to know who you are and be comfortable in your skin, which happens in midlife for women especially.
But don’t lose your compassion for your dates. Have a sense of humor and cut your date some slack.
Also, don’t rely on the social media side of dating. Meet in person as soon as possible. There are so many people terrified to date and terrified of intimacy that they use social media to hide, rather than just meeting for coffee and chemistry.
And finally, don’t try to play armchair therapist with every guy you date. Rather than deciding why he’s calling or not calling, take him at face value.
Words are weak, behavior is bold: His behavior will let you know whether he is available.