The Cougel* Chronicles: Tales of a Jewish Cougar

A Single Divorcee at a Wedding: Part Two.

2012-02-12T20:15:00.000-08:00

The last time I went to a wedding, I wrote about what it feels like to be the only single gal in attendance (It was fun, but self absorbed displacement was the theme). http://www.huffingtonpost.com/oritte-bendory/how-does-it-feel-to-be-a-_1_b_959085.html

Tonight I went to a wedding too. I didn’t have a date with me, but I didn’t fret. I had a lot on my mind so I didn’t make a big deal out of it. I finished the first draft of my book last night (yeah!) and had a loss in my family that trumped self-pity and over-preparation.

I didn’t fret over what I was going to wear, or whether I was going to meet someone. All that mattered to me was being there for my friend on her momentous day. We had gone to high school together and she had endured some hefty challenges that led her to this moment.

She’s Jewish, from an observant family, and the love of her life wasn’t when they met. But he converted. Like, full on. When you sit at a wedding and see two people make vows to be together for the rest of their lives, it means a lot when you know they’ve gone through a religious obstacle course to get there.

I got married in my twenties. Most of my friends did. For me and my ex-husband, our checklist fit. We were age appropriate, our families meshed, and we had the same backgrounds and religion.

There’s nothing wrong with that. Having similar backgrounds- where it feels second nature- is beneficial. It eliminates the barriers to entry. But when you have barriers, and your commitment to one another - your love - overcomes those barriers...Well, you could say that I might have shed a few more tears at this wedding than I did at my own.

When I walked into the lobby full of people mingling pre-ceremony, I wished I had arrived later. I moved around, pretending I had somewhere to go. I sat down on the couch and checked my phone with purpose. I didn’t know who I knew, and how the night was going to go.

“It’s time to go upstairs for the ceremony!” I realized with relief. I slipped into a seat on the end. And then someone waved to me: a friend from high school I hadn’t seen in twenty years. I jumped up, grateful to have a plus one, or a plus three (she was with some other high school pals of ours). We immediately began talking about our mutual grievances from that time – how our high school experience was unlike the people we’d since met who went to public school, who didn’t have Rabbis as their teachers. I’m not bashing this form of education, because I know many for whom it’s been fruitful. But for me, it wasn’t.

You could say the evening was a collision of my upbringing, my marriage, and where I am today. When the bride circled the groom seven times, I remembered circling my husband in the same manner, and sensing my sisters’ and mother's presence behind me. When the Rabbi talked about the union of these two people, I vaguely recalled a Rabbi talking to me over ten years ago.

When I was the first to rush to lift the chair that the bride was seated on, and carried her to greet her new husband floating atop the sea of people in his, I remembered myself being lifted up on my wedding day.

When the bride was lowered back down, she spotted me and hugged me. “Did you get the necklace?” she asked. I shook my head no, feeling confused and remiss in my guest of the bride duties, before she was whisked away.

We have the opportunity to be there for others - to connect. And at the same time reconnect with ourselves. I was seated at a table with a woman I hadn’t seen in years, who used to be a close friend in high school whose house I’d slept over twice a week. I kept a toothbrush there, and knew what shelf the peanut butter was on in anticipation of our late night pig-outs. And now, we were catching up on our lives, in our late thirties. She married with children, and me- not. But I wasn’t sad. We talked about loss, and love, and life, as the bride - our mutual friend - was preparing to give her speech.

We talked about what matters in relationships, day to day. How the inked boxes on the checklist blur and evaporate over time. We agreed that you aren’t taught those things in high school...or in any school. You learn it through living.

Later, when I came back from the bathroom, my friend was talking to a woman I didn’t know. “Who's this?” the woman asked my friend. When I told her my name, her face lit up. “I have something for you! I couldn’t find you before!” she said, pulling something out of her bag and then opening her palm. It was an amulet - part of a necklace. I realized it was a diamond studded “Chai,” which in the Jewish tradition, means “Life” (“18”). She looked at me and said, “The bride wanted you to have this, but I couldn’t find you. She wants you to find peace and happiness, as her single friend here who deserves it.”

I thought I was emotional during the ceremony, but this gesture took the cake (as the waiter deposited a slice of wedding cake in front of me…).

I guess the bottom line is that in friendship, as in love, the unconventional and the unexpected means a whole lot more. And (hopefully) lasts for a long time too.

“Groupthink”: At what point does collaboration intrude on the self?

2012-01-22T17:33:00.000-08:00

First off, hello! And Merry New Year! To those of you who actually noticed my hiatus, I thank you. I meant to leave a “gone skiing” sign before I disappeared, but some of you already knew where I'd gone. And my apologies to those who would like to know what went on behind that sign, but believe it or not, I do try to keep at least some of my life private.

What I will say, is that without realizing it from the get-go, I embarked on a Solo-cation. I got out of town for two weeks, away from my normal routine and my reliable network of friends and confidantes – to get in touch with myself.

When I got home, I noticed an interesting article in the NYT about “The Rise of the New GroupThink,” http://nyti.ms/ydO6ho which discusses how solitude is out of fashion, and how our companies, schools and culture are in thrall with the notion that creativity and achievement sprout from gregarious collaboration. Lone geniuses are out.

Hmm. This idea conflicts with one of my favorite quotes (etched onto the cover of my journal): “Solitude breeds innovation.”

Picasso said it best: “Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.”

Picasso meant “work” as the process of creation that breeds a tangible creative outcome.

But it made me consider the term “work” on different terms: working in solitude emotionally - on oneself. The process of shutting out all distractions, including the voices of those closest to us, in order to see oneself clearly.

I have a vibrant and extensive support system of friends and advisors, whom I am grateful for and love dearly. Most of them are women. Some are men. Not to mention my two sisters and my mother. That’s a lot of opinions. Or GroupThinking (and Feeling).

During all of my past relationships (marriage not included), I courted and embraced the GroupThink, even while cognizant of its potential to obfuscate my own true feelings or gut. It was a choice I made. Don’t share with those close to you and risk losing that closeness, or share and discuss, knowing that the advice is not always aligned with what’s best for you.

So when I went on my holiday abroad, on the threshold of a new relationship that comes with the challenges of any new beginning, I didn’t purchase an international phone. I didn’t have BBM. I didn’t have easy access to Internet. I was forced to shut off the wireless friendship network.

At first, it felt as if I was in rehab. In a moment of confusion or difficulty, my instinct was to reach out to this network. And when I realized that I could not – that I had to sit in and sift through the gray on my own – I felt an unsettling reprogramming of my thinking. I was out of the zone, thousands of miles out of my comfort zone, with no access to collaborative feelings.

Most of resist the discomfort zone. Our instinct is to flee at all costs. But when we can recognize it as a signal, as an opportunity for learning and change, and force ourselves to hang out in that place, the outcome is rewarding, if not empowering.

When I landed in JFK and turned on my Blackberry, the flashing red light of incoming messages induced a thrilling sensation, akin to a drug offering to an addict. “How was it? I want to hear everything!” or, “I’m sure you’re exhausted but call me this week so we can talk.”

I felt a combination of both gratitude for the loving concern, and conflict over the revelation that the growth I had experienced had been earned in the absence of such inquiries.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t return to feeding those connective channels. I genuinely missed my friends, especially my sisters and mother. I was more grateful for them than I had been before I left.

But I took a chance and tried on something new: “It was great. But it’s a long story, and I don’t have the energy, or the need, to talk about it….”

A few of my confidantes replied with: “I understand. But call me, give me a brief recap?”

But to my surprise, and relief, many of them said, “I understand. I’m here if you feel like talking.”

A few days later, when I did feel the need to talk, I took out my journal (and my novel in progress), and talked to them instead.

Get Busy Living.

2011-12-18T17:05:00.000-08:00

I haven’t blogged in a while. Perhaps it is because I’m writing a new book which now serves as my catchall, my canvas, for newborn thoughts, instead of this blog.

I’m sorry. Although I don’t know who I’m apologizing to. My mom hasn’t noticed. Some friends have, but I talk to them weekly and fill them in on my life anyway. To those of you who don’t know me and wonder where I’ve been, well, I’ve been busy living (if “Shawshank Redemption” comes to mind, that’s not a bad thing.)

I felt compelled to write again because this week, “get busy living” is on top of mind. If you live in NYC, or work in the advertising industry, you may have heard of the tragic unexplained death of someone I didn’t know - but feel like I did - in my industry. She was living her life. Going through the mundane of walking into an elevator on a Wednesday to grab coffee or go to another floor for a meeting, and the cruel and unexplained happened that brought her life to a sudden end.

And then the “whys” ensue. We grasp for answers. Why did something so random and horrific happen to someone we know and love? To anyone, for that matter? I’m not going to attempt a dialogue, let alone propose an answer to such a mysterious and fatalistic perplexity. All I know is that I continued to go through the motions of my day, but with a somber heaviness in my stomach. The only question I can ask, is not what does this mean, but what does this mean for me, in my little life. What am I doing, or not doing, to experience this life and inhabit the nano seconds of my day to day, and to appreciate and love those that matter most?

Did I hear my mother’s voice today? No. Am I pushing the boundaries of my own life, exploring the things that scare me, jumping into situations today, that I’ve been putting off until tomorrow? If the answer is still no, then I’m not getting busy living.

I can’t help but tie this post into a neat bow (since we can’t do that in life), by saying that my new novel which has been focusing my thoughts away from this blog, is about living the roads less traveled. It’s about the what-ifs. What if this amazing woman got detained and didn’t get into the elevator at that moment? What if she had chosen to take the day off, but instead she crossed the street at the wrong time? What is the “wrong time” anyway, or the “right time”? Is there even such a thing?

The more people we meet and the older we get, the more we are touched by loss. I guess we can pretend to have some control. We can trick ourselves into thinking that if we stay home, if we curl up and hide from contact with others, and from adventure - that we are protecting ourselves. If we do nothing more than stick to our mundane routines, we believe we might insure ourselves against risk, its potential losses, and the ups and downs of life. Even if that includes getting into an elevator in the middle of our work day.

But at the end of the day, at the end of the twenty-four hour increment of our short life, all that matters is that we make an effort to get out of our comfort zone, and hold onto what - and who - matters most.

Do we see what we want to see?

2011-11-27T16:52:00.000-08:00

I’m guessing that only my mother noticed that I skipped last week’s post, but I have a good reason.

I’m in the middle of my second book, thanks to NanoWrimo, November book writing month, which forces you to write 50,000 words in 30 days (that’s about 170 pages double-spaced, fyi). As of an hour ago, I’m at 44,000 words, but with the work week coming back with a vengeance tomorrow after the bubble of a holiday, I’m hoping I will knock out another 6,000 before Thursday. I won’t be done with this draft though, but I’m on my way.

A few months ago I wrote a post, entitled “How do we know what we need?,” and this month, I knew I needed a solitary vacation in order to write my book. A friend of mine graciously offered me her house in the Hamptons, and instead of going away with friends to a sunny locale for my first week off in a year, I rented a car and took my dog to a writing vacation.

My dog grew up in LA. She loves the slippery leather of cars, and she loves the outdoors. If only she could have helped me with directions. I couldn’t find the house at first, and it was getting dark. I circled the poorly marked streets several times, only to discover that the house was at the end of a narrow dirt road, resembling a windy hiking trail.

It was beautiful, two stories, and all glass, the large yard encircled by a chicken wire fence (which my dog promptly slammed into, before taking a retarded skate across the covered pool). After taking my bags upstairs and turning on all the lights, I realized how silent it was; just the wind rustling the trees. My stomach sank, and I had a jolt of apprehension thinking of whether I would fall asleep that night. “This is the setting for a horror movie,” I thought. “Who does this? I’m weird.” My dog licked my face and grunted. She didn’t care that I was scared, but I was glad she was there anyway.

I woke up the following morning to shrieks. I sat up. “An animal is getting eaten right now!” was my first thought. When I looked out the window, my breath caught. A formation of twenty massive black birds, the size of chairs, were standing in the leave littered front yard. I’d post a picture of it but I couldn’t get the sliding doors open in time and my Blackberry got the flash of the glass door instead, just as the birds moved off. I tried googling “big black birds..Hamptons” afterwards, but I’m a bad googler, and later I wondered if I had imagined the whole thing. I’m guessing they were a “murder” (apropos?) of crows, but I preferred they be ravens, as my first book is littered with raven imagery. I wanted to believe this was a positive omen - supporting my writing.

The next three days proved to be heavenly. My dog and I went to the beach, and as she ran around like a psycho, eating random dried up wood and sand, I came up with the structure for my book. I wrote for four hours that afternoon, and then took a good book with me to a restaurant so I could read in peace at the bar. Silly me. Some twice divorced real estate guy in his fifties with OCD (he told me so) chewed my ear off instead of his steak, and an old man (a regular) ate my French Fries. When I asked them why there was a painting of a crow (or a raven) on the wall next to me, whether that bird was common in the Hamptons, they looked at me like I was the crazy one. But they couldn’t convince me that it wasn’t another sign, of some kind.

So I meant to talk about this last Sunday, but I was busy living my life I guess. For Thanksgiving, I went to my sister’s house and as she was putting the turkey in the oven, I showed my father the shitty picture of the birds on the lawn, and asked him what he thought they were.

“They’re wild turkeys,” he said, matter of factly.

“No… are you sure they’re not ravens?” I asked, hopeful.

“Definitely turkeys,” he said, and patted me on the head.

Leave it to my practical father to burst my convenient little fantasy, I thought. But as I sat around the table with my parents, my sisters and their children shoveling turkey into their mouths, I was filled with gratitude.

Just like I felt when twenty turkeys woke me on that beautiful fall morning with the promise of good things to come.

Return of the Cougar

2011-11-13T15:43:00.000-08:00

When I started this blog, some readers took issue with the term “Cougar.”

“You’re too young to be a Cougar,” and “Cougars are trampy women in their fifties who hunt young guys and just use them for sex,” are some comments I received early on.

My rebuttal was:

1- Cougarism has less to do with age and more to do with having an affinity for younger men whom tend to have less baggage, and are more emotionally available (not to mention, not married.)

2- Hunting is in the eye of the hunter (and huntee). Just because a woman happens to fall for a younger guy, that doesn’t make it some strategic conquest. They might actually be good together.

3- While I may have had several young boyfriends, I surely never planned it that way. I liked those guys for their personalities (and other things), not their ages.

4- I’m a Cougel anyway, the sweet and mushy kind with old-fashioned Jewish origins.

OK, so none of those relationships worked out so well, and lesson learned, I made a pact to start opening myself up to more age appropriate men. My Jdate profile specifies my ideal match as “34-52.”

But that doesn’t stop the cubs from knockin, or change the fact that some men simply prefer older women. I’d like to believe that those that do are more mature. Women their own age don’t challenge them, or have enough going on in their lives to keep the relationship eventful (drama?) and rich (unstable?).

I guess it is inevitable that after a potential relationship with an older man imploded, I’d start idealizing the appeal of my ex-cubs and consider reaching back out to them. It’s impossible not to compare, or to come off one relationship and react to it by thinking your previous ones had more to them than you realized.

Coincidentally, the young finance cub (“YFC”) I met last month must have sensed where my head was going, because he started texting me again (I was not responsive to his earlier requests). He didn’t play games or bother with passive aggressive subtexts. He simply wrote: “YFC seeking fit Cougar for libation.” Followed by: “When can I take you out? Let’s make this happen.”

That kind of stuff (humor and candor) goes a long way at any age. But especially for someone ten years my junior….

…who looks fifteen years my junior, I realized when I met him for a drink. Was it in my head, or was the bartender looking at us funny? And then I saw some colleagues I know having drinks at the other end of the bar, and I considered hiding.

Conversation flowed. Great guy, I thought. The kind of guy with promise for the long term.

I’d go out with him again, but I should I? How many times do you have to burn your hand on the little stove, I thought, before you stop touching it? (I might have even said this to him after our second mai tai).

But “we’ll see,” “you never know,” etc. are my new mantras. Read: openness.

For example, the other night I went to a Jewish Fundraiser (I was invited last minute) at a Greenwhich Village club. I’m normally reluctant to attend such functions because the women there tend to look like they spent days getting ready, hair perfectly curled, and I usually feel like the odd tomboy out. But I was open. You never know, right?

I ended up hanging out with the cool girls at the coat check. And then an employee at the club started chatting me up. He was moving garbage pails around so I’m guessing he wasn’t the manager of the establishment. He was stocky and bespectacled, and in his early thirties.

“I like Cougars,” he said to me.

Really.

He proceeded to explain why he loves older women (I happened to agree), that he had been in the military, and has a wife and four children.

“What are you doing here?” he asked me. “You don’t seem like the other girls in there.”

“No kidding,” I said.

“Listen. Go out with me. Winter is coming up. I can keep you warm at night,” he said.

Luckily I could cut to the front of the coat check line without any problems.

So is the Cougar back?

Well I’m definitely not hunting young cubs, but seems to me they couldn’t care less.

Balance. What does that even mean?

2011-11-06T17:40:00.000-08:00

Balance. I’ve been struggling with it for months. How do I find time for my job, my friends, my family, furnishing my new apartment, dating, and last but not least, my writing? (and to those of you reading this who have kids too, I'd love to know how you do it!).

Yes I know I blog every Sunday, and it counts as writing, but having survived the process of writing a novel, of seeing a story come to life – in the absence of that, I’ve been feeling flat inside. Like a light has gone off inside my soul (cheesy though it sounds).

“You have no balance,” people have said to me. “Duh,” is my response.

But how does one find it?

I think that sometimes we perceive “balance” as this tangible thing that’s playing hide and seek with us...that’s lurking just around the corner. “If only I could just run right into it, then I’d feel better.”

But of course, that never happens. We have to create our own balance, from inside, via the choices we make, the things we say yes to, and maybe more importantly, the things we say no to.

When I started writing my first book almost four years ago, I had to train myself to say no. I had to respect my personal time, and protect it, whether anyone understood or not. It wasn’t easy at first. I told my parents, sisters, and friends to pretend that I was getting my law degree part time, on evenings and weekends, and that I wouldn’t have the luxury of hang out time until I was finished. Which came eventually – two agonizing years later. But it was worth it in the end.

And now? I’m doing it again.

For months now, I had been anticipating the month of November (a coincidence that the word “No” is in it?). November is “National Book Writing Month,” otherwise known as "NaNoWrimo.” All you have to do is sign up, and then write about 1600 words a day, which multiplied by 30 or so (I’m bad at math), equals about 50,000 words. An entire book.

Sounds easy, right? Or frightening and utterly insane?

Every morning for the past six days (since Nov. 1), I have been getting up early (7am is early for me), and instead of going to the gym, I go to my writing gym (a café). When I first sat down and opened my laptop, I had nothing but a concept, but here I am on Day 6, and I have twenty pages of something that sort of resembles a story. That’s more than I had a week ago. I think some of it sucks. In fact, I know most of it does, but as I write, everything around me disappears. And when I get to my office at the same time I have been for the last nine months, I feel lighter. I feel fed. In other words, I found balance.

A week before NaNo started, as I anticipated beginning, little things around me started to shift. I felt a “click” in my job. I was settling into my new apartment. It started snowing and I felt less obligated to go out all the time. Things didn’t work out with JDate guy. It was as if the universe was listening to me, and decided to give me a break. It rearranged the furnishings of my day to day, and made space for me. But I had set it in motion.

One day at a time. 1600 words at a time.

When you think you know what you need, do the opposite.

2011-10-30T15:42:00.000-07:00

In the past few years since I started this blog, I’ve written a few posts that diss online dating.

“I have three friends who are now married who met on JDate!” people had said to me. “It’s not for me,” I stated emphatically enough to bring the conversation to a close.

I have several friends who met that way too. Match.com, eHarmony, OkCupid (which I dubbed “OKStupid” during the two weeks I was on it). But I wanted to believe I could meet someone the organic way, where the element of discovery could exist. Where I could wake up one morning and realize, wait, I think I have feelings for this person. Where the decision, or the turn in the emotional road, could feel like it was my doing. I wanted to meet a partner through mutual friends, at dinners or industry parties, or via existing friendships with men that developed over time, with the absence of pressure or the flagrant “Do I like him?” question on a first date.

My last three relationships since my divorce did indeed happen that way. But did they last?

Would I be writing this if they had?

I got on JDate last year, in between my cub breakups, but my heart wasn’t in it. Looking back, I’m guessing that I didn’t want to swallow the bitter pill and ask the question, as a busy divorcee in the city, “has it really come down to this?”

But last month, for whatever reason, I decided to get back on that horse (see obvious metaphor below), and messaged a few interesting looking fellas who I might not have considered two years ago. Men that weren’t my “typical types,” read: in their forties, divorced with kids, who live outside of Manhattan.

I even decided to meet one of them for a coffee (sober) on a Saturday morning (hungover).

Okay, so as a blogger, I’ve been (correctly) warned by many of you who read and comment, that I should not blog about my dates, so I’m not going to. But I can’t resist a good story (so forgive some omissions).

I went on a few dates with this gentleman, and was unsure. I wasn’t hit by some bolt of lightening. I almost canceled our third date because I was working too hard, my schedule was packed, and he didn’t fit the usual checklist I follow. But he was (thankfully) persistent. He tolerated my indecision, and the six hours it took me to respond to some texts.

And then he invited me to the most unusual kind of date: a horseback ride in the country.

I had to fill out five pages of paperwork: waivers, emergency contact info, and then figure out how to use my fax machine. “What kind of guy makes me do homework for a date?” crossed my mind, but I told myself to chill out and be open. I figured that if anything, it would be an adventure, and a chance to get out of the city at the end of a long week.

He picked me up at the train station and when we arrived at the Farm, we both burst out laughing. In front of us was a large muddy corral (at least I’d like to think it was just mud), with horses walking in circles around an instructor. This was no horseback riding trail – this was horseback riding lessons, in forty degree weather, on a Friday night.

We were handed hats with shower cap linings to put over our heads, and then I was handed my horse, Buddy. “Buddy is a narcoleptic,” the trainer said. “So he might fall asleep on you.”

My date was told to hold my horse by his holster and lead him – he didn’t even get his own horse. He started telling Buddy some bad jokes, in order to keep him awake. I was laughing so hard I wasn’t listening to the instructor, who then yelled to me from across the corral: “You’re not paying attention! I said sit up in your saddle!”

My date and I exchanged glances that meant: “Let’s get out of here.”

He walked Buddy and I over to the instructor and without a hesitation said, “We are leaving. What should we do with the horse?’

I’m not going to talk about the rest of the evening here, but what I do want to convey is that sometimes, the things we least expect, or think we don't want to do, turn out to be the best things for us. Sometimes, if we just open ourselves up and allow ourselves to be surprised - rather than close ourselves off and fall into the comfort of what we’ve always known – the unexpected can develop.

As of this morning, I was going to end the post here. But then today, I decided to go to lunch and read like I always do, but at a café I’ve never been to. As I was sitting and reading the NYT (“Modern Love” of course), an older distinguished couple sat next to me. The man looked like a famous character actor: pin striped suit, bald head, and big bushy mustache. He was drinking a glass of wine with his pasta, and the elegant woman across from him looked like a Parisian designer.

I couldn’t help but smile at them, and then the man turned to me and nodded, asked if I lived in NY (he had a thick Italian accent), and after some small talk, he put his fork down and said, “You are creative. And strong. It is in your face. A man who doesn’t know what he wants, is not for you.”

I was speechless (a rare moment).

He pointed to the seat across from me, “This is why you don’t have a boyfriend sitting here,” he said. “And here,” gesturing to the empty booth beside me. “But is okay. You had one six months ago, but he was not for you and you toss him away.”

His wife told me how he likes to tell people that life is like mixing water with wine… that young people don’t realize that. But as you grow older, you realize you have to be flexible. That you can’t expect things to be one way, and if you are open to it being otherwise, you blossom.

I had to turn away at that moment to write this exchange down in my journal, and told them to enjoy their meal. I didn’t want to disturb them, but I also realized I had a gem of a story on my hands.

When they got the check, the man leaned over the table towards me, shook my hand, held it and said, “You have a good future. Believe in your future.”

As they turned to leave, my hand was on my heart, overcome by emotion.

I wanted to tell them that just this week, or perhaps in the country – with life and laughter coursing through me - that I had decided to do just that. I had decided to get back on that horse (even though he was sleeping), and welcome that exact possibility.

Can a lecture teach us about love?

2011-10-23T19:24:00.000-07:00

I went to a Kabbalah lecture this week.

I don’t attend lectures. I don’t like to be lectured to. And I have a hard time sitting still.

But I’ve always been intrigued by it, and rather than guessing, or wondering what exactly Madonna was up to, I figured I’d educate myself. I also have an idea for my next novel, so what prompted me to actually go this time was plain old research.

It was held at the Kabbalah Center, a pretty and informal space in midtown, and the teacher was charismatic and funny. He shared a few stories where the universe offered up signs to his students that provided clarity.

And then he asked: “How many people here have been in a relationship they regret?”

Everyone raised their hands.

Except me.

Just because a relationship doesn’t work out, and even when it’s ended badly, I’ve never regretted it. I’ve learned not to regret it. I work hard (and it is work) to find something new and meaningful in every relationship I’ve been in, including my 14 year relationship with my ex-husband. I was surprised that almost everyone in that room believed otherwise. Maybe the question was a pointed one; maybe the teacher was planning on explaining (if you signed up for the 10 week course) how to view experiences positively.

Then he said, "Turn to a stranger next to you and share your name, profession, and who the first person you fell in love with was and why."

The girl next to me went first. She didn’t hesitate when she uttered the name of her first love.

But I did. I didn’t have an immediate answer.

And then I realized, saying it aloud to a stranger, that the first person I fell in love with was my ex-husband.

A sign? Was I there to illuminate an emotion, to embrace something that I didn’t realize until that moment was true?

Maybe.

The next exercise: “Write down the name of the person in your life that pushes your buttons, and why, and share it with the person next to you.”

When the girl next to me showed me the name of the person she wrote down, my mouth dropped open.

I know him.

He is someone I met in the publishing world three years when I wrote my first book, and speak with sporadically.

And there it was, his name staring me in the face, as I ponder what to do with my first book, and contemplate my second.

Another sign? Or just a coincidence?

It dawned on me that I don’t necessarily need a class to teach me how to see the signs, or little “tells” that life offers. Writers do that on their own. It is how we are built. We open ourselves up to the world and seek to connect seemingly disconnected dots – and ask ourselves what it means (even though it can drive us crazy). I do it in my weekly posts, as I look back on my week and identify the associations between disparate events.

As I am doing here (insert transition).

Later in the week, my parents came into the city to look for some new furniture so I met them at a nearby store as they were trying out a sofa that my Mom liked. My Dad didn’t like the sofa, but we got comfortable on it anyway, and started to chat.

Without getting into the specifics, my Dad wanted to share with me his thoughts on my dating patterns and my stage in life.

My initial reaction: “Oh boy. Here comes another lecture.”

But then I opened my mind, and my heart, and really listened. I learned more about life, self-improvement, and perspectives on relationships from those ten minutes with someone who knows me best, than I could ever get from a class with a room full of strangers.

My father wasn’t giving me a lecture, or trying to get me to sign up for an expensive ten-week course. He was just giving me one thing: Love.

And that makes all the difference.

What happens when a single divorcee goes to a...Bar Mitzvah?

2011-10-16T16:25:00.000-07:00

This was a week where the running theme was “milestones” – weddings and Bar Mitzvahs.

I didn’t go to a wedding, but I could have gone to my own. I was sitting outside my office the other day, when a man walked by and said, “Can I ask you a question?”

I nodded.

“Will you marry me?” he said.

I chuckled, and thanked him for the flattery. Before he turned to go I asked him, “What would you do if I had said yes?”

“I’d take you to Vegas this weekend, "he said. "I’d buy you presents. I cook and I clean.”

I smiled. “That’s nice of you. But I’m engaged,” I said, hiding my unadorned ring finger behind my back.

Maybe I learned my lesson the hard way from telling my mover that I was single. Or I subconsciously knew that “engaged” projected optimism and love (saying you’re married doesn’t always have the same effect), and he would be instantly deterred.

It worked. He politely introduced himself, shook my hand, wished me the best of luck, and then walked away.

That was a first.

A few days prior, on a date with a divorced man, the topic of marriage came up a few times - not a surprise - or a taboo - when two divorcees are conversing.

So did the topic of Bar Mitzvahs. The guy has kids around that age, and when I referenced how often I go out to bars with clients for drinks (too often), he mentioned how much wine he gets put in front of him…at Bar Mitzvahs.

I laughed. But I wasn’t laughing at him, I promise, even though it seemed that way (he laughed along with me). I found it funny because it was in sharp contrast to my own lifestyle, although I understand that your children’s lives can dictate the way you live yours.

Today I went to my nephew’s Bar Mitzvah, held in a beautiful synagogue in New Jersey (my second time in synagogue this month, let alone this year). He is my only nephew amongst 5 nieces, and this was a big deal. Both my sisters and I went to the same high school, and I knew all of their friends. It was nice to see old faces (older, yes, but everyone looked the same). My older sister’s friend was there, a talented cantor who chanted the prayers. He also happened be my sister’s ex-boyfriend, who later set her up with her now husband. In a way, it was because of him that my nephew stood there on that day.

I met my ex-husband in college. Years later, he and I introduced his best friend to my younger sister. They are now married with beautiful children.

I thought about what my date the other night had said about frequenting Bar Mitzvahs, and as I sat in the sanctuary listening to my brilliant nephew speed-read the Torah, I struggled to recall when the last time I, a single woman without children, had been to a Bar Mitzvah.

When the service ended, I instinctively ducked as tiny packs of candy sailed threw the air, pelting the Bar Mitzvah boy. It is a Jewish custom to throw candy at a groom before his wedding, to wish him a sweet marriage, and that custom has extended to a Bar Mitzvah boy as well.

That’s when I remembered. Ten years ago, I was standing at my brother in law’s Bar Mitzvah, when my ex-husband was struck in the cheek by a stray bag of caramels. This time, my sister (the mother of the son), was struck in the eye (Gosh, kids are mean! But it was an accident!).

The party was held in the sukkah. It was a colorful fall day, and the tables were beautifully decorated with fresh fruit (No wine. Although that didn’t stop Mom from taking a sip of my club soda to verify that it wasn’t vodka).

I got to catch up with my third cousin who I have not seen in years, and chat with his interesting wife. Maybe they thought I was interesting too, because as the event wound down, they told me they had the perfect (age appropriate) guy to set me up with.

I found it ironic that at weddings I don’t meet anyone, let alone get offers to be set up.

Disclaimer: not that this was the goal at my own beloved nephew's Bar Mitzvah of course!

But the thought did occur to me. Maybe I (and all divorced women in their thirties and forties) should start going to Bar Mitzvahs. Has anyone made a movie called, “Bar Mitzvah Crashers”?

I’d watch it. Or maybe I should go to a few more Bar Mitzvahs, and then write it myself.

PS. To those of you who commented on my last post and wondered what happened with the young finance cub, the answer is: ultimately, nothing. But I did get a good story out of it. Stay tuned.

Atonment. Change. And of course, Kugel.

2011-10-09T19:26:00.000-07:00

It must be timely that I’ve moved to a new apartment on the Jewish New Year, which is a time of self reflection that leads to resolutions for change. I usually visit my family in NJ for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, but this Yom Kippur I wanted to stay in my new apartment. That wasn’t enough of a legitimate reason for Mom, so I told her I’d find a synagogue to go to here in the city. To Mom (or any Jewish Mother for that matter), what this really means is: I’m going to single mingle with other Jews. Aka, meet a nice Jewish Boy.

“Go to the Soho Synagogue! You must be with your people!” my mom said, excitedly. I'd heard about this Synagogue, a progressive and fancy new place that aimed to attract non-affiliated Jews who don't have time to regularly observe. “I brought an article from Israel, from an Israeli paper, that says there are professional singles that go. And it’s in Soho. You like Soho.”

I’m not sure why Jews that hang out in Soho would be any different than Jews who don’t, but I did briefly live on the Upper West Side, and so..I had hope.

When Mom asked me on Wednesday what my plan was, I told her I made a reservation for Saturday morning services. I hadn’t, but I figured it wouldn’t be difficult. But with my busy week, by the time I got around to purchasing a ticket (yes, praying costs money….especially when you’re a Jew cramming in a years worth of repentance into two hours), it was sold out! What to tell Mom? I had already fibbed. Not a good beginning for a day of atonement.

I had to go now. Besides, since they were sold out, it naturally made me want to go alittle bit more.

So after a long work day on Friday, I got home to my unstocked kitchen and realized I had no food to kick off a fast day. Usually, I eat a bland (salt makes it harder to fast) matzo ball soup and chicken meal at my parents before sunset, with lots of water, but this time I walked down Sixth Avenue with my dog, and got myself a salty burrito at Chipotle, which I inhaled with a glass of wine.

By the time I got down to the Syngagogue, it was close to 9pm. My “people” were mingling outside the swank space (which resembled a Marc Jacobs store), and I was alone. But I didn’t mind. I knew being alone meant that I could leave whenever I wanted.

Women sat on the right, men on the left. I sat on the aisle, and felt like I was back in sleepaway camp, being checked out by the boys, and wanting to check them out too. My first impression was that they looked kinda cute. I like the jacket and tie with Converse sneakers look. These guys are well dressed, I thought. But I soon realized that you’re not allowed to wear leather on Yom Kippur (I was wearing knee high leather boots. Woops). I’m also a sucker for longish hair under a yarmulka (don’t ask me why), so I thought, hey, this isnt that bad.

Twenty mintues into the service, I got progressively sleepier (wine), and my stomach hurt (burrito), and the kinda cute guys didn’t look kinda cute anymore. Did they look good initially because my expectations were low, or was my judgement distorted because of the “jewish singles” setting? Was I once again, just like the last time I was in synagogue a year ago, wearing synagoggles?

I made it for an entire hour and fifteen minutes before turning into “that kid” – the only one that bolts before the sermon. The kind of meditation I was in need of was the closed eyes kind that happens in bed.

I have nothing against prayer. I admire, and in a way I envy those who go to services each week, who enjoy it, who get something out of it. I did try to concentrate. I swayed, I sang the kol nidre, and respectfully stood when the ark was opened. Maybe it wasn’t for me. Or maybe I was just too worn out – and distracted – to be present enough to draw meaning from that experience. Perhaps that was what I needed to find out. It’s not supposed to be as easy as flipping a switch. Maybe if I keep going, if I keep showing up, I will eventually get into the flow and connect with it (not unlike writing).

I fasted, like I do every year. And then went to my good friend’s break fast in Brooklyn and broke my fast on bagels, lox, and three different kinds of...uh...yeah...kugel.

Post script: I wrote the above after a lovely (and long) day with my beautiful family. They came in to help me with the apartment. My nieces made hairdos for eachother while my dad changed lightbulbs and brainstormed how to add a shower head in my bathtub. I had half an hour before changing for a date I was not thinking about (due to all of the above). The date was good (nope not talking about it!), but I wanted to come home to post. I don’t yet have internet in my apartment, so I came down to the “lounge” in my building that has internet – and an outdoor patio. Which is filled with people having a Sunday night BBQ and blaring Coldplay. As I sat here to open my computer, a nice guy (young finance cub) came over to apologize for disturbing me, brought me a glass of Cabernet (not a beer), and invited me to join them “when I was done with my thing.”

So do I think change is a coming, and is good?

Definitely. To be continued.

Can looking back help us move forward?

2011-10-03T17:32:00.000-07:00

Some people believe that talking about the past sounds melancholic, burdened, and downright sad. But how can we fully appreciate where we’ve come, without acknowledging where we have been?

I’ve moved numerous times since my husband and I separated. Whenever someone asks me how many times, I have to count again – just like when asked how many years I’ve been divorced. I have to take my hand out of my pocket and count on each finger. “I’ve moved 6, 7 times? I’ve been separated 4, 5, years?”(as if they know the answer).

I moved to a temporary corporate apartment (aka upscale dorm room) because I sold my house in LA, and then from there I moved back to NY where I sublet a friend’s boyfriend’s (now her husband) Upper West Side apartment. It was furnished with guy things: a massive wood entertainment center for Football watching, and beer glasses lined the shelves. But it was comfy; and a block from Central Park where I could take my dog off leash before 9am. From there I moved to a small place in Soho, which was finally my own. I painted the walls pink in celebration of my newfound single girl hood (and I don’t do pink). The kitchen was the size of a shelving unit, there was one tiny closet, and the walls paper thin. My pesky neighbors left weird psycho killer style notes in crayon under my door. So I upgraded to a nice apartment in NYU-ville. The rent kept going up, and alas, today I moved to what I hope will be the last stop for me for awhile. I just unpacked the last (visible) box. The rest are shoved in a closet (but at least I have closets).

When I was packing last night, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that midway through, looking at all the boxes splayed open before me, that I wasn’t momentarily gripped with an achy emptiness in my chest. Naturally I told myself, this is a good thing! Change is good – you can never go wrong with a fresh start. The apartment I was leaving held memories of my last two cub boyfriends, and I understood that moving to a new place would help me move on.

I like stability. People who saw my Facebook status wondered why I was moving again. Why couldn’t I stay put? I’d like to. Unraveling your nest, in one day no less, is unsettling and disruptive. Noone wants to move knowing that the next place will be temporary. We have to make each place our own, and hope that it sticks.

My movers were timely and diligent. The foreman was playing smooth jazz from his iPhone while he flipped my mattress up against the wall, and then turned to me and said: “Do you have a boyfriend?”

When caught off guard, I tend to be naïve (a close cousin to dumb), so not realizing what he was getting at, I said (projected): “If I had a boyfriend don’t you think he’d be here helping me?”

“I’d like to take you out tonight,” he said.

“What? Tonight?” I replied.

“Yeah. You’re an attractive women and you have pretty hair, you should wear it down more often,” he said, plastic wrapping my mattress with a squeak.

I looked away and pretended I received an important text on my Blackberry. “I can’t tonight, I have friends helping me unpack.”

I wondered if I had said no, would he mess up my move? If I had said, “sure,” would he have given me a discount? (My Jewish Mother said the same thing when I told her later).

When I texted my sisters: “My mover just asked me out,” they both replied: “Hot Israeli?”

I cracked up, and then decided to keep the humor going.

“No,” I wrote back. “Nice looking cub, but he’s black, and Mom and Dad are still having a hard time accepting a white Christian guy.”

When the last of my things were out, I walked through the place to pick up last bits of trash. Tucked in one corner, and in one of my closets, was my ex-cub’s business card, and then one of his CDs (he’s a musician). And then I found - and threw away - my other ex-boyfriend’s love notes (I did hesitate, but at least I didn’t re-read them).

So here I am. Sitting on my couch with my dog’s head in my lap, boxes on the floor and the walls in serious need of a paint job. But that’s ok. I’m in no rush.

I don’t plan on going anywhere for awhile.

Choose Your Own Adventure.

2011-09-25T16:36:00.000-07:00

When I got divorced and left Los Angeles almost six years ago, going back for a visit has always been surreal. My job producing commercials took me there every three months or so, forcing me to confront a life I once led, from a different perspective.

It also forced a spotlight onto my emotional healing and the progress I was making. The first time I got into a rental car, rather than my beat up Saab which I sold upon moving, and drove up La Cienega Blvd. towards the Hollywood Hills where I used to live, the thick knot that inhabited my chest would expand, engulfing me in a surreal melancholy and sense of loss. Checking into a hotel with my new coworkers, who weren’t privy to my past or the knowledge that I was in a way “home,” although it was no longer my home, created a disconnect that I knew I’d get over in time, but was palatable nonetheless. Every café, intersection, even the perfumed scent of bougainvillea, elicited a jarring memory of a moment I had shared with my ex-husband, and there was no way around it.

Part of me was compelled to confront it. For the first three trips I made out there, I’d find myself steering my car up into the hills, towards my old house. When my husband and I bought it had been in shambles, and we had lovingly renovated every inch of it: we built a deck, paved the driveway, and installed a colorful orange tiled “kid’s bathroom.”

The house was still there, now inhabited by a family. I’d slouch down in the seat of my rental car, parked in front of the house across the street and stare at my old house. I was a voyeur of a stranger’s life, merged with - in a way sprouted from – my old life. The house looked the same, yet foreign; the driveway now jammed with a Volvo station wagon, a child’s pink bicycle, and a baby carriage.

I didn’t confess to anyone (until now, publicly!) that I had done that. When I asked myself why I willingly put myself through that, I think it was because I needed the concrete evidence that that life had existed. That it wasn’t an intangible memory that existed solely in my mind – in my past.

You could say that in the way divorce is compared to a kind of death, it’s not necessarily different than pulling out pictures of a lost loved one, as a reminder, or more so, to honor a past life that once was. I was also in the midst of writing my novel, based on that experience, and I suspect I did that to activate some kind of sorrow so that I could feel it in the present and write from that place. That might sound masochistic – like sticking a fork into your own heart – but there was no stopping me from that trancelike endeavor.

As the trips became more frequent, the sorrowful cloud began to dissipate. And as my colleagues became my close friends who understood what I had been through, it got easier. One of my coworkers, a confidante, surprised me one day. “Do we have some time before callbacks?" he said. "I want to see your old house.” I was shocked, but willing. Driving by the house with a friend from my new life in the passenger seat, and watching his reaction (“Wow, I get it now. You had this whole other life before us!”) gave me a sense of validation. But it also made me realize that I was no longer sad. I felt nothing but pride. I was proud to realize that I had finally moved on. That wasn’t my last trip to LA, but it was the last time I saw my house.

I now have a new job, which hasn’t required me to travel to LA, except this weekend. It’s been nine months since I’ve been back, and this time I’m not here with my coworker pals. I’m here alone; a businesswoman staying at a hotel on a business trip. Again, the changes I’ve made, and the life I am living in NYC is thrown into sharp contrast with the life I would have had had I stayed in LA. My LA friends are now married, living in pretty houses. Some of them have kids. Seeing couples my age at lunch, with their toddlers in the seat beside them, makes me think of the almost life I would have had; had I stayed married to my ex-husband, and stayed in my old house.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was strange, and that a new kind of melancholy didn’t possess me. The inevitable questions swirled: What happened? I was so close to having a certain kind of life, wasn’t I? Was I just a few years away, or even months, from having the kind of life where the strollers in the driveway could have been my own?

I realized that the timing, as always, is noteworthy. As I bid a final farewell to the life I didn’t lead, memorialized by the four walls of a house that is no longer my own, I am beginning to embrace my new life in NYC, and a new apartment that I will be moving into that is mine, and mine alone.

We make choices in life that are born out of the present moment. When we make them, we consider the impact it might have on our future, but that future is hypothetical. It is a hypothetical path that we cannot travel down if we are to choose a different one. It’s like the “Choose Your Own Adventure” books that I was obsessed with as a child, where you are "the star of your own story," and there are forty possible endings. We choose our own adventure, and once we do, the other choice and its consequences fall away. And we have to live with that.

But it doesn’t mean that sometimes we can’t play the “what if” game. It is human to wonder how different our lives would look had we stayed put - had we not encountered the people or events that spun us in another direction. But that choice is ours, and in turn, the reward comes in the form of a new experience. Life is short, but it is also long, and while we can only live out one possible ending, there are infinite choices we can make along the way.

As long as we learn to embrace those decisions - and make the most of them.

Ten Reasons (Not) To Get Back Together With Your Ex.

2011-09-18T18:11:00.000-07:00

How many people do you know suffer through a break up (amicable or not), only to get back together with their exes? How many people do you know who have done that more than once?

(Raises hand).

Why?

1. Habit: A big fat vacuum exists after a break up. Something (someone) is missing, and you have to readjust to being on your own, without a partner to share things with. This creates an acute yearning for that person which is easy to label as “it must have been love!.”

2. Romanticizing the good: Over time and distance, the “bad things” recede and the good things take center stage in your mind, and you put the guy up on a pedestal.

3. Limited options: Any new potential mate’s appeal wanes in comparison.

4. Laziness: The idea of starting the get-to-know-you process all over again with someone new seems exhausting and dreadful. Not only do you have to span time with that new person, but you have to tell your stories all over again (or you can cheat by having them read your blog).

5. Comfort: You ex knows your friends, is familiar with the fights you’ve had with your siblings or boss, and knows where your dog likes to be scratched.

6. Jealousy: You hear he is dating, and the knowledge that he is focused on (or having sex with!) someone else other than you propels you into action. (see: Ego).

7. Ego: He doesn’t contact you at all, and his Facebook statuses show him partying in bars and on boats. The realization that he might be over you hurts and is mistaken for an “in love” feeling.

8. Love by association: You spend time with friends who say, “He was a great guy, and I was sad when you split,” sending you into a regret spiral.

9. He comes back: Just when you think you’re over it, and start feeling good again, he somehow picks up on it and comes back into your life with compliments and promises (however well-meaning).

10. No single friends: Most of your friends happen to be in relationships or starting new ones, and it makes you miss being in a couple.

The list could probably continue past #10, but I thought I’d stop here, and start discussing the more hopeful and optimistic reasons some people get back together:

There is something left unexplored.

With time apart, both people have grown and truly come to appreciate the other.

The circumstances that drove them apart (a new job, long distance) change.

They broke up in haste, over a fight, and get back together because it was stupid for them to split over boxers on the bathroom floor in the first place.

Some people need (and are addicted to) the drama of a break up, and use it to wake them up to their feelings.

Sometimes we get back together with the person to remind us why we broke up in the first place. Like #2 above, we forget. It’s human. And when you’re missing someone post break up, and you know they are experiencing the same feelings at the same time, it connects you. You share a common feeling with that person that no one else can understand.

So sometimes break ups don’t last, and people end up re-committing for the long haul. So I’m not at all saying that getting back together with an ex is a lost cause, and can’t lead to a long-term healthy relationship.

If you’re wondering whether I’m talking about myself in this post, the answer is, not really (or kinda). I’m looking back on my last two or three relationships post divorce, and in all of them, we got back together, however briefly, before breaking up again for that last and final time. Sometimes we need it for closure, and I know that for me, I needed to be convinced in my mind and heart that we tried everything - that we wrung the relationship dry - before I could truly move on.

So I guess if you’re contemplating getting back together with your ex, make sure it’s for the right reasons. Whatever that means to you.

A 9/11 post.

2011-09-11T16:03:00.000-07:00

I was hesitant to post a blog tonight because any topic related to dating, relationships, and the general woes of being single seemed grossly trivial compared to the somber commeration of 9/11’s ten-year anniversary.

The minutiae that make up our day to day lives – the little joys as well as the irritating dramas and stresses – seem inconsequential and silly when we think of the tragedy of that day and the traumatic losses that have burrowed permanent holes of grief for those who have lost loved ones.

But maybe that is the point. The living are supposed to keep on living their lives as best they can. We are supposed to forge ahead and make our lives as full and impactful as possible in order to celebrate life. Whether it is in the face of news that a friend is sick, a relative has passed away, or a senseless accident has taken a loved one from us - these events shed light on what we do have, big or small, and force us to be grateful for what we have.

As I sat on my dog haired covered couch this morning watching the Reading of the Names on NY1, I didn’t notice the time pass. I was mesmerized and moved to tears. The children reading the names of their own parents, and the women who mourned the loss of their husbands hit me the hardest. I’m guessing their stories are what I can identify with most.

On this day ten years ago I was in Los Angeles with my ex-husband. We had recently moved there from NYC, nine months after our wedding. We were asleep when the planes hit the towers, and a friend’s anxious voice on our answering machine woke us to the news. We both had friends in Manhattan, and I had a family member who worked next door to the Towers. I remember feeling stricken and disconnected, watching the life altering events on the television happening in the city I loved – which I had felt I had abandoned – as the sun shone brightly over the Hollywood Hills and the birds chirped happily in my backyard. The stark incongruity intensified the surreal nature of it all.

In the weeks that followed, both my husband and I had fallen into an incapacitating depression, and looking back, despite the obvious, I think it was because we couldn’t be there to face the impact of it head on - to look at the evidence in the face.

They say that in order to properly grieve, you have to allow yourself to be swallowed up into the depths of it and feel it, before you can begin to heal. I can’t help but invoke the comparison to divorce, or any kind of loss. Running from the pain, denying it, going through the motions of having moved on without exploring the effects of a painful loss thwarts the healing process. And it doesn’t serve to honor the life that once was either.

So instead of going about my usual Sunday routine, today I sat and watched the memorial services on TV. All day. Again, I viewed and attempted to connect with a tragedy via the filter of a TV screen. Should I have gone downtown to the site, should I have attended some kind of commemoration service in person? Maybe. But I wasn’t really sure what would be the right thing to do, or what I needed to do. So instead, I chose to continue living. Living my little life. And that includes blogging.

Maybe it’s about finding a way to strike a balance. Live, laugh, and love, while also being somber. And never forgetting. Maybe if we can inhabit both feelings within the same moment, we can live our lives to their fullest.

A divorced Cougel goes to a wedding - on her wedding anniversary.

2011-09-05T18:25:00.000-07:00

How does it feel to be a single divorcee at a wedding?

I found out this weekend.

I’ve been to two weddings since my divorce. One of them was with my first ex-cub, and my parents – a cousin’s wedding. The second was a close family friend and I had my sisters and parents to sit with; they served as a security blanket.

I attended a wedding of a new friend this weekend. It was a spur of the moment decision that came about when he was kind enough to invite me, and I was honored. I had originally had plans with a romantic prospect, but in the weeks leading up to it, I sensed they were going to fall through. The guy and I didn’t have any longevity in the cards, including the week leading up to Labor Day. When he canceled due to work conflicts, I wasn’t surprised or sad. I was even relieved, and used that opportunity to seize the chance to go do something different- an adventure. A wedding in gorgeous Vermont where I could spend some time alone, celebrate a momentous day with my friend and his bride, and perhaps meet some new people.

Looking back, it was probably a bold move. I’m social, I like meeting new people, but I wasn’t prepared for the discovery that every single person there was in a relationship. Two of the four couples at my table were engaged. I was the single odd gal out.

It didn’t freak me out, or upset me, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t notice it, or that it didn’t underscore my “aloneness” - a state of being that has ceased to bother me more or less, especially living in NYC and spending time with my single friends, or married friends in the midst of divorces.

I arrived the night before the wedding and enjoyed the few hours leading up to post rehearsal dinner drinks luxuriating in my aloneness. I declined getting a ride up and instead I took the train to Albany followed by a taxi for the hour drive to Manchester, so I could read and spend time in my head. I took a bath, ordered a bottle of wine for one, and then joined a few people (some I knew and some I didn’t) for drinks.

When I walked into the bar and sat down amidst the couples at the table, something dawned on me. And without thinking, I blurted, “Today is what would have been my eleven year wedding anniversary.”

Record scratch. Followed by a few empty stares, and one look of pity. “You’re divorced?”

My response: “Yeah. But I’m okay! I’m not sad. Really.”

How’s that for some rain on a hopeful romance parade?

The following day I went into town to have lunch and to enjoy some outlet mall retail therapy. When I walked by a quaint restaurant, I experienced a strange dejavu sensation. I had been here before. Had I blocked it out? And then it occurred to me (and I had to text my mom), I had been to Manchester over a decade ago with my ex-husband and ex-mother-in-law.

The wedding was exquisite, held at the exquisite Hildene grounds of Lincoln’s historical mansion. The weather was perfect. Until it wasn’t. An hour into dinner, the sky grew black and the winds fierce, thrashing the grand tent overhang and knocking over glasses. What followed was an hour of torrential downpour and a tornado watch on Vermont. Everyone relocated into the grand living room of the mansion. People sat along the stair case, hands empty because the bar was outside in the downpour. But they adapted. The bride and groom danced in the small space before the fireplace, and the father of the bride gave a moving speech.

I couldn’t resist the obvious metaphor. We plan for perfection. We hope for flawlessness, but of course, there is no such thing. Instead, we learn to adapt. And adapt quickly, and revel in the mess that can show life at its most beautiful.

My wedding on that day eleven years ago was what you would call flawless, weather included. People called me for months to say it was the best wedding ever. “It was perfect!” As if it was a good sign that our marriage would be too.

When everyone moved back outside, I felt a surprising pang of sadness. But I didn’t miss my ex-husband. I missed my ex-boyfriend (who I had spent Hurricane weekend with). In retrospect, weddings will do that to you. Duh. So I shouldn’t have been surprised, or mad at myself for texting him that I wished he was there. But I was. Perhaps I should have been more emotionally prepared. If I had to do it over again, I would still go. I was glad to be there. But next time – and a note to all yea single women – if you’re going to a wedding without a swim buddy, rain or shine, you have to know what to expect. Or leave your Blackberry in your hotel to ward off needy misplaced texting.

My two close girlfriends who are also divorced are both in serious relationships and contemplating marriage number two. I wondered what they would be thinking had they been there with me. Would they be viewing the young engaged couples at my table, or the bride and groom, through different lenses? We’ve all heard that it’s different the second time. An older woman who I happened to sit beside on the shuttle to the wedding, offered the following to me unprompted: “It’s better the second time. Trust me.”

I have yet to find out. But I’m hopeful.

Hurricanes: Can hype and drama be a good thing?

2011-08-28T17:07:00.000-07:00

Most people would say that Hurricane Irene came around at the worst time. Trips and weddings were canceled, weekends at the beach for what remains of summer bungled, and New Yorkers forced to hibernate in claustrophobic apartments.

After the deluge of Facebook statuses bemoaning the media hype and pointless fear it generated, it seems redundant to get into here. I was one of the people who paid no attention to it until Friday afternoon, when my mother texted me warnings: “Mayor close. Subway. bus. Please stock. up w necc. water. Flash lite. Trannsvradio.” (a sexually ambiguous transmission of sorts?) Mayor INSTRUCTIONS.” (I’m not sure what the periods are for…some kind of Morse code for Jewish Mothers, maybe?).

And then of course, “Go buy food 4 5 days.” (which could easily have been a text she forgot to hit “send” on from last week). All of this was Mom setting the stage for what my father texted me a few hours later, “Why don’t I come pick you and the dog up and take you to N.J.?”

Jewish parents who don’t get to see their kids enough (is it ever enough?) love impending doom. Dad called Saturday morning and chuckling knowingly he said, “Something that worries us comes up….anything! And we say, ‘”Lets go see the kids!”

I declined their invitation, as generous and loving as it was. I didn’t want to deal with the transit mess and get stuck in N.J., nor did I want to worry about what was happening to my apartment while I was away. I wanted to embrace the forced downtime. After weeks of social engagements or weekends with friends at the beach (I know, poor me), I figured this would be a good time to read, draw, and pig out on the $200 worth of groceries (okay, Mom?) I’d never eat otherwise.

And who better to do this with than a very tall ex-boyfriend with a big appetite to help finish all that food, and with whom I knew I’d feel safe with? Besides, he lives in an evacuation zone. It was the least I could do.

None of this was planned. We haven’t even been in close touch. But the timing presented itself, and I didn’t hesitate for a moment.

It made me wonder whether the hurricane and all the drama that came along with it can serve to bring our needs into sharp focus.

A hurricane, a terror attack, or any dramatic event makes us pause. It creates a need to connect, and forces us to consider certain feelings and the questions that come with the acknowledgement of those feelings: Who is in my inner circle? What do I need to survive? Who do I draw comfort and safety from, rather than who is “filler”?

I wasn’t trying to fill a void of fear or loneliness. If that was the agenda, I guess I could have mustered up a few people to serve as a temporary Band-Aid. But I’d rather be alone than spend time with someone who helps pass time.

Sometimes we crave a little chaos. And maybe the hurricane, no matter how exaggerated it was, satisfied that need. We all know people or have the tendency ourselves to heighten events in our lives – to stir things up. Whether it is an external force, or an internally generated one. We latch on to it, even incite it, in order to wake us up to what matters, or shift our perspectives out of complacency or blindness. Or sometimes simply because we need a change.

And drama always leaves a bit of a mess in its wake, right?

When I woke up this morning, I anticipated mess: a power outage, my dog’s inability to hold in #1 evidenced on the carpet, and my internet and cable shut down. But instead, it was tranquil and quiet. When I opened my eyes, I was welcomed by a working Blackberry, lit up by texts from my mom and sisters, and the scent of brewing coffee coming from the kitchen.

So for that, I thank Irene. She was on a path, headed towards us with her own agenda: to interfere with our plans, shake us up, and leave a big mess in her wake. But in the calm after the storm, it’s up to us to give her intrusion and its affect on our lives meaning and purpose.

Why do men like younger women?

2011-08-21T17:19:00.000-07:00

As a self proclaimed cougar, it might seem odd that I haven’t asked this question before, but perhaps it is because I’m no longer dating younger guys. Rather, I’m seeing a lot of older men falling for “girls” (which I will call them here) in their twenties. Call it the reverse-cougar.

The reasons seem obvious:

1) Their faces and bodies look younger (read: good).

2) Girls don’t yet have the emotional baggage older women tend to have.

3) Girls are not as threatening as women in their 30’s or 40’s who tend to be stronger and more successful.

4) Girls “have time,” which allows the relationship to develop casually without the pressure of time. A guy can follow the standard chronology of dating, living together, getting engaged, then married with kids – in that order.

5) With a girl, a guy can cling to the idea of having “more than one kid,” as opposed to with a woman in her mid to late 30s.

6) Girls don’t necessarily know who they are yet or what they want, so they’re not imposing it on (or challenging) their boyfriend.

7) Girls look up to an older man who can guide and teach them, and it makes a guy feel manly.

I get it!

But I never thought that there was another appeal: immaturity.

Immaturity is sexy to a guy, because it disguises itself as “mysterious” and hard to read, and the inconsistent behavior that comes along with immaturity plays games with the heart.

Those of you who read this blog know I’ve dated up to three guys ten years younger than me, where the breakups all came for generally the same reason: difference in life stage and experience. Yeah. Duh. And so ever since my latest cub breakup, you could say I have been avoiding expending energy on guys that are more than five years my junior, by staying open to men forty and older.

While that hasn’t yet proven effective (no new partner has appeared), I’m fine with it. And I’ve made many new friendships with cub-age guys, without any temptation to turn it into more. Besides, most of these guys have girlfriends whom are younger than them, in their mid twenties.

One of them happens to be an ex, who began dating a girl 14 years my junior, and seems to be very happy with her. I’m not jealous or disappointed. I predicted it, and part of me feels a touch of “I told you so.” It only reinforces the reason for our breakup.

A few other guy pals of mine in their 30’s are also in the midst of budding relationships with twenty-five-year olds, and I’ve noticed a kind of emotional obstacle course these girls put them through, ie. a few months into the relationship the girl breaks up with the guy, for reasons that range from jealousy, caprice, or fabricated irrational grievances.

Guess what happens next? Rather than calling her on it and putting his foot down, or even telling her he is finished, the guy does the opposite. He suddenly realizes he reeeally likes this girl, and must win her back. Suddenly, a guy who wasn’t even sure he was that into her, decides that she could be “the one.”

Why? Is that all it takes? A fight, followed by a breakup and some ego bruising, to poke at a guy’s heart and mobilize him into action?

Maybe these younger and less mature women are onto something. Looking back on my relationship with my ex-cub, I recall being open, communicative, and understanding (and I believe he would agree). He always knew where I stood, even after we broke up. I do however remember him saying one thing that stuck: “You were consistent, Cougel. Being with you was easy.”

Mistake? If I had been a pain in the ass, or dumped him without cause a few times, perhaps we’d still be in a relationship. The thought has crossed my mind.

That’s silly, I know.

Immaturity isn’t apparent to the immature. Whether you’re in a relationship with someone immature, or in an argument with an immature friend, trying to convince them that their behavior is immature, or how it affects you, is futile. Sometimes it can take years, until that person grows up and looks back to realize it.

After my divorce, when the dating scene was brand spanking new to me, I was oblivious to these signs too. I was immature in love, and tended to want the guys who were inconsistent, unevolved, and obtuse with their emotions. I couldn’t read them (or their cryptic texts), and I mistook that confusion for a fluttery feeling, a thrill, which I described as “love.”

Is it frustrating to see these guys getting in a twist over girls who are clearly putting them through the ringer? Yes. But I guess it’s their problem. Or their wish.

After all, I dated younger men for a while and couldn’t see it either. So I understand it. I’m just glad I woke up.

Or grew up.

But to all those girls (and women too) who still behave immaturely in relationships (and I am not saying I don’t go there occasionally too), I might venture to say: don’t fight it too hard. Don’t try to change too much. Because it seems to be working.

Is it possible that immaturity can deepen – even mature – a relationship?

Detours on life’s main path.

2011-08-14T18:19:00.000-07:00

When I tell some people about the careers I’ve had: I was a Fine Arts major, a screenwriter, an indie film producer, and an advertising agency producer (being a waitress for two weeks at UNO’s pizza in D.C. doesn’t count) before I was a writer/blogger and marketer - they either don’t believe me, or think I’m weird.

They have a hard time figuring out how all of these things fit sequentially on a single path (even though all endeavors can be classified as “arts and entertainment.”) And they’re right. Looking back, there does appear to be a lot of movement, or new starts, but at the time, the transitions didn’t feel abrupt at all.

I applied to the Fine Arts school of my University because I loved to draw and paint, and that was where I met my future ex-husband, who was an artist too. After college, he continued to paint, and then direct films. I admired his talent, and encouraged him to continue, and he inhabited the role of the “artist” whereas I became the producer, the facilitator of his talents and the executor of his vision. For a significant time period, this was a fruitful and gratifying dynamic. I didn’t feel the need to be an artist anymore, and was comfortable with my creative spirit lying fallow.

And then I couldn’t find it anymore (although no doubt writing is a potent form of creative expression).

I abandoned writing and making movies, and didn’t feel the desire to create art anymore. I became fully entrenched in the business that is advertising. And while there are irrefutably many creative people in advertising, we are ultimately at the mercy of our client’s specifications to sell a product.

Six months ago I got another job, as the Director of Marketing for a production company. I didn’t change industries, since its still advertising, but it was decidedly a career change in that the skill set is different than those I previously employed. I’m not creating characters or plots for stories, nor am I overseeing budgets and schedules for productions. I’m networking, entertaining clients, and the wonderful by product of it all is that I’m making new and interesting friends. And I’m promoting directors, talented artists in their own right, a role in which I feel comfortable, as it emulates the productive dynamic I had with my ex-husband.

And then I had an idea (and when Cougel has an idea, case in point, this blog, look out!).

Why do artists that work in advertising have to remain closeted?

I decided to have an art show at my office (an artist’s style loft) for artists in advertising. A coming out party! It began with a vague sense that there were others out there like me, although very few people came to mind, and as I started reaching out to other producers, art directors, and copywriters, the response was overwhelming. And moving. The influx of passion and enthusiasm - not to mention the scope of talent – that exists hidden behind corporate doors, was staggering.

I began planning this about three weeks ago, and since then, I don’t think I’ve been in a bad mood once. Even while PMS-ing, or without a boyfriend or any viable “future husband” potential on the horizon, I’ve been excited, inspired, and well… happy. I had dinner with an old friend last week, who fifteen minutes into the conversation, responded to something positive I said with, "Who are you?"

I didn't answer him aloud, but in my mind, I think I might have uttered something like, "Me."

Perhaps it is because all of these seemingly disparate passions intersected at the right time, at the right place, awakening that creative spirit I thought I had left in the dust ten years ago. Somehow, all the jobs I’ve had, the people I’ve met, and the experiences that masqueraded as pit stops, culminated into the promising path I am on now.

So I guess there is no such thing as a detour after all. It all depends on where those pit stops take you.

Is introversion a prerequisite to creativity?

2011-08-07T18:58:00.000-07:00

Just in case any of you believe that writing a decent blog post weekly is easy, allow me to dispel this notion. When I have an idea brewing or an obvious story to tell, it is less difficult. When I’m emotionally unsettled or my subconscious is working through something, it rises to the surface of the page pretty quickly.

The writer’s block emerges when I’m happy. When I feel balanced and social and engaged with my job and friendships, and rummage around my heart and mind for an idea, I find nothing but stale air. It's as if my muse (the little bitch) is trying to punish me for abandoning her.

When I was writing my novel, I sentenced myself to solitary confinement. Solitude breeds creativity, and while those dark evenings were somber and lonely (my “emotional playlist” of 100 sad sad songs didn’t help), I was able to connect to my inner voice – my inner life. It was a tough choice to say no to socializing, and yes to putting words on a page, but it was never a question of whether I should.

I enjoyed this time, and crave it too. My mother says I was like this as a child, evidenced by Super-8 films (yes, it was a long time ago) of birthday parties (my own) where I’d be playing quietly in a corner alone, away from my chatty little friends. I am the middle child, the black sheep if you will, and had always considered myself an introvert.

There was a wonderful article in the NYT a few weeks ago http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/opinion/sunday/26shyness.html?_r=1 about shyness and whether introversion is an evolutionary tactic, but mostly it outlines the differences between extroverts (“rovers”) and introverts (“sitters”). “….many of the most creative people in a range of fields are introverts who are comfortable working in solitary conditions in which they can focus attention inward. Steve Wozniak, the engineer who founded Apple with Steve Jobs….describes his creative process as an exercise in solitude. “Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me… they’re shy and they live in their heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone.”

For anyone who has undergone the writing process, the above is not a revelation. It is a prerequisite.

So it’s not a wonder that the writer in me is coming up blank lately. I don’t think I’m ignoring my emotions, but I am decidedly (and happily) in extrovert mode. My new job has brought it out in me. The introvert in me would have never thought I’d work in sales, be decent at it, let alone enjoy it. But in the last few months, and especially the last two weeks, I’ve been meeting many interesting people, forging new friendships, and planning events.

And loving it.

But then where does the writing mindset, the drive to sit down alone and write, fit in? Do we have to be reclusive, or emotionally off kilter, to be able to write? Or write well? Can one be both an extrovert and an introvert, and manage to excel and find fulfillment in both spaces?

I’m guessing it all comes down to the yin and yang of life. Because if you’re not a curious person, curious about the world, people, or ideas – and you don’t seek to explore what makes it all tick or to connect with others - then what in the world would you have to write about?

Life, Take Two

2011-07-31T18:18:00.000-07:00

On most Sunday mornings, I look back on the week I’ve had and think about what to post – whether there are emerging themes or repeat occurrences that are worth discussion.

This past week was packed with what seemed to be a lot of disconnected events, all noteworthy in my mind, but not necessarily related. It kicked off with the passing of a dog I loved, at the young age of nine, who my dog played with as a pup when we lived in Los Angeles. My reaction (tears and an impulsive phone call to my friend) surprised me in its intensity. The obvious reason is it made me think of my own dog’s mortality (but also forced me to make an appointment for her exam which was overdue and drag us both to the vet at 7:30 on a hung-over morning). And then two other friends’ pets suddenly passed this week as well (without Facebook I would never have known).

Divorce is often compared to a kind of death – the death of one life, and the beginning of a new one. And when the divorce is bitter and contact is terminated, the remaining vacuum and feelings of loss are akin to death too, which unfortunately is something I can relate to. My ex-husband and I met in college, at the ripe young age of 18, and when we split 16 years later, the seven stages of grieving per Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (who I studied in my University Psychology classes) were unavoidable (although not as long, and surely not as deep and painful as an actual death of a loved one).

But a rebirth is inevitable too, as finally, thankfully, the last few years have been for me. I can always tell when I go home to New Jersey to visit with my family, who serve as truth check or mirror to what is really going on with me (whether I welcome it or not), when my sister looks me in the eyes and says, “You’re doing good. I can see it,” as she happened to say to me today.

In another seemingly unrelated moment, a friend of mine mentioned that his ex-wife remarried this weekend, and I'm guessing he was feeling a disconcerting internal shift too; a release of the past and a fierce desire to build a new future for himself.

A girl (I’ll call her Jill) whom I was friendly with from my college dorm (and who knew my ex-husband) reached out to me several years back and we forged an immediate connection, fueled by our common struggles as single women in our late thirties. We didn’t see each other often, but when we did, we discovered uncanny similarities. I’ve recently been swamped at my new job and all the social outings it entails, and while I had heard she was searching for an office space for her business, I didn’t give it much thought.

Until she told me she coincidentally found a lease in my building.

On the heels of my whirlwind week, I stayed in the city this weekend with the intention of doing nothing. I bought a present for my niece’s birthday whose party I attended today, and caught up on the phone with old friends. I’ve been struggling with finding balance – time to give to the people who really matter to me – and while I didn’t plan anything, I felt myself open up and turn towards those who had been giving to me.

Jill happened to move into my building this weekend. Unbeknownst to me, she had bravely made the decision to take a leap, and then made the move on her own, as strong women with faith - and a kind of trust in the universe - do. It reminded me of when I moved into my first apartment post divorce, and then again post breakup, and how difficult it was. Without much fanfare, I turned off the Facebook, grabbed two glasses of wine, and went downstairs to give her a second opinion on paint colors and furnishings. When I opened the door she had left open for me, I felt the rush of memories from our dorm life flood in.

Later, she texted me to say that my presence in the building felt like an omen of sorts; that a woman she knew from college was there, “fighting the good fight, taking risks, and forging a new path…maybe the univ has given us both a big thumbs up,” she wrote.

By “univ,” she meant “universe.”

But then it hit me. I thought she meant “University.” Not just because we went to University together, but because our building happens to be on a street called "University Place."

I’m not going to get into the whole “signs and omens” thing here again - I’ve written several posts about it already. But my skin was suddenly covered with goose bumps, when it was 89 degrees out.

It made me think about rebirth again. The odds of my life intersecting with an old friend of mine at this specific time, when we are both grabbing change by the gut, was not to be overlooked.

No connection is tenuous, in my opinion. All of these seemingly disparate events could easily be hidden from view if we are not primed to see them. But this week, I was fortunate to have banished the clutter of frivolous flirtations and distractions so that I could.

And then tonight, as I sat trying to figure out what to write about and trolling Facebook as I always do when I procrastinate, a quote on a friend’s wall made it all click together:

"The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, sensitivity and an understanding of life that fills them with compassions, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen." -- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Can the option to get married change a relationship?

2011-07-24T17:59:00.000-07:00

From New York City to Niagara Falls, hundreds of gay and lesbian couples across the state began marrying today – the culmination of a long battle in the Legislature and a new milestone for gay rights advocates seeking to legalize same-sex marriage across the nation (abbreviated; NYT). In New York City, 823 couples had signed up in advance to get marriage licenses today.

Saying that this is huge is an understatement. On multiple levels.

My blog is just one of many “dating blogs” which discusses the challenges of finding a satisfying and healthy relationship -- post marriage. I also write about the difficulty of finding it in the whirlwind that is New York City. So the sudden uptick in individuals rushing to the “altar” in the city in which I live inspired thought.

To be clear, I’m not one of those bitter divorcees who no longer believes that marriage is possible. Both my sisters are happily married, as are my parents, and witnessing their relationships thrive through inevitable ups and downs has been a hopeful – and critical - reference for me that matrimonial harmony can exist. But besides this evidence, I’m simply a romantic at heart. I married my ex-husband when I was 27 with all the rosy-eyed optimism and white wedding aspirations one could expect. And despite our divorce, I maintain a hopeful view for myself (even though some posts reflect otherwise. I blame it on Sunday blues). This doesn’t mean I expect that I will necessarily marry again, and that’s okay too. But anything is possible.

The entire NYT vows section today was dedicated to gay marriage announcements. It was incredible to see, and a stark contrast to the typical heterosexual marriage announcements we’ve been reading for as long as we (or I, I’ll admit) can remember. A milestone indeed.

But it raises this question: For all the people that are now permitted to get married, are there some who don’t want to? Now that they can, does it mean they actually should?

One of the stories I read mentioned a gay couple that disagreed over tying the knot. One of the men didn’t want to. He didn’t believe in it. He thought their relationship was sacred just the way it was, without a wedding contract. The opportunity to get married surfaced a new conflict between them, and potentially a split.

I wonder, does having the option create strife within the relationship that otherwise would not exist? I might be getting a little sci-fi movie concept here, but what if we all lived in a place where marriage was not permitted? Would the elimination of that option as a goal, change the nature of a relationship? Does the absence of that expectation free two people up to embrace one another for who they are, by eliminating pressure and projections?

I realize I’m not saying anything new here. The pros and cons of the institution of marriage is an age-old debate. It is one I discuss with women my age often. If I had to take a poll, half of the divorced women I know or who comment on my blog have given up on it, or decided that it is something they no longer want. The other half are still hopeful, or in relationships that promise longevity. It is different for everyone, and only we know what is best for us and our situation.

I think that this groundbreaking legislation is a great thing, and not just because many of my gay friends can now get married (if they want to, of course). It means that perhaps, as unconventional as it might seem, the pendulum is swinging back to the traditional, where marriage and commitment are valued again.

Hopefully it doesn’t mean that while the marriage rate is going to go up, the divorce rate will too.

We’ll just have to wait and see.

And hope.

Ten Reasons Why You’re Still Single.

2011-07-17T19:07:00.000-07:00

The following question was asked of me four separate times this week, from four different men.

“How in the world are you still single?”

Compliment?

Sure. It was meant to flatter me. Even though my inability to come up with a clear answer made me feel the opposite of flattered.

I considered the following reasons. True or False? (another pop quiz!)

1. I’m divorced and it took me time to be ready for a relationship.

2. I’m single by choice.

3. I haven’t met “the guy” yet.

4. I’m drawn to men who are unavailable (cubs included).

5. I work too much.

6. I’m picky (and gosh darn it I should be!).

7. I need to retool my Jdate and Ok Stupid profiles, and join Match.com.

8. The majority of my friends are married. I need to find more single friends and go to bars with them.

9. Men feel threatened by me and my “strength” or “success.”

10. I’m a blogger who exposes herself online and it’s sabotaging my efforts.

At first, I felt all of the above were False. But now that I’ve written them down, I wonder whether they all might have a shred of truth.

A friend told me not to feel discomfited by this question. “It means these men find you datable!” she reassured me. “They’re just shocked you haven’t been snatched up yet.”

But I wonder if the unspoken implication is, "Is there something wrong with you?"

There is one commonality between the four men who said this: they are all in a relationship (engaged or married).

But what if they weren’t? What if they were single and in a position to actually go out with me? Would they? It’s easy to throw out statements and compliments when you are protected from having to act on them.

When I told Mom about this tonight, she took the question literally. I could see her trying to come up with the real reason why. It was she who offered up .9 above: “You’re successful and strong and men are scared of it.”

I love my mother, and I love that she believes in me, but I got defensive. “So what am I supposed to do, Mom? Not be me? Should I downplay my attributes and be meeker?”

She replied, “No, No. Of course not. You’re wonderful. You’re something else!” (What might that be, I wondered. But I didn’t say anything.) Then she paused, considering what to say next. “Just maybe don’t’ talk about what you do or that you are a writer on the first date.”

Her comment gave me pause. Does she have a point? Do any of you relate to reasons 1-10 above?

Do you know what you need?

2011-07-10T18:29:00.000-07:00

The theme of this post might be a continuation of - or perhaps a contradiction to - my last post: “Why do we need love?”

I've found that with age and experience comes the importance of knowing what we need. It extends beyond just relationships or our search for a partner. We try to seek out experiences that fill us, connect us with this world, and bring us closer to the life we want to lead.

But most of the time, we don’t consciously know what we need. It’s difficult to articulate a wish list that doesn’t sound silly or material, i.e. “I need a bigger apartment,” or “I need a boyfriend,” or “I want to quit my job and travel the world."

We make the mistake of thinking we need “things,” or stop-gap measures like a break from our jobs, or the perfect relationship, to make us feel whole.

Before I was married, when my ex-husband and I met, there were three things I thought I wanted: A husband. A house. And to make it in the movie business.

Eventually, I got (and then lost) all three. And since then I’ve asked myself, did I really want these things? Well, maybe I wanted them, but did I truly need them? And is that why they felt off to me, as if I was wearing the wrong clothes?

I came out to East Hampton this weekend to stay with some people I know, and some people I don’t. I wanted a break from the chaos and claustrophobia of the city. When I was told I would have my own room due to last minute cancellations, I had a momentary self-pity bang of “I wish I had a boyfriend to share it with.” Or even a close girlfriend to bring (most of my oldest friends live in LA.) I realize this might seem frivolous and ungrateful, but I felt anxious. Probably because romantic getaway cues were abundant and underscored my singleness.

But I forced myself to remember that being on my own is a good thing. It allows for spontaneity, new experiences and friendships, and if I’m lucky, creative growth too (blog material included).

And then I got a Facebook message from a woman I’ve never met. A mutual friend told her that I would be out here, and so we made plans to meet. It so happens that she is divorced and currently single too. Even more serendipitously (although the advertising world is small), one of the women at the house happened to know her too, so we all decided to go out together.

I must have forgotten that there is no better cure for the "I'm alone" blues than having meaningful conversations (and cocktails of course) with strong, free spirited women. Especially the kind that have endured (and learned from) similar experiences as you have. And a gorgeous summer night helps too.

On our drive back to the house around midnight, my friend made a sudden turn down a different street. When I looked up, I realized we were at the beach. I can’t remember whether I took my shoes off before I got out of the car, but with my long sun dress tucked into my underwear (it was dark), I found myself running to the shore line. I put my feet in the water and looked up at the starlit sky. And then a strange thing happened.

I'm not a big Yoga fan (I pull muscles I didn't know exist), but I've heard of women (the men probably don't admit it) who after connecting with a core part of themselves, are overcome by tears.

I didn't have to go into child's pose in the sand to experience that kind of profound release. I just stood in the water with my hand on my chest and my head tilted to the sky, my ears filled with the rush of the crashing waves coming at me, and discovered that thing I had been needing.

Serenity? The force of nature? Awe of the expansive universe? The paradox of life like the rage then calm of the ocean? Whatever it was - because it felt too great to articulate - was all around me. Or, maybe, I was a part of it.

I awoke the next morning feeling lighter. And more centered. The anxiety and misdirected energy that had filled me at the start of the weekend banished.

It dawned on me that what I believed I had needed - a romantic weekend or the comfort of an old friend - wasn't what I needed at all. And since I was unable to see it (although in hindsight subconsciously I must have been seeking it), the universe revealed it for me.

All I had to do was give us both permission.

Love, Etc. Why do we need it?

2011-07-03T14:58:00.000-07:00

There’s nothing better than seeing a film about love to snap you out of a “who needs love” frame of mind, especially when it is an unscripted documentary.

After an insulated week spent in the illusion that is the bubble of Cannes, I was anticipating the reality of spending the long holiday weekend in NYC, alone, with a touch of dread. I was worried I’d feel like I did over Memorial Day weekend, when everyone was coupled off or in the Hamptons, and it didn’t help that it was my birthday.

But it taught me how to preempt any gloom – to cut it off at the pass. I wonder if sometimes we subconsciously drive ourselves to rock bottom as a catalyst for action. I was determined to independently make my weekend meaningful and optimistic – without relying on anyone else.

It’s been awhile since I’ve been in that space. When I was in the throes of completing my novel, my free time was dedicated to solitude - to reading and writing. That was my priority, rather than relationships. And when I finished my book, I had a boyfriend, so it didn’t hit me until recently that I was floundering, adrift without my own hobby or passion to immerse myself in – something that is within my control.

No, I haven’t started another book. That is, if you consider typed pages a qualification. But I did purchase a brand new mole-skin journal, and on a sunny Saturday when everyone was off picnicking or swimming, I sat in my dark café (it’s mine because I wrote most of my first book sitting in the same chair drinking the same shitty coffee) and started brainstorming ideas. And a vague sense of what my next novel might be began to form. It starts with a warm feeling, like an expanding balloon forming inside, that has yet to be articulated.

I can only guess that for people who have been single for most of their 20s and 30s, revelations like these - learning how to gain satisfaction from our own self-initiated projects - are a no brainer.

But for someone like me, having been married throughout my 20s and part of my 30s, these shifts are conscious. I went into the weekend with a dismissal of love, asking myself, why do we need love? If you are a self-sufficient, generally happy person with the confidence that you can take care of yourself, then why do you need a partner?

Do we put too much emphasis on it? And is it due to the way romance is portrayed in our culture, or how marriage is held up as some ideal that every young woman should aspire to?

Or, is it simply a basic human need that because it is so challenging to satisfy, we’ve defensively “decided” we are fine without it? Have we become too fearful that it makes us look vulnerable, or that it signifies that we are not independent self-autonomous individuals for wanting it? I can count on both hands how many friends I’ve heard say, “Us single women talk about men, about relationships, way too much. We are successful and strong. Come on. What’s our problem?” Granted, this thinking would put dating blogs (mine included?) out of commission.

Without consciously looking for an answer or the awareness that this was my frame of mind, I spontaneously went to see the opening of a friend’s documentary, “Love, Etc.” The film charts the evolution of five romantic relationships in New York over the course of a year. The relationships are diverse, ranging from a single gay man searching for love, who decides to become a single father, to the innocent young love of high-school seniors, to an elderly couple that has been married 48 years.

I was blown away. And not just because the film was heartfelt and humorous. All the stories were real. And bittersweet. A blend of hopeful resolutions and disappointments, that in retrospect, were inevitable. The way love is.

A side note: It did occur to me whether seeing this film at this time in my life was a signifier of the place that I am at. When my ex-husband and I were struggling through what was to become the final year of our marriage, we had made a horror film, about a serial killer. At the risk of an overt and dramatic analogy, it has crossed my mind on more than one occasion whether our film was a signifier of the moribund nature of our dying marriage.

In the middle of “Love, Etc.” one of the characters (a successful theater director), was home-bound in the back of his limo after the opening night of his play. He was alone, looking out the window and he said something that resonated: “That was a success. But it doesn’t matter because I don’t have a partner to share it with.”

A man in his late 40s, who had achieved more than most could dream of professionally, was unabashedly admitting what was missing for him most: love. I briefly wondered whether he would have reached that level of success had he been in a relationship, or whether one had to do with the other at all.

In the end, he doesn’t give up on love. He simply decides not to make it everything. He doesn’t make it his goal. Rather, he decides to go after what he wants most: to be a father.

And in the process, when he isn’t looking, love shows up.

(In case you want to check out the movie: http://loveetcthemovie.com/ )

Why do some married men not wear rings?

2011-06-27T15:08:00.000-07:00

I just returned from a week of what’s been dubbed, “Spring Break for adults” – the Cannes Lions Festival (the advertising one, not the glamourous film one). It was my first time there, due to my new job, representing my production company.

It was a blast (and the reason I couldn’t write a new blog last night, let alone form a coherent thought).

I had been warned. “You’re going to have the best time. It’s bonkers!” not to mention, “You’re so going to get hit on!” and “You’re definitely going to hook up with a French dude.”

The first two of the above happened. And when I got home, everyone seemed to want to know if the third thing transpired.

I guess it’s assumed, if you’re single and semi attractive (although I don’t think that even matters), that having a romance in Cannes is as easy (and allowed) as having a gelato after dinner or cigarettes when you don’t normally smoke.

(Disclaimer: The topic of this post can easily bring me to it’s close cousin, “Why do people cheat?” but I won’t go down that path here. This post is more about the prequel; the crumbs at the top of the treacherous infidelity path.)

It seems that being single has nothing to do with it either. I have never met so many married men without wedding rings on. I have never met so many men I had wonderful conversations with, where I thought something more than just a fling might develop, only to discover that they are married, with kids (I had to ask).

What is this about?

This behavior is not new. I’ve just never seen it in such a concentrated form, where it seems permissible.

By the way, I don’t judge it. You never know what is actually going on behind closed marital doors, and the weight of despair on someone’s mind. This opinion of mine stems from having had some experience. Because when I was married, in the subconscious stage of unhappiness - where I hadn’t voiced it aloud, or even to myself – was in retrospect guilty of concealing my marital status too. While I always wore my ring, and never attempted to stray, there were definitely times where I’d meet an attractive stranger at a party and “I” would escape from my lips, rather than “we.” ie. “I moved to Los Angeles…” or “I had people over for dinner…” Looking back, I’m mortified at my behavior, as subconscious and uncalculated as it was. Looking back, it was a major marital satisfaction barometer, and a harbinger of what was to come.

Why do we this? For some, it’s ego. I believe that some of the men (and probably women too) who were at Cannes without their rings on, probably wanted to see if they were still attractive and worthy of being hit on. It doesn’t mean they were planning on cheating (although some do, of course…there were magnum size bottles of Rose on every table). And some people have been married so long (as I was), that a fantasy develops – a romantic yearning – of what it might be like to be single; to be free to flirt and go with the romantic and sexual wind without consequence. It is human nature.

A friend of mine, when I told her about one particular married man who came on to me, after admitting he was married but on his way to divorce, exclaimed: “What an asshole!” I beg to differ. “He can do whatever he wants,” I replied. “I’d be the asshole if I went there, knowing the truth. It’s up to me.”

Do I have a point? Or am I too forgiving - perhaps too empathetic – because I understand how compromised (or even distorted) people’s emotions and behavior can be when they are unhappily married?

Perhaps I am just naïve. Perhaps I prefer to be. Us single women, who are still hopeful about our prospects and optimistic about marriage (me included), would like to remain enclosed in the naïve bubble, rather than get a glimpse into how rampant infidelity actually is. Having it confirmed, or worse, being the instrument to it, can only lead to disappointment, depression, and sometimes shame.

I think in this case, the phrase “ignorance is bliss” applies, and now that I’m back in the bubble that is my single life in NYC, I choose to cling to its clichéd wisdom.

Can logic get in the way of love?

2011-06-19T16:05:00.000-07:00

This question has been cropping up lately, in various forms. It wasn’t a consideration when I was in my twenties, and surely not when I decided to marry my ex-husband. Once we were committed to one another, the goal was to make it work, despite our practical differences and sometimes what seemed like insurmountable obstacles, such as financial issues and a difference in our short term goals.

The goal to make it work – that decision – goes a long way. It’s the fuel in the relationship gas tank, at least for the first few years, and for some, it can keep the relationship running for infinite miles. And I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, especially in marriages that are working on some level – and especially when there are children involved.

But is practicality, the glue for many marriages, ironically a commitment preventative for singles or divorces? Is it different when you’re in your thirties or forties, when you’ve experienced enough to spot the impracticalities of a relationship early on? Do you obey the stop sign, or do you listen to your heart that’s screaming “go!” and floor it?

Car metaphors aside, are we overthinking? Does knowing too much, does logic, get in the way of our emotions? Is it used as a defense mechanism that blocks us from giving something a chance to develop, or does it protect us from wasting our time and getting hurt?

I stayed in on Friday night, and after pretending to watch “Dark Knight” (perhaps to pay the late Heath Ledger respects, except he didn’t look like I remembered him), I found myself watching the last half hour of “The Bridges of Madison County” (sob). I read that book over ten years ago, when I was embarking on the marriage journey, and even back then it filled me with romantic yearning. What was Francesca going to choose? The practical - her life, home, and family that she had invested in, the only life she knew? Or was she going to throw it all away for her one true love, despite its apparent infeasibility? Clint Eastwood’s character says, “This kind of certainty comes only once in a lifetime.” For him, an unmarried maverick, the decision was simple.

I don’t think it was a coincidence that I happened upon this film at this time. Now that I’m back to being single and meeting potential long-term mates, practical considerations seem to be more flagrant than ever. After all, they are the required facts on an online dating profile. Is the guy age appropriate, does he live in New York? Is he divorced, does he have children? There’s a reason this checklist exists, and a reason why we choose to contact that person, or click “next.”

But what happens when you meet someone you really like, who defies the checklist? Do you throw logic to the wind, and go there anyway? It’s likely that the next guy I fall for will be the opposite of a young cub: older, divorced, and who already has children.
What if he doesn’t want to have any more kids - when I do? Would I be an irrational fool to attempt the potential for love, or an even bigger fool to turn my back on it?

You could say that I’ve already been there, with my past two young cub relationships. I acknowledged our potential issues, but chose to obscure them, in order to give things a chance. It’s no big surprise however, that the practical got the best of us. It’s no big surprise that my relationship with a guy eleven years my junior could ultimately not go the distance. Or that he’s now dating a girl fourteen years my junior; more appropriate for him and his life stage. It’s no surprise that my recent relationship stalled only four months in, when I knew going in that our timing and needs were not in sync. I don’t regret these relationships, but I can conclude that while love existed, it could not transcend our practical differences.

In the end, Francesca chose her family. After her death, she left a letter (had there been texting back then, the whole story - perhaps the whole love affair - would have turned out differently) to her children: “I gave up my life for you.”

I’d seen this movie before, and I knew how it was going to end, but yet this line surprised and saddened me. Did she really give up her life – and true love - for what made sense, and did she regret it?

Does it have to be one or the other?

June gloom

2011-06-12T17:59:00.000-07:00

I scanned through my old posts tonight, hoping they’d spark a new idea, and I noticed that I only wrote two last June, instead of four or five. I wonder if there is a connection as to why I’m feeling stumped on this particular week.

As a blogger, we choose to put ourselves out there. When I’m feeling strong, when things are good, it’s a lot easier to write an honest post that still manages to conceal the private stuff that is too risky to share, especially when I’m aware of exes, co-workers, close friends, and people I know reading it.

People ask me how I do it. “Isn’t it tricky to promote your own blog to people - to new friends, including potential future mates?” The answer is, absolutely. It is tricky. You could say that I, or any writer or blogger, takes a chance each time she directs someone to a public journal of sorts that exposes her vulnerabilities, conflicts, and history. Isnt that the stuff that people should discover about you over time, if they (and you) want to?

Yes. But then there are the readers I don’t know. Who come here (and comment, or email me privately), who notice when I don’t post. Who thank me for putting their feelings in words; who thank me for giving them strength. Or even for entertaining them on a dreary Sunday. So each and every time I feel uninspired, or hesitant to share what is going on with me, I push myself anyway. Or I just write about mom, to escape writing about myself (thanks mom!).

So tonight, I got nothing. I’ll call it June gloom. I think it is a combination of my most recent break up sinking in, after all the distractions and flirtations have disappeared, my birthday and the inevitable self-evaluation it triggers, combined with a hectic month of work related events. It’s been one of those weeks where no matter how many times I tell myself that my life is good, and full, that I am fortunate, the words stay stuck in my head. They don’t seep inward and influence my emotions.

Or maybe it’s just that time of year.

What do you all think? Should bloggers be sharing, even when they are wary to, or have nothing to say?

Disappointments in love: are we ourselves to blame?

2011-06-05T17:44:00.000-07:00

Wisdom comes with age, right? But what about immunity against disappointment, and even heartache?

How many relationships have we found ourselves in, that when they fall apart, we tell ourselves, “I knew this was going to happen.” Well, if we forecasted its demise, or even its lack of sustainability, then why do we go there to begin with?

Except for my marriage, which going in, I naturally did not doubt its promise for longevity, I’ve since been in other relationships where I knew there were major obstacles at the start. My last two ex-cubs, by sheer virtue of our age and stage in life differences, were unlikely pairings, not to mention other obvious reasons. Did I recognize that the obstacles were there at the onset? Yes. Did I plow through regardless, hoping that love would conquer all? Probably. Was I still surprised and upset when my initial doubts proved correct in the end? Absolutely.

I’ve also had some false starts in the past few years, where I met a guy who I crushed out on instantly (infatuation fever is my chronic condition, and I accept it). We had a lot in common and shared the same values. One of them lived in Israel, but I convinced myself that we could “Skype it out.” Another lived closer, on this continent, just a few hours away. “Give it a chance,” friends said. “At this stage in your life, and in his, it’s hard to find someone you’re compatible with. Who is nice. And who isn’t taken.” I think what they also meant, but didn’t voice to me was, “At your age, especially since you’re divorced, you have to be even more open to compromise (read: settle?).

So with these hopeful mantras in mind, I decided these relationships must be worth exploring. Even though somewhere deep down I sensed they didn’t have legs to bridge all that distance (which goes beyond just the geographical.) And after only a few months of feverish sexting and phone calls, those relationships (if you could even call it that) were extinguished as abruptly as they had been ignited.

So then why go there? Is it (pop quiz!):

A) Hopeless romanticism: We think that if we try hard enough, if we love enough, we can overcome the barriers.

B) Fear that the right thing - the right click - will never come along, so we have to nurture the bird in hand, even when it’s a squirmy little f*cker.

C) Naïve optimism: a belief that we can inhabit the moment and just enjoy it (ie. the “you only live once” excuse.)

D) An exaggerated sense of our own resiliency, where we think, “I won’t get attached. I won’t be hurt. And even if I do, I can recover quickly.”

E) Lack of any other options calling, texting, or even thinking about us. So the compromised option is looking even more appealing.

F) All of the above.

You can probably guess which answer I’d pick. (Yes, a big fat “F,” like my 9^th grade History tests). I think it’s a combination of many factors. And it doesn’t necessarily get easier with age or wisdom. The disappointments don’t hurt any less, but I know that at least for me, they don’t last nearly as long.

A friend told me something that resonated with me, which she heard from her mother: “Love never killed anyone.”

Personally, I interpret that to mean: “Go there.” Can’t we be optimistic and romantic, and embrace the opportunity for love whole-heartedly, regardless of apparent obstacles? As long as we are aware that they exist?

Because even if you think you know - you never really know if you don’t try. Right?

When it comes to our exes, what can we really ex-pect?

2011-05-22T17:24:00.000-07:00

About every eight months or so, I can feel it coming on, the way my knees ache before it rains. It arrives with either the advent of spring (although in NY right now that seems premature), or around thanksgiving, where I get a message from an ex I haven’t heard from in awhile. And the more time that accrues since my divorce, the more exes (unfortunately) exist.

After my husband and I separated, I had the classic rebound. Although at the time, of course it didn’t feel like a rebound. It felt serious. I was in love, and had all the symptoms to prove it, including the depression and heartache that followed after he broke up with me, with no warning (in retrospect, there was naturally plenty of warning that I couldn’t see). It took me a long time to get over that one. But regardless, I knew it was over, and whether it was pride or the practical acceptance that there was never going to be a round two, I deleted his information and never initiated contact. Not a single impulse text was sent (doesn’t mean I didn’t write them).

Everyone handles breakups differently. For me, it's like the flip of a switch. No matter how powerful the yearnings or temptations to reach out can be at times, when I know something is over, I resist. I’m not sure if it’s how I’m built, or a protective reflex - or both - but I am grateful that needy post break up reach-outs are just not my M.O. I always hear a voice (I think it’s my Israeli relatives, or my father’s), saying, “What’s the point? What do you want to get out of it?” And if I know that the guy can’t provide me with any more answers or closure, and it is something I need to find within myself, the option to abstain is obvious.

But that doesn’t mean it’s the same on the other end. Just last week, I heard from my last boyfriend (not a surprise since it’s recent), my ex-rebound, and my ex-husband. The last two relationships are 4-5 years old, and so I’m always surprised by the sporadic reemergence of their names in my inbox. The content of the emails vary, yet they all seem colored by the hue of regret, no matter how veiled the attempt. It feels like the metaphorical pebble is being thrown at my (closed and locked) window.

Why now? Do they sense that I’m single again, or is it just the natural cycles of time, or the weather, that sparks discontent in their current relationships, and the consequential remembrance of the “one that got away?”

I have to say, it is not flattering to hear that you’re the one that got away. Especially when you’re the one who was broken up with or it seemed mutual. For some women it might provide a jolt of vindication and ego inflation (and I get that. You’re allowed to say “yay!”) But for me, at this stage in my life, it incites frustration. I can’t help but wonder whether it is just a pattern I should accept, or whether it is me, and my choice in men - if I date guys that aren’t able to make it stick. But then why do they come back (not that they actually would, or that I want them to).

Is it ego, or the pretty lens of nostalgia that tempts them back as a potential solution to their current relationship dissatisfaction? And of course it begs the question, what does it reveal about them, when they are in a relationship and emailing an ex-girlfriend?

Will I ever know the real reason, even if I decide to write back? Are these men able to express the underlying motivation for their sudden engagement?

Do they even know for themselves, what “the point is”?

Note: I intentionally didn’t wrap this post up with a neat little answer bow. Because I don’t know. (But I can rhyme!) So I’d love to hear what my readers have to say in this regard.

NYC: Which is more difficult to find - an apartment, or a man?

2011-05-15T17:46:00.000-07:00

It all depends on the quality you’re seeking. There’s an expression I learned back when I started making films. You want your movie to be three things: “Fast, inexpensive, and good.” But the thing is, you can only have two out of three.

It applies to apartments too. If you’re prepared to pay a lot, you can have a good place quickly. But if you’re patient, and take your time, you can find the perfect place, at the right price. Does this apply to dating too? If we don’t pressure ourselves with deadlines – if we leave our options open and keep looking – will the right thing come our way?

I’ve lived in NYC for years (with a six year detour in LA) in many apartments and neighborhoods. When I was living with my ex-husband, the choice of apartment had different criteria. Now that I’m single, and in the five years since I moved back to NY, the specs have changed. At first, I just needed something that was mine, that I could call my own (and that permitted large dogs), and I found it. It was cheap, I found it quickly, and I felt triumphant because it was my first apartment post divorce. But after two years, when I started to gain my confidence and independence back, I began to see the apartment for what it was - a shithole masquerading as “It’s mine not ours!” glee. My neighbors were note-leaving, wall-pounding assholes, and the kitchen was a shelving unit. And while I don’t cook, I thought (okay, my Mom did) that moving to a place with an actual kitchen might inspire me to (it hasn’t).

I decided to rent a new place. This decision coincided with my break up (the first or second one- can’t recall) with ex-cub #1 (sounds like a Cougar dating show). I stupidly gave notice on the shit hole and had to find a new apartment within 3 weeks. I didn’t think I would find something in time. “Apartment hunting is harder than dating!” I dramatically texted to four friends simultaneously. I was a wreck. I wanted something bigger and nicer, that I could “grow into” (read: stay in even if I had a baby and/or a new husband) but I soon realized I couldn’t afford it. And the two apartments I liked wouldn’t take pets (the bastards). It dawned on me that I was in no position, emotionally or financially, to be making decisions in the present based on where I might hypothetically be in the future.

I found a place in the end, which I live in now. I like it. It’s pretty. It's more expensive than I wanted, and probably need (I got fast and nice. Not cheap. You catching on?). But I realized in all that searching that it is so easy to see something you kind of like, without having to commit to it. In the hyper scramble that is Man-hattan, with so many options – apartments we missed, men we didn’t get to meet – isn’t there always something better just around the corner?

These perceived options can paralyze us from making a choice, and sometimes paralyze us permanently. Renting, dating, moving from place to place in search of the next thing, when sometimes, the right thing might be right in front of you. Right?

After one year in my pretty new place, my rent has been significantly increased. Time to move again! (same time as break up with ex-cub #2...hmm...).

Except this time, I have a different attitude. I’m not freaking out. But it’s not because I’m not in a rush. It’s because I realize that nothing is perfect. Nor permanent. Besides, it’s only an apartment. I know what is important to me - not later, in three years - but today (location, price, and vibe. It doesn’t matter if it’s smaller than a newborn).

So I went to look at some apartments today. Mom and Dad came along, even though all of the apartments were below 24^th Street, without a Zabars, Fairway, or yarmulke-wearing dude in sight. Mom did perk up when she spotted a synagogue on W 12^th Street. She didn’t know we had those downtown.

We had a great day, even though I found myself caught in moments of brief despair regarding where I was headed, and who I would meet next. And whether it would finally stick. But I didn’t say anything to my parents. They didn’t ask about my recent breakup, or whether there was a new guy, even when my Blackberry beeped with texts that made me smile (yes, that is all I am divulging…now). At dinner afterwards (5pm early bird special, of course), amidst the apartment discussion my dad surprised me when he gestured towards my mother across the table and said to me, “Look at your mother. Isn’t she cute? From the second I saw her, I decided I wasn’t going to waste any time. It’s been 45 years.”

So I guess in some very special cases, it’s possible to have all three.

Mom’s Top Twelve

2011-05-08T19:01:00.000-07:00

I’ve been meaning to bring Mom (Ema, in Hebrew) back to the blog, since it’s been a while, and what better day to do so than Mother’s Day? In no particular order, here are my favorite Ema-isms from the last year. If you don’t speak Ema (a language consisting of misspellings, malapropisms, and of course, love), bear with me.

Cougel: It’s looking like I’m close to getting this new job!

Mom: I am holding my fingers for you.

Cougel: I got the job!

Mom: You must be inside the seventh cloud.

Re: new Christian boyfriend…

Mom: How is it going?

Cougel: Good, we communicate about everything.

Mom: If you talk about everything, have you talked about him converting?

Cougel: My friend is going through a hard time and she’s staying at my apartment.

Mom: Just remember the saying, no good deed goes unfinished.

Cougel: What did you think of my essay?

Mom: I loved it. So hard warming.

Emails from Ema:

Subject: CANNED TUNA!

Just read in consumer report, of studies that showed that mercury is very high. in tuna .[we know that] . . you should not eat or give to your children more that 1 serving a week. [ children should have 3 oz ]. i am shocked. sub. canned salmon fr. Alaska. Love, Ema

To daughters (re: The Holocaust): ... the other cuntries did nothing!

To daughters (re: Passover): Just came from Shoprite in Pars. they have all the dry goods out for pesach. bought most of the stuff. I don’t have to sclapp to Livingston. Meat and others, i will buy when i get back fr. Israel.

Cougel: Sorry I haven’t called. I’ve been working hard.

Ema: You must be exhausted from seeing clints.

To Cougel (re: a funny joke): I am laughing so hard. Ha cha cha.

To friends: My famous daughter’s essay was published in HUFFINGTON POST PUBLISHER!

To Cougel: I brought your horoscope in heb. fr. israel. amazing so much to the point. Call me if u want me to translate.

To Cougel: Did you hear about the 8.9 earth quake in Japan? a big one so scary. nature is not in our control.

For those of you who are new to my blog, I’m bringing back one of my very first posts, “Mom wants to read the blog (without knowing what Cougar means).”

Email # 1:
NU GET ME YOUR BLOG. EMA

Email #2:
Send me instructions how to get in ? ema

From Cougel, to Mom:
its http://www.cougel.blogspot.com/
MOM DONT BE SENSITIVE! THERE'S STUFF ABOUT YOU AND DAD THAT"S CUTE but EXAGERATED FOR DRAMATIC EFFECT

From Cougel (giving mom proper context):
by the way, a "cougar" is a popular term in pop culture now for women over 40, attractive, independent, who go after younger men... it started derogatory but now its not.. it's like demi moore.

MOM FINALLY READS IT
From Mom:
its cute.
i like it.
can i go on it and add more?

From Cougel to Mom:
Ur so cute! U can comment. At bottom of each story there should be, in gray, "comments" and a box will open for u to write whatever u want. What do u want to add?

From Mom:
I have to think about it. The world reads them ???
Did you eat dinner ?

Should married people be giving divorcees advice?

2011-04-24T14:21:00.000-07:00

I was recently asked to write a piece for The Huffington Post/Divorce section (psyched!) and my topic choice, “How do you know when you’re over your divorce?” inspired me to write this post.

I am not suggesting that us divorcees are part of some special club, but we do have a unique experience that those who have not been through it can’t really understand. Fortunately for them, they just don’t get it. They attempt to guide us, when they have never been in our shoes. I suspect it’s no different in reverse. Should someone who has never been married give marital advice? Should someone who has never had children provide child-rearing tips? I guess they can, but whether you listen to it or not is your choice (or problem).

Three of my close girlfriends are divorced – we all split with our exes around the same time. Two of them are now in serious relationships, and like me, they have pretty much healed. They have put their divorces behind them.

The only difference is, I’m still single. To some people, single is a condition that needs fixing. People close to me want to “help” me. They want me to be happy (even though I think that most of the time, I am), and they think if I find my next husband, like my divorced girlfriends have, I will be.

I realize that their intentions come from a good place – love. I understand the ache, or the itch, to make a loved one’s burden lighter, and sometimes we can’t resist the urge to scratch it, even though it might not help.

With the input of some fellow divorcees, here are some examples:

Divorced: “I got a really nice email from my ex-husband…after all this time…”

Married: “Maybe you two should go on a date.”

Divorced, no kids: “I’m thinking about going to a fertility clinic to discuss my options of having a kid.”

Married with kids: “Oh, is that the place where you can get some eggs?”

Divorced: “I had a dream that I saw my ex husband and we made up. I woke up really sad.”

Married: “Wow, I can’t believe you’re not over it yet.”

Divorced: “This guy I met on Match.com told me his last girlfriend called the cops on him after they had a fight, but that she’s the one that started it.”

Married: “Give him a chance.”

Divorced, no kids: “Wow, I can’t believe I’m going to be 40 this year. When I was married, I thought I'd have at least two kids.

Married with kids: “My friends started having kids at 44. You can have three.”

Divorced: “Sometimes it still hurts that my husband cheated on me.”

Married: “Didn’t you know that was going to happen? You can’t just travel for work all the time and expect your husband to stay faithful.”

Divorced: "I really want a child and my divorce has delayed everything."

Married with Kids: "Just do it. Pick anyone. It doesn't matter who.”

Divorced: " I'm sorry I haven't seen you for a while. Our friendship is important to me but it’s been tough and I needed space to process my divorce."

Married: "It's ok. I'm just going to pretend you went on vacation."

It's true that on the surface, none of the above suggestions seem constructive, or applicable. If we wanted stock advice, we could pick up a self help book (or read "Eat Pray Love"). Maintaining a close friendship with people who have never been in your shoes can be tricky...if you let it. I try not to expect any magical pearls of wisdom. We are the sole surivivors of our own history and experiences - no one else wakes up in our own skin. And that's okay. That's how it's supposed to be.

So I guess the choice is ours. We can put up a wall between us and the people we care about who "just don't understand," and protect ourselves from frustration. Or- we can choose to share, in order to nurture and sustain that relationship.

And if that means that suggestions are going to be offered, so be it.

You may even be surprised that sometimes, if you stay open, a pearl of wisdom might sneak it's way in.

Can being sick after a break up heal you?

2011-04-16T20:37:00.000-07:00

Since I unloaded a significant amount of raw emotion in my last post about my break up, I’m keeping this one simple. For one, I don’t have a whole lot to say (believe it). Not much has happened in the last week, whereas usually, in the weeks following a break up, I’m brimming with random dating stories or revelations - a typical template for me. After my two break ups with my first cub, I hit the ground running. And by running, I mean running from myself – from my feelings. I signed up for Jdate, allowed myself to be set up (by anyone except my mother or her friends – no offense), and went out every single night with my single girlfriends. I wasn’t on the hunt for a new boyfriend, hell no. But I was definitely on the hunt for a distraction from my heartache, and allowed myself to indulge in this kind of escape for a good three weeks, before either stopping the madness, or settling back into a normal routine where I’d make time for my writing, my family, and my friends (the married ones too).

This break up, it turns out, is different. I’m not moping. I’m not really depressed either. I don’t know if it’s because I knew things were going south a month before we split up, and I got a headstart, or if it has nothing to do with the relationship at all. It probably has a lot to do with me, and that finally, maybe? I’m better at knowing what I need. My life is full right now, without a boyfriend in it.

Or maybe, simply, I just wasn’t that into him.

I think we women can convince ourselves of almost anything. If we want a boyfriend, if we’ve decided that “it’s time,” we’ll hold on tight, despite the warning signs. I don’t think I did this with my ex, as evidenced by our swift break up, but I am probably guilty of allowing my agenda to obscure my doubts at the onset. I wanted a boyfriend. Period.

And so I had one. And it was really nice. Until it wasn’t.

So a day after we broke up, I got sick. And then I got better, for about four days, and then I got really sick. Looking back, this has happened to me with every single break up I’ve ever had. I’ve been told it’s my body “purging,” (that sounds gross), or that sorrow lowers the immune system. I think it’s probably a bit of both. And the fact that New York seems to be forever stuck in winter.

But this time I was almost as sick as I was when my ex-husband and I split (five days of high fever and no voice…metaphor?). Not only did I have a painful sinus infection which disturbed my sleep and required antibiotics (and thus seven days of no alcohol), I also got pink eye (in both eyes), like a ten year old. Which meant I couldn’t be around people, and had to wear my dorky glasses and no make up. Not the best look for a newly single cougar. After a brief tantrum (“I can’t get sick now! I have a new job! I have to write on the weekends! I want to go out, I have all these plans! I want to go to parties and bars! Waah!”) I calmed down and embraced it as forced quiet time.

For this break up, I had to do things differently. I couldn’t run from myself. I had to stay in, with my dog, my solitude, my books and my daydreaming, and once I settled into that, I realized how much I missed it.

It did occur to me that the magnitude of my illness post break up actually has no correlation to the magnitude of the loss. I wasn’t this ill because I was mourning some long lost love. I was ill because the universe (yes, the universe again) was sending me a message. This time, I needed to change my pattern. I needed to not default to my old ways. I needed to take a time out, and when we are in a rut, or merged with old habits, sometimes it takes an external force to get us to change.

So in a way, this forced detox helped me hetox too. And I needed both.

I guess we all cope with break ups in different ways. But I’m grateful to have discovered a better way. Obviously it helps that the guy and I didn’t share our lives yet. He had very few things in my apartment, and I can’t help but remember catching him on the morning we decided to break up, scanning the closets and counters to check if he had left anything behind, signaling that it was really over. He did forget his toothbrush though, and I haven’t thrown it away. Old toothbrushes are really good for cleaning tough stains on shoes. And toilets.

I have two more days of hermitage to go, and I’m making the most of it. I managed to finish yet another revision on my book, and watch some really bad TV, a rare feat for me.

And so with my book off my plate once again, my health and my contact lenses back, I’ll be ready to get back out there.

Hopefully the sun will too.

Another cub bites the dust.

2011-04-10T11:59:00.000-07:00

I skipped a posting last week because I was sick, although in hindsight, that was probably a cover for the real reason. I think there was too much uncertainty roiling around in my subconscious, and I couldn’t work out what to tackle first. I also must have intuited that it was too early (and personal) to write about what was to come a few days later: a break up with my tall, young, sweet and Aidan-like goyfriend.

Most of my friends don’t know yet but the few that I've told reacted with the classic, “Whaattt?? What happened?!” They were surprised. Things seemed to be going so well.

We all know that just because things look great on the outside, doesn’t always mean that they actually are. Although to my boyfriend and I, on the inside, it was looking promising. We were going through the good relationship motions: checking in with one another, sleeping over, sharing stories, dining and wining together. When I was sick he bought me yellow tulips. The image of him standing by my bed, this huge guy clutching this tiny unbloomed bouquet makes my heart hurt. I had given him a key to my apartment just a week before.

He even met the Fockersteins, for god (his and mine) sake! And afterwards, my mother went out of her way to Google 'Amazon' and send me a book, signifying that my man and I had a future, entitled “Marrying a Jew, from a Christian perspective.” I freaked. My goyfriend was on his way over and I found myself hiding the book and its receipt like it was porn. I emailed Mom to tell her that if I needed more information on interfaith relationships, I knew how to Google too, and could do so when I was ready.

My point is, I wonder if the visible increase in such niceties indicates that there is something wrong under the surface? How many times have you heard women express great shock over a break up, specifically because the guy “texted me just the night before to say he wanted to spend his life with me!” or “but we just planned a vacation to Hawaii!” Are we actually more emphatic, more lovey-dovey to our significant other, just before we break up with them? Is it denial, or are we overcompensating, in the hopes of eradicating our doubts?

Looking back, I think some of this was going on with us. We were ignoring the elephant in the room for a while (no not the Christian one…a cute image though. And by the way, if you think I’m avoiding the real reason we broke up, you are correct. I’m not going to go anywhere near that in a public post, out of respect for him, and because even for a blogger, there are some things that are really no body’s business.) A year ago, with my last boyfriend, I could go a long time blissfully ignoring things – ignoring my gut. But not anymore. At least there is a silver lining to this breakup. Amidst the heartache, at least I know that my gut and I have become best friends – the kind of friend I listen to, who doesn’t project her own agenda, baggage, or neurosis on me like some friends tend to do.

My dad said it best: “I see you don’t sit on the pot too long anymore.”

When I told Mom we broke up, she surprised me. Rather than reacting with her predictable “Heeeeee!! Mah karah?” (“What happened?” in Hebrew…Mom switches to Hebrew for important subjects), she listened.

And then in a soft patient voice she said, “Cougel, you will be okay. You’re strong and practical. You’ve been through a lot worse.”

How true, I realized. After the end of a fourteen-year marriage, followed by a three-year relationship with a guy I was envisioning marriage number two with, the failure of a four-month relationship, no matter how in love I felt, doesn’t scare me. I wonder if the loss of love hurts less with age and experience, or more, because the older we get, the greater our despair. Or perhaps the rate of our recovery correlates with the quality of the relationship itself, and how certain we are deep down that it just “wasn’t right.” Four days after my breakup, and judging by how I’m doing, I’m pretty certain that for me it was the latter.

It doesn’t mean I didn’t cry the day we broke up. After Mom and I hung up, I called her back to tell her one more thing: “By the way. I’m going to keep the book you sent me….for the next guy.”

Mom burst out laughing (I love that she can laugh at herself) and then I joined in. It felt good. Mom also knows there is some truth to my comment. The likelihood that my next boyfriend won’t be Jewish is no surprise, nor does it seem to freak my parents out anymore (Call it acceptance. Or learned helplessness. Either way, I’m glad).

The upside to all of this is that now I can start blogging more freely again, without worrying about respecting a boyfriend’s privacy (my own privacy, as evidenced by this blog, is fair game). Although I doubt I will start online dating anytime soon, no matter how good the fodder is for my blog.

But when I do, you’ll know.

Can men and women really be friends?

2011-03-26T07:39:00.000-07:00

It’s the age-old question. Debated amongst many.

I caught “When Harry Met Sally” on cable the other night (it was a Monday, the only night a week I am home by myself, sans boyfriend or work events).

I guess the movie “proves” that men and women can never be 100% friends – the potential for them to be more is always there, regardless of platonic behavior. The curiosity of what it would be like to date your friend ducks in and out of the edges of possibility, whether you intend to act on it or not.

It got me thinking about all of my past significant relationships. Every single one of them, including my marriage, started with friendship. My ex-husband and I were good friends for three years in college before we started dating our senior year. Neither one of had a crush on the other previously; we both agreed our feelings had been strictly platonic. And they were. But the potential for the chemistry to shift with the wind was always there, whether we knew it or not. My ex-cub and I were friends first too - but with some benefits (perhaps therein lies the…uh…rub).

With both those relationships, my sister had said, “It’s like 'When Harry Met Sally!'” implying that those relationships were sure to last. It gave me comfort, and the assurance that relationships that begin with friendship are the best kind. You already know one another, and since you’re not trying to woo the other person you are free to be yourself. So naturally a relationship that starts in that manner trumps a relationship that starts where romantic options are in plain sight, where you calculatedly reveal parts of yourself over time.

But does it? Does starting a relationship with friendship actually insure its longevity and strength?

I wrote a post supporting this theory just a few months ago. My ex-cub and I had just broken up and I was braving the dating trenches. I couldn’t figure out how I could enter into a relationship with someone where our agendas distorted our perception of one another. I believed that I’d have better luck falling in love with someone I already knew, or met in a platonic fashion. I thought I would need to discover that I loved them over time, the way it happened for Harry and Sally.

My boyfriend and I had an intense talk the other day, where we discussed deeper issues and what is important to us long term. Afterwards, it dawned on me that this kind of conversation might never have occurred had we been friends first. We would have assumed we knew those things about eachother already. But are those kinds of assumptions a short cut around really digging deep into what makes the other person tick? Are they detours around the hard work that inevitably makes your foundation stronger, and your love for one another heartier?

After our talk, I felt a newfound surge of love, one that felt more expansive and sustainable than what I had felt before. I realized that in this relationship, one in which we were not friends first, our friendship gets to grow alongside, or inside, our romantic one.

This time, no one can exclaim, “It’s like 'When Harry Met Sally!'”

And I’m a lot more comfortable with that.

Why do we care about the marriages of strangers?

2011-03-20T18:18:00.000-07:00

In the early years of my marriage, and even before that, when my ex husband and I were dating (ie. when things were good) I would open the New York Times style section to read the Modern Love column. The “vows” section, a two page spread of wedding announcements, didn’t interest me, although for some reason I’d quickly glance at the couples' last names to locate inter-faith marriages (foreshadowing?). Sometimes I’d read the feature story to learn how the couple met, or what they did for a living. The feature story seemed to be reserved for power players or socialites, and I must have been intrigued by how they were able to “have it all” – a successful career, good looks, and of course, true love.

During the period when my marriage was on the rocks, I found myself perusing the vows section more closely. I did this when my husband wasn’t around, to avoid detection (some people sneak porn; I’d sneak wedding announcements). I’d study the photographs of the happy glowing couples and would experience a brief pang of yearning.

After my divorce, I didn’t even think to read this section, and when I did happen to come across it I’d roll my eyes. Sounds bitter I know, but at that point I saw things differently. Or rather, I felt I saw through things – I saw past the shiny idyllic surface and guessed there was more going on than meets the eye. It strengthened my view that the media – books, movies, magazines – glorified marriage, and presented is as some fairytale illusion.

I considered blogging on this subject last week, and then something in today’s vow’s section sealed the deal. The feature story was about the marriage of a guy named Matt Kay to a woman named Sascha Rothchild. Ms. Rothchild is the author of the book ‘How to Get Divorced by 30.’

Yep. She got divorced, published a memoir about it, and then married again – announcing it in the vows section. How’s that for irony?

It made me question who actually reads this section. Women who have never been married and hope to someday? Or is it women in unhappy marriages who read it? Do men? If you don’t know the people in it, how is it any more interesting than reading the classifieds when you’re not job hunting? Or stock listings when you’re broke?

You might be wondering why I found myself reading it today. It was the feature story that drew my attention. If a woman who has experienced divorce (a kind of shattering of the wedding fantasy) is able to re-embrace the joys of marriage, come full circle, and announce it to the world, then maybe the vows section has a purpose. Perhaps its staying power is as strong, and as hopeful, as a long lasting marriage.

Do you ever read this section and stop to wonder what it says about you?

Meet the Fockersteins.

2011-03-13T21:02:00.000-07:00

My parents know I've been seeing someone (I'll call him "John"). Immediately after my divorce, they were the drivers of the "Cougel needs to find another husband" bandwagon, but that was almost four years ago, and since then I've had my share of bungled dates, breakups, and experiences that seemed to have stemmed their concern. Or rather, they've seen me navigate the single path and grow, and at this point, they just want me to be happy.

Note: For those of you that don't have a Jewish mother, or parents to whom their children and grandchildren fill their days, thoughts, and hearts, you might think I "worry" what my parents think waay too much. That dedicating a post to their involvement in my love life is immature or misdirected. That's okay. But if you do, I hope you keep reading.

My parents' trust in my decisions shows. They take my lead. I've mentioned John in passing, when relevant, but mostly, unless I bring it up, they don't ask. By "they," I really mean Mom. She's done a 180 as far as the nudging goes. And for a Jewish Mother (especially mine), that's huge. I've been busy and immersed in my new job so I haven't actually had the opportunity to talk about him to Mom, but also, I'm taking things with him day by day. I'm not forcing my future or collecting people's support as forward momentum.

I haven't been quite ready to have John meet my family anyway. My family is a lot. There are many of us, yes, but we are all close, break into Hebrew randomly, and talk over each other. There is a lot of hugging, complimenting, hair touching, and eating. It's no small feat for someone who cares what I think, and what my family thinks of him - not to mention him being culturally and religiously different - to meet them for the first time. I've been home for countless Sabbath meals since John and I met, and bringing him with me wasn't a consideration.

Until this past week. Something shifted. Our relationship is growing, as all things should with time. My mother planned a BBQ dinner in honor of my sister's birthday. I didn't ask anyone what they thought about my inviting John - if it was too early, or what they felt about it. I just asked him to come. He was pleased. We didn't make a big deal about it. I didn't feel like it was a big deal. If I did, then I suspect I wouldn't have invited him in the first place.

My dad called to ask me if "The Him" was coming to dinner (translated from Hebrew: "Ha-hoo"). It basically means "the guy" but with less weight. My father is notorious for "forgetting" the names of his daughters' significant others, until they become truly significant. I laughed, "Yes, Dad. I'm bringing The Him." And then he surprised me by asking me to spell my boyfriend's first and last name for him. (His real name is more complicated than 'John'). "What do you need his last name for?" I said. "I'm sure Mom already Googled him." (I know for a fact that she has but I wasn't sure she told my dad.)

Dinner was great. John had plenty of things to talk to my brother in-laws about (by things I mean, I overheard phrases like "interest rates" and "economic reform"). My nieces didn't flinch when introduced to him, which I had been worried about. Just last month my 2.5 year old niece asked me where "the boy with the black T-shirt was," referring to my ex-cub. This time, she interrupted the mortgage rate conversation to look me and John in the eye and ask us, "Is there a baby in your house?"

When we checked the NJ transit schedule, we realized we had ten minutes to get to the station to catch our train back to NYC and scrambled to get our coats. Every time I see my parents, my mother asks me to send her a list of things I need. I can easily get all of these items in NY (almonds, avocados, advil, socks), but I send her the list anyway, because it makes her happy.

Mom was thrown by our abrupt departure. "But wait! Cougel! What about your things? I didn't have time to collect them for you!" She ran to the cabinets, opening the refrigerator to toss coffee and muffins into a bag. I told her it was OK - that I'd get everything in the city, no problem. On my way downstairs she pushed a ziploc filled with ibuprofen into my hands (Mom only buys generic).

Goodbyes and thank yous were exchanged amidst the flurry, and John and I, along with my cousin and his girlfriend, packed into my dad's car in the garage and got ready to pull out. And then I saw Mom. She was standing at the car window holding a four-pack of toilet paper. "You need some?" she asked, pulling a roll out and holding it up to me.

I don't know if I felt worse rejecting the forlorn roll of toilet paper, or my mom, so I took it.

The train was pulling up as we got out of the car, and John turned to thank my father for the lovely evening. I overheard him say: "You have a beautiful family...and a beautiful daughter."

"You're welcome. Nice to see you," My dad said.

And then my father called my boyfriend by his name.

Do women want to marry their dads?

2011-03-06T18:05:00.000-08:00

This is a common question. Many books have been written about it. But I wonder if the question is open ended and its answer varies for everyone.

Some therapists claim that a woman who marries a man like her father probably had a difficult relationship with him (or he was absent) and she spends her life looking for someone who can fill that vacancy. Others say that a daughter’s relationship with her father is naturally more complicated than the relationship she has with her mother, and that dynamic informs her choices later.

Is the notion that we are looking for a man like our father something we women adamantly refuse to accept, or think we can get away from? I know many women - myself included - who when they embarked on that search for their future spouse (usually in their early 20's), refused to give this conceit much thought.

I know I did. Looking back, my ex-husband’s character was nothing like my dad’s, nor was his physique. I wondered, even after we divorced, whether the fact that he was the opposite of my dad, and the men that I was surrounded by growing up (my somewhat macho, tall, strong and silent Israeli uncles and cousins), played a large role in my choice to marry him. Rebellion? Attraction to someone “different”? Or an adamant refusal to acknowledge that deep down, I needed someone with the wonderful qualities that my father possesses? What did I know, as a twenty one year old girl thrust out of college and into the real world, about what I really wanted? Or what was really good for me?

I’m one of three girls – no brothers. My parents are happily married (still!) and I wonder if my dad being the only male, surrounded by four women, intensified our impression of him as strong and omniscient, and reinforced the male imprint he had on us. It might have been diffused had I had brothers. I will never know. But does it matter?

My friend asked me the other night how things were going with my new boyfriend, and said he wondered whether I was with this guy because he “checked all the boxes” for me. I found that question odd. “No way, I said. It’s the opposite. He’s nine years younger than me, not Jewish, and figuring out his path career wise.” This is not the obvious or optimal check list for a career-driven Jewish divorcee in her late thirties. And on the surface, it’s the opposite check list that my ex-husband possessed (age appropriate, Jewish, nice Jewish family, etc).

But I no longer concern myself with such things. Check lists, at least for me, are now about character. Does the guy possess inner strength, patience, kindness, ambition, and a propensity to be a leader? In assessing the traits of my new boyfriend, the answer is a resounding yes.

Does he fit the bill physically? Well, he looks nothing like my father (that would be creepy), but he is tall – not just taller than the guys I’ve dated, but as tall as a basketball player. I can sit in his lap. I get to feel like Carrie did with Aidan. When my best friend from high school heard how tall my boyfriend was, she texted me: “Cougel, it’s about time. I remember how you used to say you wanted to date a manly guy... tall and strong like your Israeli relatives.”

This dawned on me yesterday (and consequently inspired this post), when my new boyfriend, on a beautiful Saturday afternoon when we could have been outside brunching and drinking, helped me set up a system of organization for my new job, which requires thorough record keeping. I’m a techtard, and have been anxious to get the appropriate methods set up that work for me. My new boyfriend understands this. With my computer in his lap, and excel open, he morphed into a teacher, before my eyes. He asked me what I needed, and then walked me through Excel-hell, step by step. I got frustrated and impatient, not knowing exactly what I needed and wanting to get outside. I felt like a little girl. I went back in time to when I was in the ninth grade cramming for a math test (I sucked at math), and sitting with my dad in the dining room as he tutored me (he was an accountant). I would throw little “I don’t want to be here” fits, which my father didn’t indulge.

Just like my boyfriend.

I think that us women, in some small way, like to feel like little girls with the men we are dating. We don’t want to be the boss – even though we act bossy. We want a man who takes charge, who can teach us about things we don’t know (or have the patience to learn), because sometimes they know what we need better than we do. I don’t care if this sounds anti-feminist. I think that women are wired a certain way, as a result of how we were raised, and it’s just the way it is. Rather than rejecting this – which might lead to poor choices (ie. partnering with the wrong guy), don’t you think we should embrace it?

It’s not important to over analyze it, or attempt to track back the exact thing about our fathers that we want or don’t want in a man. It’s not going to be obvious. It’s going to crop up in random moments and interactions, when the man we are with does something that just feels comfortable and familiar, in all the good ways.

It just feels like home.

Embracing Oscar.

2011-02-27T15:24:00.000-08:00

I’m watching the Oscars this year.

Big woop, right?

The thing is, I haven’t watched the Oscars, let alone movies, in almost four years. It is somewhat of a big deal for me because I used to work in the movie business. It was my life, if you will. I wrote screenplays and made some short films, and one indie, with my ex-husband. Movies were our life. We made a point of seeing everything that was worth seeing or relevant to the projects we were writing. We would discuss them during the film - or at least I would. I’m one of those annoying people who can’t shut up and states the obvious. It doesn’t matter who is sitting next to me. I’ve been known to turn to a stranger in the tensest of moments and ask, “Omg, is she going to die?” and even, at the height of a happy ending, when the guy is about to kiss the women he’s been pining over: “Oh!!! They’re in love!”

I love movies. I used to make shitty black and white ones on 16mm. They were about repression and squashed dreams. I didn’t have the capacity back then to comprehend what my choice of subject might actually be saying about me or my subconscious desires, but looking back, it’s as obvious as the symbolism in “Black Swan.” Similarly, I knew it was telling that since my divorce, I have been unable to go to the movies. When I did, it would fill me with melancholy. It made me miss my ex-husband, who analyzed them in the same manner and with the same objective as I did. A random line or a name in the credits would remind me of an idea he and I had come up with, or an absurd meeting we had with some douchebag executive - that no one else could relate to.

So I just stopped going. I wrote essays and fiction instead. I banned the whole screenplay writing thing. I wasn’t interested. I decided that novel writing was more worthwhile. At least with a book, the end product lives on paper. The writer has some semblance of control (save a publishers notes, of course). With a piece of fiction, at least you’re not dependent on fund raising, director and actor attachments, and the stars aligning when the moon is not in retrograde over Venus and Mars at the same time.

But in the past year, I started taking an interest in movies again. Perhaps it’s another indication of my emotional progress. I might even consider writing a screenplay, if an idea is more suited to that format than a book. Once I finished my novel, and started writing other things, I realized that all those years of toiling in the movie business was the best storytelling school I could have ever attended. So thinking about that time no longer makes me sad or regretful.

So this year, I managed to see “127 Hours” (loved it), “Black Swan” (eye roll) “The Fighter” (an admirable rip off of “Rocky” meets a Ben Affleck Boston movie), “Inception” (who cares whether Leo was dreaming or not; all that matters is that he is dreamy), and my favorite – probably the best film I’ve seen in a decade (minus four years of seeing nothing) – “The King’s Speech.”

I hope “The King’s Speech” wins, although it probably won’t. Movies with British accents always have a good shot, but Dame Judi isn't in this one.

My mother (who hasn’t seen any of these) thinks that “127 Swans” is going to win, and by the time any of you read this post, we will probably both be wrong.

The Third Roommate. Does every couple have one?

2011-02-21T09:13:00.000-08:00

Couples who live together shouldn't have a third roommate. I don’t mean Kato living in the guesthouse or the twenty something couch surfer that never leaves. I’m talking about that thing that clutters the space, causes you to fight, and never seems to go away.

It’s different for everyone. For a friend of mine and her fiance, it’s the wet towel.

The wet towel that ends up on the floor, the chair in the kitchen, and worst of all, the bed. For some reason, the guy can’t seem to hang the thing up, and my friend cannot seem to let it go. It could be the downfall of their relationship and the one issue she cant stop talking about or get over. Why is that towel so annoying? Why has its size expanded to exaggerated proportions, cloaking all the good in the relationship? As women, we hate being our mothers. We don’t want our partners to make us into our mothers by acting like they did when they were kids, prompting us to scold them til they hate us. But then why can’t the guy just hang the darn thing up? What is he passively aggressively trying to say?

Is he claiming his territory, or is it just a stubborn refusal to concede? If the third roommate was eliminated, well then what? Would another problem, perhaps the real issue, surface in its place? My friend should just hire a cleaning lady. “These things are fixable,” I said. “You’re lucky in this case - you can just throw money at it.”

I had this issue with my ex-husband, before we were married, when we were living together. Boxers were abandoned upright on the bathroom floor, and shreds of toilet paper dangled like confetti on an empty cardboard roll. Maybe he just didn’t think to change it, or knew that I would. But why is it so hard? A guy takes the time to dig through a pile of comics and select the perfect one to accompany him to the can, but he can’t stop at the linen closet on his way and grab a fresh roll of toilet paper? So, we hired a cleaning lady. That, plus some learned conscientiousness from my ex, solved the problem. The roommate was banished!

But then a new one moved in. Xbox.

Halo became the guest on the couch that my ex chose to interact with rather than the roommate he moved in with (me). I felt like my mother, pleading with him to play less, or at least put it away at bed time. That didn’t work. People advised me, “You should just throw his Xbox out when he’s not looking!” Kick the roommate out once and for all! But I couldn’t do that. Then I would firmly be solidifying myself in the role of mom.

I wanted it to come from him.

Did it, you wonder? Well, if you read my blog, you know how that story ended.

My ex-cub had his own apartment, but he practically lived in mine. And so did his guitars. In their black cases. Which when stuffed together in a corner resembled three dead roommates.

I suspect we all have that thing in our lives. That thing that causes us to triangulate, that divides our attention and obfuscates the underlying issue. It’s much easier to talk about, and to, the third roommate - blame it for all our problems - instead of confronting the scary shit hiding under the dirty laundry. And the towel, like all laundry, no matter how many times we tend to it, keeps coming back.

It's still too early with my new boyfriend to identify our third roommate, or if we'd even have one; we don't live together yet, nor does he even have a key to my apartment. But regardless, our communication is excellent. Oh. Wait. There are those stubborn string cheese wrappers that reappear stuck to the counter and floor...

Who is your third roommate, and how are you dealing with it?

What does Saint Valentine's Day mean to Jew?

2011-02-12T14:47:00.000-08:00

“Saint Valentine's Day, commonly shortened to Valentine's Day, is an annual commemoration held on February 14 celebrating love and affection between intimate companions.The day is named after one or more early Christian martyrs, Saint Valentine, and was established by Pope Gelasius I in 500 AD. It is traditionally a day on which lovers express their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering confectionery, and sending greeting cards (known as "valentines").” [Wikepedia]

I have several hang ups about this definition, but the first thing that comes to mind is, do dudes actually think that flowers and chocolates gets them off the ‘show me the love’ hook?

And then there’s the “Saint” part, which means, “if you’re a Jew, this-saint your holiday.” When I was a teenager and beginning to obsess over boys, I attended a Jewish private school where I was forbidden to participate in lots of fun things (like holding a boy’s hand on school property), but being excluded from Valentine’s Day – a day of love – felt like a punishment.

But once I grew up, I knew better. I learned to see Valentine’s Day like Mother’s Day, for example, where every day should be about cherishing the people in your life that matter, and got over not celebrating it. It helped that I was married and my Jewish husband didn’t celebrate V-day either, although it did cross my mind that it was a convenient excuse not to bother with flowers and chocolates. So the day just came and went, where together we lifted our Jewish noses in the air and sniffed, “We don’t need Valentine’s Day anyway. We pronounced our love to each other under the chuppah when we got married. We’re done!” (Note: spell-check corrected “chuppah” to “chopped liver.”)

And when I later became single for the first time in my 30’s, Valentine’s Day didn’t come up at all - I would go out with my single friends on February 14^th and not feel bad about it. And when my ex-cub and I dated on and off for two years, we somehow managed to break up between January and April, so I didn’t acknowledge the date then either.

But this February is unfolding differently, at least according to my horoscope (if I referenced the correct one) and the exciting changes in my life. Yes, there’s the new boyfriend, who while Christian, doesn’t celebrate Valentine’s Day for different reasons. We’ve only been dating for two or three months, so I don’t expect much, and wouldn't really know what to “do” with it anyway. So we are going to stay in, and I will eat chocolate (which is no different than any other day).

But what I am trying to get to the heart of here, is love and gratitude. It may be a coincidence, but this month has proven to be full of both. My essay was published by Simon & Schuster in a beautiful anthology called “Live and Let Love,” in time for Valentine’s Day. It celebrates women who have triumphed over incredible hardships, and whose hearts bloomed as a result.

And, I fell in love (is declaring this on my blog a bigger deal than a Facebook status change?). And due to timing and keeping myself open, I landed a job I’m thrilled about.

Perhaps it was these events that changed my outlook, or perhaps I was headed that way anyway, but I noticed that suddenly I’m channeling positive feelings akin to love. When I meet new people, I don’t snub them (I hope), or experience apathy the way I used to. I make a point to respond to every email I get, be it from acquaintances or strangers (save the occasional weirdo), and try not to get irritated when people don’t do the same. I assume that people have good intentions, even when they don’t’ always act that way, because I figure they must be going through some shit I know nothing about.

I also realize that I’m moody, and that this feeling of love and gratitude is fragile and transient, so I’m going to celebrate it for as long as it fills me… which might just happen to include Valentine's Day.

Do good things come in threes?

2011-02-06T16:44:00.000-08:00

2011 is off to a good start, and although I’m not superstitious, I’m wary putting my achievements down in writing, so allow me to leave out some details. After close to four years at my job, I’m moving on. When I moved back to NYC after my divorce four years ago, the job was a godsend, and provided me with much needed stability in the midst of a lot of uncertainty. I also began my relationship with my ex-cub then too, as well as my novel, and both those things are now behind me. The job was the one remnant of that transitional period of my life, and my departure marks a true new start.

A friend who congratulated me on my new job, as well as on an essay of mine that’s been published in an anthology – my first time in print - remarked that good things come in threes, and that I’m due for one more. But I think that third thing already happened: my new relationship. This is my first time in what feels like a mature, balanced and loving relationship that is developing on a healthy course. But unlike the new job, and my published piece, this third “thing” is not a thing. It is a living and ever changing dynamic between two people whose form can shift – or evaporate – on a dime.

There’s a big difference between setting goals that are dependent and manifest themselves in tangible form, like the goal to write a book, get a new job, or purchase a new home. It’s entirely another when it involves another person, with their own hopes, dreams, needs and quirks. And making plans and decisions for a potential future with that person poses an even larger challenge, and requires a different set of introspective tools.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, my new boyfriend is not only not Jewish, but he is a practicing Christian. I’m not surprised, nor should I be, that as the relationship progresses down a path towards the future, this potential hurdle comes into view. On a regular day, as I inhabit the micro-bubble of my life, at work and dinner with friends and spending time with him, I can remain blissfully unaware of what looms in front of us. But when I step out of my little world and go home to see my family, for example, our differences become more prominent.

I went home to see my parents, sisters, and my nieces and nephew for Shabbat dinner this weekend. They all know about my new man, and are happy that I’m happy. But I can tell that my mother is worried, as is my brother-in-law who is a Rabbi. My last boyfriend wasn’t Jewish either, but he fell into the atheist category –he didn’t observe or feel a connection to his religion and would have probably taken my lead should we have had a family together. This guy, is clearly different. It’s also what I love about him. His values, his sense of family and spirituality, and the importance he places on living a life of meaning, echo my own. But I suspect (since we haven’t discussed it yet) that he is going to want to include certain practices in his life when he has a family. But will I? What compromises am I willing to make, and what, if any, will he? What if he wants to baptize his children, go to church, and have a Christmas tree in the house? I’ve never been in this position before, and if I were to peer at my life from the outside, I’d say that once again, I’m being tested. Or perhaps it’s my Jewish identity- my faith- that I’m being forced to confront, at a critical juncture in my adult life.

I already married the Jewish guy, whose upbringing was almost identical to mine. Sure, it made a lot of things easy, but being able to check those boxes on the “good match” list didn’t override all the other mismatched qualities. Now, for the first time, I feel as if I met someone who fits, by virtue of all the tiny intangible things that connect us. Is religion a deal breaker for me? Am I being forced to figure this out now, having gotten away with not having had to before? Perhaps this man has come into my life for this purpose. Perhaps I have some unfinished J business to tend to.

I told Mom about a producer who is taking over my job, who has a Jewish name. “Is she Jewish?” Mom asked. “Yes,” I said. “She’s not only Jewish, she speaks Hebrew. And she’s a lesbian.” I paused then asked, only half joking: “Who would you rather I bring home for Shabbat dinner, a Jewish lesbian, or a non-Jewish guy?” The long silence that followed this question, answered it.

I was also told that what I think I want now will change when I have kids. I don’t contest that fact. It’s true that even though I don’t observe or practice any Jewish rituals on my own, I might decide that I want to when I have a family. But what if I decide that l don’t? My biggest lesson, and my new philosophy in life, born out of having made a lot of poor decisions under pressure or based on others expectations – is that I cannot make decisions today based on hypotheticals - based on what I might feel two or ten years from now. That kind of thinking has led me astray in the past, and I don’t trust it.

When I came back into the city after being immersed in cultural observances and my family’s expectations, I noticed a faint anxiety had emerged in my stomach. It was difficult to discern whether a legitimate concern had cropped up for me after being with my family, because of my beliefs, or whether I had contracted my family’s concerns. At 38 years old, worrying about what your family thinks and allowing it to cloud your judgment is concern enough.

But I’m not surprised. I’m taking solace in the fact that at least I am registering all of these things honestly, with my eyes wide open. It’s all I can do.

So am I due for a third bit of good news, or have I already received it? My relationship is a work in progress, and I have no idea how things are going to play out from here. I guess I just have to go with it. What do you guys think?

What happens once you graduate divorce?

2011-01-30T15:45:00.000-08:00

Have any of you gotten to that place, when you wake up one morning, and you realize, "I’m over it?"

I’m not talking about no longer texting an ex-boyfriend, or realizing that your heart has finally mended. I mean finally moving past the heavy mourning phase of your divorce. It takes time – a lot longer than you can possibly predict. There's some myth which states that it takes a month of healing for every year you’ve been together. I was with my ex-husband for 14 years, but it took more than three to feel “normal,” to get to know myself, and to reach the end of the ‘what is my life going to look like now’ journey. And then it took another year to quit smoking the nostalgia cigarette in order to feel creative and mine my grief for material (this blog not included).

It didn’t seem possible three years ago. I didn’t think I’d ever get to a place where I could talk about my past without saying “we” - where I had accumulated enough experiences that happened to me, rather than we.

It happens slowly, and yet you notice it suddenly, like:

1- When you run into your ex, and instead of feeling nauseous and shaky, you feel okay.

2- A mutual friend tells you that he’s reading your blog. Not just reading it, but “studying it.” You’re curious, but you don’t mind.

3- You stop going to his Facebook page to see if he’s changed his profile picture (since you’re not friends you’re not privy to anything else). It’s like reopening the fridge to see if something new has appeared until you realize you’re not even hungry.

4- You don’t feel the uncontrollable urge to talk about your marriage or “what happened to you” anymore.

5- You enter into a new relationship where you don’t cry the first time you have sex.

6- You enter into a new relationship where you’re not comparing the new guy to your ex, checking off the positive qualities he has that your ex didn’t. Or perhaps you’ve come so far that you realize they have some good things in common, too.

7- You find out that your ex has a new house, a new wife, and a new baby. Six months ago it might have driven you to the brink of email bombing – but now suddenly, you are too busy making your own life worthwhile, and enjoying it, that you don’t care what is going on in his. Maybe you’re even happy for him.

8- Your sister calls you on what would have been your tenth wedding anniversary, to see if you’re okay, when you don’t even know what day it is.

9- He sends you an email out of the blue- when you haven’t spoken in almost two years, and while you experience a disconcerting jolt of anxiety, it doesn’t send you into a tizzy the way those emails used to. And even if you might consider writing back, you get too busy in your own life that the email gets buried in your inbox.

Life gets in the way. Your life. A life that you’ve built all by yourself, from the ground up, and when it whisks you away – even rescues you from the lurking tidal wave of your past – I think it’s a good sign.

I went through a period where I actually felt a yearning for that dark place, and sometimes, I admit, I still do. It’s disconcerting. In some strange way – looking back through the gauzy lens of nostalgia – I believe that I felt more raw and real and creative inside of that space than I feel in the bright light outside of it. But it’s probably a good thing.

Can you detect the moment when you realized you were over your ex and the life you left behind, and when you did, did it make you happy, sad, or both?

Signposts on the path to a meaningful life.

2011-01-17T09:29:00.000-08:00

Yes, this is a post about signposts (pun intended). I wrote one a while back about signs, the universe, and how if we take the space to learn its language, if our eyes are open, we can see them all around us. But here I am, delving into this topic again, because once more, things are happening that I can’t ignore.

I recently read Dani Shapiro’s memoir, “Devotion.” A friend recommended I read it because Dani’s story and voice reminded her of me (and what a compliment). In her thoughtful book, Dani charts her search for meaning (while leading a seemingly rich life) and how she finds it in her reinterpretation of religion - a hybrid of Judaism and Buddhism (Buddish? Jewdist? You get the point). Dani grew up in an observant household, like I did, and after taking a detour away from it, like me, she found her way back to it. Unlike me. Not yet anyway.

But there is a reason this book was written now, and a reason it resonated with me. There’s a reason that although I hardly ever watch TV, I recently found myself immersed in a cable program about the roots of Kabbalah. Every day for the last three years, since my divorce and subsequent life change, I’ve worn the same two Kabbalistic necklaces that I bought from a religious shopkeeper in the Israeli port town of Jaffa (One is shaped like a key, and fyi, “Is that the key to your heart?” is the worst pick up line ever). I feel naked without those necklaces, even though I don't know what every single etching on it means. They just feel warm around my neck – they feel right.

I started having dreams about running to the airport and missing my flight to Israel again. I mentioned this in a previous post. When my ex-cub and I were getting serious and discussing whether he would convert or at the very least learn more about my religion, these dreams were prevalent. The most symbolic of them being the one where I couldn’t get on the plane because I had lost my passport – signifying the loss of my Jewish identity, perhaps. Since my ex goyfriend and I broke up, the dreams ceased.

But the signs haven’t. And now that I find myself in the early stages of a relationship with someone new, who also happens to not be Jewish, the same questions are emerging. What does it mean for me to be Jewish? What customs and rituals matter enough to actually enforce? How much of it is meaningful to me personally, and how much is just inherited expectations (and agita) from my family? Obviously, I am entering into this new relationship willingly. At this stage and age in my life, I’ve decided that it is in no way a deal breaker. Finding love – an indisputable connection - is difficult enough that I’ve decided I cannot limit myself to only Jews (not to mention that my J-date experience has produced zero contact with J’s; only with goys. Goy - 2. Jew - 0).

My new guy and I are just getting to know each other, and it’s definitively too early for me to concern myself with this (if it is even a concern at all), so I’m not going to.

But the signs couldn’t care less.

Religion came up last night for the first time. Turns out my new guy loves religion, the Old Testament, and goes to church occasionally. We share the same values and intellectual curiosity. A good start.

But in typical neurotic Cougel fashion, I found myself reflecting on what that might translate into in the future – should we even have one together - and briefly discussed this with my sister. As I was walking through Union Square on the way to a meeting, I was BBMing with her thoughts regarding what it means to be Jewish, and mentioned the lost passport dream to her again. When I put my Blackberry into my purse, a young woman with long dark hair stopped me. I thought she was going to ask me for directions. She said something else.

“Excuse me, are you Jewish?”

Note: It’s freezing in NYC. I had a big furry hat on, sunglasses, and my typical rock and roll garb and borderline Lesbian boots. My curly Jewy hair was covered. There were no tells.

I don’t know why I didn’t just say, “Yes,” or “No thank you, I’m in a rush.” Maybe it was typical New Yorker suspicion and identity concealment in play, or maybe it was my own confusion that made me reply with, “Why?”

She handed me a box of candles, for the Sabbath (it was Friday), and said, “We had some extras and I wanted you to have one. Candle lighting is at 4:30.”

Coincidence? No way. If that wasn’t Universe code for, “Hey Cougel, get your Jewishit together,” I don’t know what is.

My brother-in-law who is a Rabbi told me that we all have a “malach,” an angel, that hovers in the universe around us to watch out for us. But the malach is also there to test us, to surface important conflicts out of our subconscious and into the light. A signpost, if you will, in the form of a stranger on a wintery New York street.

I don’t know what the answer is, or what I’m supposed to “do” with this information, if I’m to do anything at all. But while reading Dani’s book, I admired her tenacity and ability to do the painful digging in order to ground herself in something bigger than the minutiae of her day to day life. It sparked to life the swirling undercurrent I’ve been experiencing regarding finding deeper meaning in my own life. I don’t know if the key (yes, the key again) lies in Judaism, or Eastern philosophy (I don’t do Yoga), or something in between.

But if I don’t stop to see the signposts in my own search for meaning, then it’s likely I will never find the answer.

So, is this neurotic mumbo jumbo, or is there relevance to all of this? Is this even a question for the masses, or is it up to us as individuals to interpret the sign’s meaning for ourselves?

The real reason behind my writer's blog-block.

2011-01-09T18:50:00.000-08:00

Sunday. Just the thought of that word evokes feelings of long brunches, calling mom, and snuggling up on the couch to watch bad TV. For me, it’s blog day. If I haven’t written a blog by Sunday, or haven’t come up with a topic for one, I don’t panic, but I do feel an urgency to get something posted. As most bloggers will say, does anyone really notice? Do they even care? But I do.

So here I am, at 8:30 on a Sunday night, with nothing to say. I was about to post a column I wrote last month – from my back blog of ideas – for times like these. But it didn’t feel right. It felt dishonest. It occurred to me that it’s not that I don't have anything to say, but that I’m actually not quite sure how to say it, or if I’m ready to.

I met someone. Five weeks ago. I’ve mentioned him briefly in my last few posts, unsure if the relationship was going to develop further, and I figured I’d cross the blog bridge when I got to it. And now I have.

As I suspected, meeting him changed my outlook. I went to South Beach over the holidays. When I booked that trip, I was single, post break up, and intent on living it up and potentially meeting someone. http://bit.ly/h3tBfz But after meeting this guy, my agenda changed. I thought we wouldn’t talk while I was away, but we ended up speaking every day, and by the time I got back to NY, we had fallen into a groove. We’ve spent almost every night together since I’ve been back.

So am I in a relationship now? It looks that way. Since I was married for so long, and have only had one significant relationship since (where we were friends first), this kind of progression is new to me. I’ve never actually been with someone whom I went on a date with, then five, then started to lose count, as the relationship organically deepened in a mature and romantic way.

Is he a cub? Well, he’s 9 years younger than me, so technically you could say he is. But when I am with him, I forget. He is wiser, more confident, and manlier than some men in their 40s and 50s. I’ll reserve that topic for a later and more in depth post, but for now, yes, you could say that after my public declaration that I will no longer date younger guys, here I am, doing it again. Do I feel bad about it? Not at all. Not yet anyway.

Is he, or rather is it my surprise (and joy) that I am suddenly in a relationship, the reason I was stuck today and unsure what to write about? Probably.

Although I write this blog under a pseudonym, many of you who read it know me and are my friends, so this is new territory for me and my blog. I haven’t yet figured out whether I can continue to write about my romantic life, when there is actually someone I care about in it. It's not the same thing as blogging about a blind date gone bad, or even an ex. This guy knows about my blog, and at my behest, respectfully does not read it. He doesn’t want our dating to stop me from writing honestly, and he said he doesn’t mind if I write about him, as long as I don’t use his name. But the question is, do I want to expose myself, or taint the delicate stage we are in, of a new blossoming relationship, by putting it out there?

And lastly, I wonder, does it change the focus of my blog altogether, if I’m no longer single?

So I’m asking for advice from my readers. What do you think? Is it time to bring other benign topics back (like Mom, for example), or since the guy is saying he doesn’t care, should I just go for it?

With a new year comes the old.

2011-01-02T17:18:00.000-08:00

How could I not write about the past year, right? In the weeks leading up to New Year’s, I was feeling noticeably at peace. This was not what I expected heading into the holidays. It’s a cliché to say that being single during Christmas and New years is a recipe for depression, but it’s cliché for a reason. But this year, I felt better than I have, for a longer stretch of time, than I had throughout most of 2010.

Is it an accumulation of all of my efforts over the year to change, to get on top of my shit, to turn that frown upside down?

This wasn’t a resolution I made. On Jan 1 2010, I didn’t forecast or promise myself that in the upcoming year I would make the ground underneath my feet less shaky, nurture my relationships more, and start living in the present.

It just sort of happened. Or did it?

It was a rough year, as it was for almost everyone I know. It seems that at the turn of every New Year, we anxiously usher out the old and place high hopes on the new. Our desire for change, for “better,” blinds us from honoring what we have experienced - including the pain and grief - and acknowledging those things as critical building blocks to our future. It’s easy to look back on the past year and bid it adieu; to recount the hardships and believe that they evaporate when the clock strikes midnight. Of course, they don’t. They stay with us. “Our past doesn’t go away. It becomes us,” said TS Eliot somewhere, which I’m lifting from a wonderful memoir, Darrin Strauss’ “Half a Life.”

A lot of people have asked me what my New Year’s resolutions are. But I can’t offer a concrete answer. I’d like to say, “For my book to get published,” or “To meet my future husband,” and while these things are true, I have no control over any of them. The WSJ “Friday Journal” section featured “Cultural Resolutions: What top writers, artists and musicians are hoping to accomplish in 2011.” Each artist states that they wish to achieve a goal that is concrete: a work of art, losing weight, having a baby, etc. All of these goals are inspiring and while it’s quite likely these people will attain them, it made me stop and think. What about setting goals that are not tangible, that stem from within? Isn’t buying a house or expanding a museum’s collection, the cumulative result of all these intangible changes we make on the inside?

Without knowing it consciously, without uttering it aloud, my subconscious agenda this past year was to get to know myself better. And to try to stay in the present - rather than in the tug of war between past and future - and have faith that the rest, the physical manifestations of that, would follow in whatever form they were meant to.

I finished my novel and got a literary agent. That wasn’t my resolution. My resolution was the precursor to that. To find my voice, to keep going, to follow the thread I had started weaving. The rest followed. I had my first significant relationship - and my first significant break up - since my marriage. Looking back, my tacit and yet misguided resolution was to settle down with this person and start a family with him, but in the end, the opposite happened. That relationship taught me how to be present, to listen to my gutt, and clear the space for the new things waiting in line to get in.

Judging by how I was feeling as the clock was striking midnight, at a party surrounded by new and loyal friends, as texts were coming in from my long time pals who don’t live in NY, and a man I’ve recently met who was at a wedding in the Midwest – our texts crossing in the ether as the ball was dropping – I think it’s going to be a good year.

Being single: Is it just a state of mind?

2010-12-25T15:42:00.000-08:00

When making plans for the holidays, I was down in the dumps. I was still mending after my break up and knew I needed to get out of cold NYC and have something to look forward to. Last year, I celebrated my first Christmas at my ex cub’s home in the South. It was my first taste of what Christmas feels like, which having been raised in a Jewish household, I had never experienced before. Looking back, it planted that seed of yearning for cozy family and companionship that I had always imagined this time of year sowed. But now I knew for sure.

There was no way I was going to stay in the city, single and roaming. Two years ago, I took the week off for precious book writing time, and cherished it. But this year, my book is finished – at least for now - so that wasn’t a focus either. No one likes to feel unmoored, especially when the New Year beckons.

So I decided to go to South Beach for some sun and solo time. Traveling alone has become a salve for my soul since my divorce, and has always managed to stoke my writing fire, be it chapters, essays, or ideas for a different novel. At least that was my plan.

So I booked myself four nights at an affordable boutique hotel, figuring that was all I needed. It didn’t have a bar, or a pool, but a trusted friend recommended it for some peace and quiet, and it sounded perfect to me.

And then I told my parents.

My father turned to me and said, “How cheap is this hotel you’re staying at?”

“What does it matter, Dad? It’s what I can afford.”

“What if money was no object? Would you stay at a nice place, a real hotel? Where you could find a husband?”

His question can be interpreted several different ways. You could say my parents really really want me to settle down, at all costs, even if I’m not even sure myself. And that it only adds to the pressure.

But you could also say that they want me to be happy. And that they were also taking cues from me – when I was depressed and stuck, having lost a guy I had been (mistakenly) building a future with.

My mother jumped into action. My sisters always said she would make a great travel agent. For someone unversed in the ways of Google, somehow my mother was able to forward me hotel deals from five different discounted travel sites. In the end, she called her travel agent, a “very with it gay man” (her words), who got me a deal at a swank hotel on South Beach. A Hanukah present. Probably my first real one (when I was little, it was socks, shirts at The Gap, and once, really awesome roller-skates).

That was four weeks ago. When I told my friends this story, they laughed and thought it was so sweet. I do have wonderful parents. The caveat being, I said (half joking), is that I better come back from Florida with a potential husband.

Or I’ll have to make one up.

Since then, I managed to emerge from my post break up haze. The holiday parties helped; social opportunities, new contacts, and some friends work parties too, where I met a guy.

I’m not going to talk about said guy here, for lots of reasons, but mostly because he is not my boyfriend, and I have no idea if he will be. But unexpectedly, at a party I almost didn’t go to, I connected with someone with whom thus far, our dynamic has been effortless. You know that feeling, when you’re getting to know someone, but in the process you don’t even realize that you are? After just a few dates, you feel like you’ve always known them?

So I got to South Beach today. A few of my friends are in town too, all in their twenties. They go out at 11pm and stay out til dawn. They told me I better get with it and join. They’re singing “The Cougel needs some fun The Cougel needs to hook up with boys” song. I was singing it too – when I booked my trip. So when I hesitated, and said to my friend, “Well, I don’t know. I mean, its not that I wouldn’t be open, but I don’t feel eager to. Suddenly, I don’t really care.”

Because I realized, as soon as I left this morning, that here I am, receiving texts (and phone calls! Imagine that?) from the nice guy - from the moment he left to visit his family - and headily sending texts back. I don’t wait an hour to respond, I don’t even think about waiting. Is it getting in the way of my plan? Of my parents' plan? Of course, it shouldn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. It supports my theory that we can never plan for how we are going to feel a month in advance, or even a few days. We just have to adapt to the changes.

But my friends say, “Cougel, you’re single. You can do whatever you want. You should have fun. Keep your options open.”

It's true. Technically, I am undoubtedly still single. But how does feeling, and behavior factor in? What does being single really mean? Am I the kind of person that can act single, when I’m thinking about, or possibly on the verge of being with someone else? And if I do act single, and hook up with "whoever," will that get in the way?

What does “being single” actually look like?

I’m discovering that after all my running around post divorce - where dating or one night stands seemed second nature – that it’s possible, that now that I’m more settled and know what I want, that hooking up with guys that I don’t want to hang out in the future with, seems more than just pointless. It’s really not that much fun.

It made me wonder, is being single really just a state of mind?

Can you predict when a guy is gonna bail?

2010-12-19T16:40:00.000-08:00

Can you isolate the exact moment on a date or in a relationship when you know it’s not going to work out, that the guy is going to go bye-bye?

It sounds funny, but I'm going to call it "the moment of imminent 'poof'" (no not like that).

It used to take me at least five dates, or feel like a slap in the face, when after what I thought was a good date, with future potential, a guy vanished.

But the signs are always there for the taking. Then why do we ignore them? Does our desire to project an open mind, or to be in a relationship, blind us from listening to our gut?

Last year I met a guy through a friend who I wasn’t initially interested in at all, until my friend told me how “into me” he was, and that he (creepishly?) looked at my Facebook photos a lot. I was flattered. Flattery does work, whether we want to admit it or not. Besides, he was a nice Jewish boy - smart, funny, and “only” six years my junior. Looking back, maybe those “check list” things (the kind I could boast about to my mother) wooed me and blocked me from assessing whether I actually truly connected with the guy. We eventually began a dialogue and went on a date. Three hours of talking plus two hours of being “those people” at a bar (making out in the corner) equals a good date, no? My friend confirmed this: “He had an amazing time. He’s so into you.” Cut to date two, where I was pleasantly surprised to learn that physically we connected too. When he left, I was humming to myself, hopeful.

So I didn’t find it unreasonable to text him the following day (cringe), “Last night was fun.”

It took him six hours to respond with three words: “Glad you enjoyed.”

Excuse me?

Needless to say, my imminent poof detector was out of whack back then. While I knew that this comment signaled something was wrong (and I didn’t write back), I felt slighted. And when I didn’t hear from him again, I felt deflated and confused. Had I been blinded by my desire to bounce back from break up #2 with my cub unscathed, that I hadn’t been able to see this coming from the get go? The guy was going through a life change when we met. He had quit his job, rented out his apartment, and was leaving the city on a six month quest in search of himself. What caused me to bother getting involved in the first place, you ask? Naïve romanticism? Loneliness? Okay, fine. Stupidity.

When it comes to romantic maturity, I’m 38 going on 23. I like to blame the fact that I was married for so long - frozen in time - and haven’t benefited from the growth that dating in your twenties fosters. You could say it’s why I keep going back to dating guys that are ten years younger than me. We probably have the same emotional maturity quotient.

But guess what? I’m learning!

On the last slew of dates I’ve had post break up, I’ve managed to listen to my gut. Somewhere in the midst of date one or two, I’ve learned to sense when it’s not going to work – that instance when something in the dynamic shifts. Whether it’s how a guy says something, or what he doesn’t say.

For example, I met a tall handsome Israeli (should have been my first clue) at a party (he looked 36, but I found out later he was 29). He showed promise. When he asked me out, he used the telephone. Drinks at the bar were flirty and friendly and so was the first half of dinner. Conversation was flowing. And then the alcohol was too. He was drinking two glasses to my one, and then ordered another bottle. I noticed it, but it wasn’t until he started flirting with the female manager - right in front of me - that I realized, this guy’s gonna go poof. When the date ended, he hastily kissed me on the lips and said, “I’ll call ya tomorrow!” before running off. I wasn’t surprised when I never heard from him again.

But only later did I realize that the real defining moment was when he dared to ask me mid-dinner, “So how old are you exactly?”

“Older than you,” I said.

“Well I know that!” he remarked with an arrogant toss of his head.

And then what did I do? To my disgust and shame, I lied. I told him I was 37. A whole year younger than my actual age.

I mean, if you’re going to do something as gross as lie about your age, you might as well go for it. I realized later that his questioning had made me feel insecure enough to feel flustered, and it was in that instance that I knew there would never be a second date. And I didn’t want one.

I also went on a few dates with a sexy man fifteen years my senior whom doesn’t live in NY. We had had an ongoing flirtation for some time, and now that I was single again, we went out when he was in town. I was cautious to risk getting attached to someone long distance, but was willing to give it a shot; to at the very least, have some fun (wink wink).

After two dates (which he initiated) consisting of intense school kid style make out sessions on the sidewalk - when he had a hotel room three blocks away - I started to wonder. What’s a man in his fifties, who doesn’t seem interested in a long-term commitment - even though he had expressed interest (and apprehension) in that potential between us - bothering with me at all? With a woman who he’s not going to see often, unless its for sex?

But it never went there either. By the third date, where we met up with a mutual friend, I could sense a shift. In myself. Suddenly, inexplicably, my interest went “poof.” When we walked towards my apartment, I noticed that he was keeping his distance, even though we had kissed passionately just the night before. We had nothing to say to each other. Perhaps he was sensing my sudden disinterest. And then when we were two blocks from my apartment, he unchivalrously decided to take a short cut to his hotel, rather than walk me all the way home.

I knew it too, with my ex-cub. In the month before our break up, I could sense he was gonna go bye-bye, before he did. It was an accumulation of all the tiny intangible changes in his behavior and attention that telegraphed that the end was near. I don’t know if it’s a skill that we women have inherently, to be keen observers and intuition listeners, but it’s a gift nonetheless.

I guess the point is that sometimes, the underlying reason isn’t discernable, nor is it important. Sometimes it’s enough to just listen to yourself, to keep your eyes and heart open, and see the signs for what they are. Sometimes things just don’t click – no matter how much you want them to - and why doesn’t matter.

It’s possible that after investing so much time in my last boyfriend, when deep down I probably knew it wasn’t going to go anywhere, I’ve learned that my gut is there to save me. Save me from wasting precious time with a guy that’s already planning on going poof, even if he doesn’t know it himself.

Any of you have examples of moments that you thankfully paid attention to? Or ones that looking back, you realized that you willfully ignored?

It is what it is.

2010-12-12T08:24:00.000-08:00

I used to loathe this phrase. It sounds like a cop out. When you don’t feel like giving advice to a friend or are at a loss for words, “It is what it is” is the lazy default.

Urban Dictionary agrees:
-A phrase that seems to state the obvious but actually implies helplessness.
-Used often in the business world, this incredibly versatile phrase can be literally translated as "fuck it."
-A trite, overused and infuriatingly meaningless cliche that is utilized by provincials who think they are adding some deep, meaningful insight during a discussion.

It’s almost as irritating as, “You gotta do what you gotta do.” When the shit hits the fan, these phrases crop up everywhere. When my marriage fell apart and I was adrift and turning to people for advice, I’d hear: “Well, you gotta do what you gotta do.”

“But what if I don’t know what I gotta do? That’s the whole reason we are having this conversation!”

Friend (shrug): “It is what it is.”

Right. Got it.

“It is what it is” is a phrase that Israelis employ often. Growing up, I heard it a lot - from my cousins, my aunts and uncles, and from my parents too. Maybe it’s because Israelis live in conflict and anticipation of the next “bad” thing that could happen tomorrow, so they are forced to accept “it,” that is, life, and its harsh realities. For them, “It is what it is” is not just a phrase, it is a philosophy. It supports accepting the state of affairs rather than hiding from them and living under pretense.

So it made me wonder if my ongoing issue with this phrase has been rooted in a deeper frustration. Perhaps what angered me was not the laziness or seeming meaninglessness of this phrase, but rather the realities of my own life; of a picture that had been forming before my eyes, when for so long I’d held onto a different one. Perhaps it is the makeup of my life today – the furnishings that occupy its space – be it abandoned dreams or the reassessment of my goals that I am stubbornly rallying against.

So I’ve started to look at things differently. When people say (or think): “Cougel, don’t you miss the life you had in LA, and your nice house?” “Do you want to be doing what you’re doing right now?”

Guess what my response to that is?

“It is what it is” is not cynical, nor is it defeatist. I no longer see it as a dismissal, as a shrug of the shoulders that says, “Ah fuck it. I can’t do anything about my situation so I’m not even going to try.” It’s exactly the opposite. It means that taking an honest look at what you have and accepting the cards that have been dealt to you frees you from illusion. And from there, you can start building again.

So I’ve started to take stock of the “its” in my life, and then I’m going to make some decisions from there.

Because you know, I gotta do what I gotta do.

If a Cougar stops dating young cubs, is she still a Cougar?

2010-12-03T13:09:00.000-08:00

My break up with my cub was due to several differences between us, age and life stage being the biggest. So I've since sworn to try to date guys over 35. On my online dating profile, under "age range looking for," I deliberately wrote "35-51." This doesn't mean that if I meet a guy younger (or older) that I wouldn't be open, but I figured I had to re-start somewhere.

The thing is, it hasn't stopped the cubs from migrating in my direction or even pursuing me. It's bizarre. It makes me wonder, is being a "Cougar" in the eyes of the beholder? If I'm not cub hunting - let alone even looking anymore - but the cubs are hunting me, does that mean that I'm a Cougar by default, regardless of intent?

I met a guy a few weeks ago through friends who is 26 (or "26 and 3/4's," he explained, as kids do). But he seems much older. He's sophisticated, wise, and accomplished. When he told friends of mine that he's looking for an older woman, 35-38, preferably Jewish, they sent me urgent texts: "Cougel! He's not only a cub, he's a Jewish cub. A Cougel's prime target! Get your ass over to this bar right now and meet him!" So I did. My friends were right. The dude is awesome. We totally hit it off.

And yet I'm reluctant to take it further. I'm not sure if it's because I've been recently burned by the age thing and still healing, or if I've wisely learned from my experience and know that practically speaking, it's unlikely the relationship could go anywhere.

This guy doesn't care though. He doesn't seem put off by my reluctance. He doesn't care how old I am. In fact, he likes it.

It made me stop and think. Is there something intangible about me that attracts younger men? Or, is there something about younger men that attracts me, despite my decision not to go there?

As I mulled this question over, a chat box popped up on the online dating site I've joined (not J-date, but the free one, which is proving to be good for laughs rather than romance). It was from "BoyToy123," description: straight, single, 24 years old. This was the third time he tried to engage me so I decided to respond and set him straight, like so:

BOYTOY123: Do you like younger men?

ME: Yes but not to date.

BOYTOY123: Ohh. Shucks. Well then what for?

ME: Why, does my profile say I like guys under 25?

BOYTOY123: No. Just figured I'd try. I'm very attracted to older women. And you have a very sexy face.

ME: I dated a guy younger than me and that didn't work out. So I'm taking a hiatus. Sorry.

BOYTOY123: Well I'm not really looking to date..
ME: No kiddin.
BOYTOY123: ...just go out a few times.. see where it goes...

ME: Right. That's fine. But I'm looking for a long term thing.

BOYTOY123: Ah alrighty

ME: Thx for checking in though, I'm flattered.

BOYTOY123: Ok. If you ever want a young boy toy, let me know!

Yes, that happened.

I can't help but laugh at the irony. I'm finally ready for a long term partner and open to dating age compatable men, but it's crickets out there in the wild. Crickets, and apparently, cubs.

Does this mean that I should stop fighting the laws of nature, and just go with it?

Thanksgiving: Where receiving can be as important as giving.

2010-11-26T16:23:00.000-08:00

The abundance of Thanksgiving posts out there pre-Thursday turned off my writing switch. All the pertinent topics had been covered, ranging from the obvious gratitude articles to the difficult travel day posts. I posted a link to one I particularly liked called, “Can you be thankful for what you don’t have?” to my Facebook page because it inverted the way we normally think on Thanksgiving. On a regular day, when we see another person’s misfortune, it’s easy to tell ourselves, “I should be grateful. Thank goodness that didn’t happen to me, or someone I love.” But does that really work? Perhaps such thinking is superficial. It rushes out of our heads as quickly as it rushes in. It sometimes makes us push aside legitimate grievances, out of guilt, and allows us to avoid dealing with our reoccurring issues. But only for a moment.

In the weeks preceding this holiday, I’ve been a mopey brat, and I haven't liked it one bit. I’ve been feeling sorry for myself, despite all the tangible good things I could check off on a list. It bothered me. Because in the years since my divorce - where I was close to rock bottom - I’ve taken warm pride in discovering the joys of gratitude. Gratitude has come in the smallest and most random forms: a surprise phone call from a relative, connecting with a stranger, a perfectly formed sentence, the fact that my parents answer the phone because they can, and the ability to be present for a friend in need. But in the past few weeks, none of these things were working. Why?

Oh, break-up blues is an easy one, right? But how long is that card good for? My ex-cub and I broke up over two months ago. So what if I’m going to be “alone” for the holidays, when last year he and I spend Thanksgiving and Christmas together. So what if going home to NJ, where everyone is married with children underscores my “differentness.” So what if (per my last post) the dating scene looks bleak and I’m not getting any younger. So what if I’m not feeling impassioned by my day job or my writing on the side job. At least I have a job where I work with people I adore. At least I wrote a novel. What more could I ask for?

All of the above is 100% true, yes. But does this kind of talking to yourself really work? Does it automatically lift your spirits, like a “snap the F out of it” switch was flipped?

For some people, it totally works, like for my father, and some men I know. When my sisters and I were little girls and we’d cry over a boy or missing our camp friends, my father used to say to us (and he still does), “Who died?”

That used to frustrate the hell out of me. “Why does someone have to die, Dad, for me to be sad? Don’t I have a right to be sad when things aren’t going my way?”

On Thanksgiving morning, I woke up to the sun shining (ok- well at least it wasn’t raining) and my dog licking my face. My older sister and her family were in the city for a Bat Mitzvah (on Thanksgiving?) and were picking me up to drive to my parents. I had something to look forward to. Two hours of traffic, yes, but in a car filled with my nieces and nephew fighting over my Blackberry (I didn’t even know there were games on it) and iPad (the smudgy fingerprints after wards are worth it), playing with apps that my ex-cub had had the foresight to download (“for the kids”). I felt my gloom start to lift, although there was still a nagging ache. Then a friend of mine, who went through a divorce when I did, messaged me that she was feeling down. Her sincere email, on any other day, would be something I would hungrily indulge, where I'd give advice and talk about how I feel the same way. What are we doing with our lives? What is going to happen? We are in our late thirties and still processing these damn divorces? But after I got her email, it hit me. “No. No,” I replied. “Sorry, but I’m not going to feel sorry for you.” Or myself, I thought. “We have so much to be thankful for.” (I had to wrestle my Blackberry out of my niece’s hands to write this, but still). “You have to let the good stuff in,” I wrote. “But first you need to see it, in order to receive it. So get that dark shit out of the way and make room!” (Huh. Good stuff, Cougel, I thought to myself, before hitting ‘send.’) My girlfriend, rather than taking offense, thanked me. The light bulb went on, for both of us, and I was grateful for her message – a necessary mirror to my own unfounded self pity - and grateful to have her in my life.

My mother made a beautiful meal and decorated the table with brown leaves (it’s the thought that counts). She was pleased to see me eat seconds. And pleased to see that I’d put on some weight, “You don’t look sick anymore,” she said. After dinner, we watched “The Godfather,” although watching my father laugh and gesticulate while reciting the lines is better than the movie. And then, since we were sitting around with newspapers and laptops, I decided to reinstate my J-date account. Maybe there’s something to be said for a dating site that attracts people from the same culture, whom can actually pay for the service. What a revelation! I even let my mother sit next to me so we could look through all the profiles together. I expected her to say, “What’s wrong with him?” every time I dismissed someone, but this time, to my surprise, she nodded and said, “You know best, mamaleh.” I even let her chime in on what photos I should include (she nixed the one where I was holding a martini glass in my hand).

I thought back on the post I had read a few days prior, “Can we be thankful for what we don’t have?” and to my pleasant surprise, I didn’t need to conjure up all the bad things that thankfully hadn't happened to me - or list the tangible "good things" - in order to be thankful for what was right in front of me.

Dating in NYC: WTF?

2010-11-18T16:32:00.000-08:00

I’ve had this conversation a lot lately, so I thought I’d commit it to paper (er, the web).

What is wrong with the dating scene in New York? Is it me, or is true that (I quote friends),“Men in NY are retarded, or at best, weird?” I know men complain about the same thing in regards to women, and I’m convinced there is truth to that too. Is it the climate of this city, or is it the kinds of people it attracts? Do we all share a common restlessness or fantasy that something “better” is just around the corner, preventing us from committing to one person? Or does it have nothing to do with us. Is there just something in the tap water? (Maybe I should be ordering sparkling.)

The upside is that because it’s so difficult to meet available, age appropriate men that aren’t d-bags (and women that aren’t bat shit) a lot of New Yorkers go online to find a mate. So I thought I’d try that too. There’s a fairly new dating site that I heard was cool, free, with more “creative types” (which sometimes translates into narcissistic and poor). Here are some examples of profiles I’ve come across on said site:

1. “I am a very together kind of guy. I am very passionate yet controlled. I have a good head on my shoulders and in my pants.”

2. “In the course of doing psych testing with a 10 year old boy I was told I had ‘gay hands.’”

3. “I’m really funny. I’m a comedy writer. It might not show in what I’m writing here but trust me.”

4. “I’m living paycheck to paycheck...except without the paycheck. I care for my elderly cat, who has many health issues. He is my soul mate.”

5. “If you’ve read this far, I think it’s okay to say I’m on this site for sex. I'm very fit. I’m not interested in a relationship. I don’t want kids. I don’t like dogs.”

6. “I'm educated and cultured, fun and funny, and have my fecal matter together for the most part.”

So many options! How is a girl to choose?

My friend met a guy on Match. His profile specified “straight” but we all suspected otherwise. After more than five dates, where he expressed serious interest in her and had another date on the books, he disappeared. My friend was worried about him. When he finally surfaced six days later, he apologized: “I had family visiting from abroad. We went to see Billy Elliot! I loved it so much!” Another friend of mine’s date brought his two Chihuahuas with him to dinner. And then to bed. I just had a first (and last) date with a dude who brought me to a restaurant he "semi-owned" (shoulda been my first clue), where he proceeded to put his hands all over the female manager whenever she came by our table, and called her when we left. There’s also a longer story I won’t mention here, where a guy eyed my smooth arms, asked if I shave them, then told me he shaves his legs. And not because he’s a swimmer.

I realize this might come off as mean-spirited, but who can ignore the humor in all of this? Yes, these men are being honest I guess, but if you’re trying to woo a woman, there are some basic things you should know, such as, if you’re a strange bird and you kinda know it, “Be yourself!” is not the best course to take.

When people ask me how it's going, and I explain what I am up against, they recommend the following:

Mom: Why don’t you join AIPAC or the JCC so you can meet Jewish men? Go to lectures about the holocaust!

Sister: You should become a tri-athlete!

Sister 2: Take a cooking class.

Friend: Why don’t you move to S. Africa?

New York, I love you. But at this rate, maybe I should try the latter.

Have you already met your match, but screwed it up?

2010-11-14T14:49:00.000-08:00

The word “bashert” is a word I’ve heard for as long as I can remember. It’s Yiddish for “pre-destined” (i.e. the person we are intended to marry). My first thought, based on where I am today, is to say that having this idea, this goal or fantasy implanted in a person at such a young age can only lead to disappointment; to the bubble bursting, where we marry someone we “think” is right when we are too young to know – or know ourselves – only to come crashing down later. Or, it leads us to the waiting game, where we hold down the single fort, searching for the right person and potentially missing the boat – or blinding us from seeing who is right (even when that “Mr. Right for me” is actually standing right in front of us).

It took me fourteen years of commitment to my ex-husband, and almost four years of healing and growing afterwards, which includes being in other relationships, to go from believing that he was wrong for me - that he was in no way my bashert - to wonder if perhaps he was.

Record scratch.

Let me back up. I don’t say that lightly, nor do I say that with sadness or regret. I just find myself wondering, after having finally been around the dating block (which I missed out on in my twenties), if I met my ex-husband today – if we were set up or met on Jdate - if we’d actually be a really good match. Come to think of it, out of all the lame set ups and disappointing dates I’ve had, he’d be a great call. I’d put money down that we’d probably get past the elusive date three, and maybe even be in a relationship.

Is that crazy? Maybe. I probably sound crazy saying this, but I’ll bet I’m not the only divorced woman whose mind this has crossed. Important note: this feeling does not stem from nostalgia or romanticizing the past. This is called, I think, an outcome of living, experiencing and learning what we actually want. If you marry young, like I did, how are you supposed to know what's right for you? And trust and faith, with no reference to compare what you have against, is a reach. The other and equally important point to make is that of course, if my ex-husband and I had met for the first time today, we would be different people. Different than who we were when we were 20, but also different than we would have been as a result of our marriage and divorce to one another.

According to orthodox Jewish belief (I heard this from my brilliant sister and bro-in law via conversations we have about marriage and love; I’m in no way an expert on this), Adam and Eve were bashert too. They were pre-ordained by God to be together; God had a master plan.

Until the apple screwed it all up.

Is there a metaphorical apple in all relationships that fail? And does divorce represent a fail, or can intact marriages still be failing, without it being obvious? (Probably a different blog topic). Can two people actually be bashert, but they either don’t have the tools to recognize it, or the apple seduces their intentions away?

If I had to pick one thing (okay, two) apples in my marriage, it would be 1) marrying too young to know what we wanted, without a chance to evolve as individuals, and 2) Hollywood. My ex-husband and I wrote screenplays together. We shared the determination to make it in the movie business, and when we split, we both recognized that the moment we agreed to pursue that dream, we had made a deal with the devil. Or the snake. You get the analogy.

For those of you who read this blog, you already know that I don’t attempt to provide answers. Especially not on a topic as loaded as fate and destiny. But what l I can do is call to mind two quotes that might apply: “Wisdom is wasted on the old,” and “Be ready for your luck.” In other words, in order to acquire the tools - the intuition and the vision - to see when what is right for you is within your grasp, you have to experience life. You have to taste it.

Even if it means taking a bite of the damn apple.

Defriending your ex, and why anti-social media can be healthy.

2010-11-08T13:15:00.000-08:00

I’m sure there have been a gazillion blog posts and articles written about breaking up in today’s world of social media. The medium which allows us instant contact with friends, potential partners, and the ones we are in relationships with, can become our worst enemy when we break up.

My cub and I broke up two months ago today (I’ve been rounding up to four because that’s what it feels like, although not in a positive way). But because of Facebook, Twitter, and Ichat, it was more like a sprain or a fracture at best, rather than a clean break. Those apps give us the illusion of contact and connection. They allow us to delude ourselves into believing that although we are no longer together in the real world, in the virtual one – and that includes are minds – we still are. Any new status update or tweet, no matter how lame, can make your heart flutter with its promise of a new clue into what your ex is up to. Or at least you know he is alive; going to work, the gym, drinking coffee...and lots of beer.

You want to believe that he’s drinking all that beer because he’s still trying to get over you; because the slightest inkling of him having recovered so quickly cuts deep. You hold your breath when you check his page, praying you’re not going to see something else, like a post from a female name you don’t recognize with lots of xoxoxo. (Or worse, as with a previous ex of mine, a picture of him with a baby...His!) So you scour newly posted photos of bar revelry for signs of the guy brooding in the background as his friends are having a blast. But then you see reoccurring photos of him with the same brunette. So you check out this girl’s profile page. If she’s young, without the sense (or baggage) that warrants the need for privacy, you’re lucky. You can see all her photos, and then decide for yourself if she’s even worthy of your sexy exy. Hopefully, she’s not as attractive as you, which makes you feel better. For like a minute. Because you know full well that pictures, particularly the Facebook series, can’t convey personality, how flirty she might be, and how vulnerable your ex is to such attention.

I could be ashamed to admit that I’ve been guilty of the above, but shame is not the point. The point is, that engaging in such fruitless behavior, when you know in your gut that you need to move on, is completely counter productive to healing. It allows us to leave the wound open, because closing it signals harsh finality.

For weeks I considered defriending my ex-cub, knowing it was distracting me, misdirecting my energy, and at low points, really upsetting me. But I couldn’t do it. I knew that it would shock him, not just because it would seem abrupt in the face of our amicable split, but because it would signal to him that I had taken the final necessary step and that our relationship, at least in the form it had been in for over three years, was over. I also knew that it would signal to him that I not only needed to move on, which he had always been aware of, but that I was finally ready to.

A friend, when encouraging me to remove him, said, “Just say no!” and I laughed because it made me think of the drug slogan. But social media, at its most harmful, is when we use it to numb the pain of heartbreak and the pain of confronting reality. We hang on, perpetuating the habit by impulsively checking in (in the form of stalking), and it seems benign, but its cumulative effects - like a drug - are toxic. It pollutes our clarity, heightens our yearning, and weakens our resolve.

I had to cut myself off. Knowing that by doing so, I would be cutting him off too. Breaking up is hard enough, but enabling one another to remain stuck by keeping the break up wound open is in my opinion even worse.

So I did it. I defriended him. Big step for Cougel. As I write this, I realize how silly it is that I've allowed a social media application to expand to such monstrous proportions in my romantic life, but I'd be dishonest if I were to diminish its role. I'm sure I'm not the only one either. Let's call it like it is, right?

When I automatically got on Facebook the next morning, like I always do, and realized that I could no longer take a virtual stroll over to my ex, or scour the chat box to see if he was chattable, I laughed at the absurdity of it. What am I even doing here? Suddenly, Facebook felt pointless. But it also affirmed that by taking the step of removing him - a psychological obstacle to my growth - I had taken the step towards bettering myself. So I moved my cursor up to that little "x" in the upper corner, clicked it, and closed the application.

How’s that for some closure?

Dreams: indicators of unresolved issues, or are we over thinking?

2010-11-03T20:22:00.000-07:00

When I was in my early teens, I had a recurring dream of being chased by Nazis and dogs in the snow. The first few times I assumed that the dream was due to extensive exposure to the Holocaust in my Jewish history classes, as well as at home. But eventually I wondered if I was dreaming about my great grandmother who had been exterminated in Auschwitz. I was interested in Psychology and when I learned about Jung’s theory of the “collective unconscious,” which states that a collective and universal psychic system exists (besides our personal reservoir of experience) that is inherited, I wondered if perhaps my great grandmother was reaching out to me through my dream - through time - to remind me of my heritage at a time when I must have needed it.

A dream with a similar theme has emerged in the last year. While I was dating my non-Jewish ex-cub (after a long marriage to a Jewish dude), I dreamed that I was running through the airport (I know, sounds like I’m always running…hmm...) to catch a flight to Israel, as the gate was closing. I missed the flight each and every time. I assumed this dream meant that I missed my relatives in Israel, or that I was trying to get to the place that for me feels the most like “home.” But then when I dreamed that I had lost my passport and was therefore forbidden to board the plane, I realized there was more to it. I shared this dream with my wise brother-in-law, who said that my passport represents my Jewish identity, and that I’ve misplaced it. “Do you know who has your passport, Cougel?” he asked me. “No! Can’t you just tell me?” I begged. But he shook his head and smiled knowingly. The mystery was for me to unravel, and me alone.

Since my cub and I broke up and I’ve started opening myself up to dating men with a similar background (and religion) as me, the dream has ceased. So does that mean that I’ve located my passport? Well, when I decided to rummage through my things to make sure, I found my actual passport in a box labeled “random shit” that happened to contain a picture of me on my 31^st birthday, with my ex-husband on the day we got our puppy. Oooh!! How telling! Or, not. It actually confused me more. I hoped that perhaps my next series of dreams would provide me with more clues.

No such luck. Instead, the new dreams are about reuniting with my ex-husband, whom I am not in contact with. His ghost is visiting me almost every night, and I’d love to find an ex-corsist whom can banish him from my psyche and grant me rest. The dreams are a mix of sadness and joy over our reconnecting; we are crying and laughing and happy to see each other. But in last night’s dream there was broken glass on the floor. What’s that mean? Does that symbolize the breaking of the glass under the chuppah? Could it be that obvious? These dreams are pissing me off in their relentlessness. I have a hunch that they’re related to the culmination and end of my novel writing process, which I began back when we separated. There is no obvious metaphor there, but my gut knows the two are linked. I’m sure some readers (dudes) out there are rolling their eyes reading this and thinking, “Dreams (or is it psychics?) are for women and fools.” To which I reply, well, duh. I’m a woman…who feels foolish for being unable to hush up my dreams or unlock their meaning. But I’d be more of a fool to ignore their persistent recurrences, wouldn’t I? There’s obviously something in my waking life that I’m supposed to do, change, or at the very least, acknowledge.

When I figure out what that is, I'll let you know. Or maybe I'll know more in the morning, after I dream some more. Night night.

What's a Jewish Cougar supposed to be for Halloween?

2010-10-29T16:14:00.000-07:00

Jews aren’t supposed to “do Halloween.” When I was in Hebrew School, the principal sent out a memo telling parents that it's a pagan holiday and therefore not proper for “the children of the Hebrew Academy” to dress up like goblins and witches. What a bummer! I still managed to collect tons of snicker bars and eat them.

But now that I’m older, single, and living in Manhattan, it is my duty to partake in the fun of dressing up, being stupid, and having an excuse to talk to whomever. It occurred to me that maybe it's also an opportunity to mask parts of myself. A chance - for a change - to keep some information a secret in a social setting, at least for one evening.

I don’t know what the plan is yet. Downtown Manhattan on Halloween is one big circus so you don’t really need a destination. All you need to do is ask a guy what he is supposed to be (even when it’s obvious)...an insta conversation starter. The only problem is, you have no idea what the guy actually looks like naked (of his costume) or in broad daylight. But who cares? What’s beneath the superficial disguise doesn’t matter. After all, it’s Shalloween!

My costume this year? I was thinking of purchasing some cat ears (and some cleavage), wearing a Jewish star around my neck, and going to Toys R Us to buy a boy toy I could put in my pocket. Hilarious! Not. But then I realized, after all my moaning over how to remain semi anonymous with this blog when I'm meeting guys, dressing up like a Jewish Cougar is probably not a good idea (nor does it qualify as a disguise). So instead my girlfriend and I are going to be “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and “The Girl who Played with Fire.” Basically, that means I get to dress up like a hot lesbian. Not sure what this says about me, but I already have the appropriate attire hanging in my closet.

Or, maybe it’s my chance to flirt. Not only with dudes. Maybe I can try what all the guys in my office have been saying: “Cougel, forget men! It’s obviously not working for you. Maybe you should be a lesbian!”

I don’t know if that’s feasible; if I can actually try to be one when I’m not. But on Halloween, maybe I can pretend.

Facebook. Let your fingers do the stalking.

2010-10-20T13:10:00.000-07:00

We all know how useful Facebook is for stalking ex-es. This includes discovering that your ex-boyfriend's got a new girl, or that your ex hook-up has four, or that your ex-husband has a new baby, when you didn’t even know he’d gotten married.

Well I think Facebook is feelin used and abused, so now it’s stalking us back.

Have you guys noticed the Facebook ads on the right side of your profile page? I know their search engines are behind it, targeting each individual, but still, the ads are unsettling in their specificity. They seem to know what buttons need pushing. Are they trying to tell us something? (In the example on the right the ad insists this woman is a gay man).

My ex-cub pointed this out to me. His noticed that ever since our break up, his Facebook ads are recommending things like: 1- a new apartment, 2- a better career, and 3- local Christian girls. I guess Facebook knows it’s probably not a good idea to sell him local Jewish Cougars.

So I took a look at my page. The ad at the top was benign: 'New York vegan food.' But as I scrolled down I saw, “Psychology and Counseling,” and then, “Acupuncture and IVF treatments.”

What the F-book? Does Facebook think that they can just passive aggressively express their opinion of what they think is right for me?

For fun, I wondered what kind of ads would come from my mother. Would I be getting, “Local Jewish doctors and lawyers,” or “Apartments available on the Upper West Side,” or “Donate to the Holocaust Museum?”

Linked-In recently got on the here-are-things-you-prefer-not-to-think-about bandwagon too. The day after my cub and I broke up, Linked-In recommended I connect with my ex-husband. They thought he was “someone I might know.” Ya think?

Pressure and guilt from my mother I can take. But automated, social media guilt? Creepy!

(Confession: As I write this, I keep checking back to my profile page to see what else Facebook thinks I should be doing. Wait, ‘Invisalign?’ Are my teeth crooked?)