The 30-Something Single Girl

Getting back “on track" after a bad breakup!

I thought I had it all together in my 20’s when I met a guy who seemed to be who I was “meant to have met” and spend my life with. Wow! How confident I was that I had it all!

Scene fades in…Calia is sitting at her ping pong table (yeah…well I was in my 20’s and in college…who needs more than a ping pong table as her dining room table?)

Calia’s inner voice: Wow! I’m so lucky! I have met this great guy and I am ready to have it all- good times, vacations together, I’ll probably get married, I’m going to get my first job in my new exciting career, I’ll have a house and children and live happily ever after! Everybody wants to be me!

(cue the doom music that Calia can’t hear lurking in the background…)

Calia’s friends: Wow! We want to be you!

Calia: I bet you do!

(fast forward a few months…cue the thunder and clouds in the sky getting ready to open up a storm over Calia and the guy’s beautiful new house as the guy starts to suck the life and personality from Calia’s every living breath!)

Calia’s inner voice: Boy! I’m so excited! This is sure a beautiful day! I’m really on my way to having everything! Everybody wants to be me!

Calia’s friends: Have you heard from Calia lately? She is really in a bad situation. She’s not allowed to call us anymore. She has really changed!

(cue the roar of the monster hiding in the closet next to Calia’s beautiful dresses!)

Calia: Look at all of my beautiful dresses! Everybody wants to be me!

(fast forward a few months…cue Calia’s mother coming to the end of the driveway of Calia’s ex’s new house as she picks Calia up with only her beautiful dresses and the license plate from the car she has just signed over to the ex!)

Calia:…

Calia:…

Calia:…I can’t believe I didn’t see this coming…I don’t even want to be me!

Calia picks up her old car from a lot that she had left it on when she bought a new one the year before that would be acceptable to her new boyfriend. The crying Calia gets into the old car after the friendly guy at the lot pulls the license plate from her weak and shaking hands and puts it onto it. She pulls out of the lot and 100 feet from where it had sat for a year, the muffler drops off into the street…She opened the door, got out and started walking…She wasn’t sure exactly where she was going. Just walking I guess…Her new apartment with nothing in it but the dresses she took from the house she thought she had started her future in and the silverware her parents had put into the drawers in the kitchen didn’t seem to make her very happy. But then again, nothing really made her happy anymore. So she just kept walking…

The next chapter starts but unfortunately it is longer than Calia’s “plan” had originally intended. She wasn’t sure what was making her more unhappy: Losing him, or losing all that time and having to completely start over after believing that she had already started her life!...yeah…she decided that all she needed to do was meet someone else and quickly start again! She gave herself a specific time-frame- 5 minutes! That was all she had right?...She even set an alarm on her blackberry to go off 6 months later with the message “get a life!”…OMG!...that thing went off every 6 minutes for 4 weeks until she decided that hitting the snooze on this negative message was becoming counterproductive to actually “getting a life!” She’d go on dates with the “wrong guy” and the alarm would go off! He’d ask what it was. She’d politely tell him. “Yeah…it’s my biological clock!”…This was actually extremely hilarious to her in a sort of “poke your eyes out” kinda way…the guy never thought it was quite as funny for some reason though.

That chapter ended a few years later- way behind schedule, with absolutely no worth while content…other than some pretty funny dating stories. Dating when you’re not ready and constantly choosing to date people who your subconscious mind has picked out to prove to your conscious that life, indeed sucks, can throw you way off track but can make for some really great tales to commiserate about with other jaded, angry people who are paddling in circles in the same boat! Something happened as she came to that realization. She woke up one day and turned off that alarm. At first the silence was deafening…then it was a little scary…then it was soothing…

Ahh…

No more pressure to get “on track”. No more self-defeating dates with people who were more of the same. No more commiserating with people about how “there’s no one out there!” No more negative energy. No more need to have done things on the time frame that had already long passed. No more believing that since it didn’t happen the way she had planned it to happen, that it would never happen. The more she had tried to control it, the more energy she had put into believing that no good was ever going to come and that time was up. She took up a new phrase that she really started to enjoy. In fact, she used it nearly all the time. She found her old playful giggle as she started to free her self-imposed restrictions and negative believes with it.

“What are they going to do to me?”…

• What are they going to do to me if I love my life?
• What are they going to do to me if I meet the one a little later and the old “not the one” is one or two divorces ahead of me?
• What are they going to do to me if I have my children a little later because something magical saved me from false starting my life and living completely on the wrong track?
• What are they going to do to me if I drive 95 on the highway?...okay…um… ‘giggle’…so they actually can do something about that…oh well…you live, you learn…hee hee…

The point is simple: When you think you’re off track, it’s very easy to stay on that track for much longer than you need to. You don’t have to impose a specific age and set of circumstances that you must have to make you happy. You can make a list of the things that you would like to achieve. In fact, I would suggest it. It’s nice to be clear about what it is you are looking for. Just make sure those are the things you really want and you are putting yourself into situations that bring you closer to finding them. In the meantime, don’t sit around waiting for your life to start! Do everything in the world you’ve ever wanted to do and life will find you! That’s what I call getting yourself on the right track!

Does "Beautiful" Have to be "Dumb"?

I find this to be absolutely hilarious!  Not because it is indeed superficially hilarious, but because it is also startlingly true to form when it comes to assessing the importance of intellectual ability placed on the beautiful people.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not dissing good looking people.  I have been considered to be good looking but it always threw me off since I spent most of my life just being the "funny, flute toting,computer geek!"...actually I'm not sure who called me that last part other then me right now, but you get the picture. The strangest thing is that most of the guys I have spent any time with sort of just wished that I would shut up (and fix their computer after they left the room).  Looking back, they may have been right.  Having a conversation with them over the noisy banter in their heads about whether or not "she will do me" may have been a waste of my voice.  I will say that there is something glaringly wrong with this video though:  What girl that looks like her ever orders fries?  I thought we had an unspoken agreement with the universe that we have to pretend in public that we can't eat anything other than berrys and lettuce?...Oh well...That's it...I am inspired now!  I'm going to stop eating my fries in bed!

I just saw an interview on FOX news (no dissing-  I like FOX news!  It's sort of my favorite!  I like it because it insights so many people into an incoherent rage that they can't communicate in complete sentences...I think that's funny!)  Anyway...let's talk about the interview with the new Miss Universe.  Yes!  She was definitely beautiful....Yes!  She was definitely beautiful...Yes!  She was definitely beautiful!...She said, "um...I think it was a destiny thing.  There were 83 beautiful woman and only one would win."

...Yes!  She was definitely beautiful! 

Apparently the clincher that won her the title in the pagent was her answer to her question about how she felt about the internet: "It is a door, uh, and I think, uh, we should teach children values, uh, cause it's good and we should use it."... Is it a tiny bit spiteful that I sort of envisioned myself holding her head under a sink and spelling the sign language letters into her hand "www-aaa-tttt-eee-rrr", but then I took a step into reality and realized that I could never do that.  It would've messed up her hair!

Now, I'm sure I'm going to get all sorts of angry responses to this.  I apologize up front because I am mostly just joking.  I'm sure Miss Universe is smart and she's just playing into the act that we all sometimes have to in order to gain respect from the opposite sex.  Too much strength and confidence is often a turn off to the wrong person!  The catch is knowing when someone is attracted to your strength and confidence because he/she wants to break it down as a self-fulfilling project! The moral of this story is...wait...I don't know what the moral is...the moral is...um...always do your hair before leaving the house?

... or...you could just be yourself and not worry what people might "want" in a partner...Most likely, someone wants exactly what you already are.  Never be afraid to be that person!  Besides...playing dumb the rest of your life might actually make your brain freeze that way!

Please Don't Steal My Breadstick!

Who steals the breadstick off of a plate? Uncool! I love my bread! You can't just take it!…I can’t believe the nerve of some guys. I went on a date with one who was, for all intents and purposes, very nice. He picked me up and took me to dinner. Going well so far… We had good conversation, (though he was a little louder than my “normal guy” taste), and a nice meal. He had finished his 4 courses and I was still nursing my salad. It was a great salad but I was eating slowly while we talked. As he finished his food, he reached across the table and took my breadstick off the side of my plate….huh?…what the?…HEY!…That’s my breadstick!…I was savoring that tasty, delicious, carbohydrate treat for after I was done with my lettuce. Unbelievable!…I thought that maybe it was just an oversight. He probably didn’t even realize he did it…unless of course he thought that since he was paying for the meal, my plate was his too?…AAGH! If that’s the case, I’ll buy my own dinner! I went home and dismissed the issue as a mistake on his part and decided that since I was always accused of not giving guys a chance, I would try one more time with him the following week.

The next week came along…different restaurant, different menu, SAME BREAD ABDUCTION! That’s MY gosh darn bread! Don’t get between a girl and her bread. What is up with that? He called again after that night and left me a message. “Hey Calamaria! Calalamadingdong, Calamazustiphan!…wanna get together this week?”…um…nope….and don’t call me that! Yuck! This is why overly outgoing guys turn me off! If I want to hang out with an obnoxiously loud bread thief, I’ll stay at home by myself! At least that way I only have myself to blame!

 

Hiding behind the truth?

I find it very interesting when I run into women who make excuses for the guys they are seeing. I’ve heard things like, “He’s just scared”, “He was hurt before and isn’t ready to get involved”, “He has really changed!”…uh oh ladies! Has he really changed or has the way you look at his actions changed? Don’t you think it’s interesting that we can always see a train wreck coming when we’re standing on the outside…but if we’re standing on the tracks, we keep expecting the train to get out of our way and are surprised when it runs us over? It’s nobody’s fault really. It’s human nature to want to trust and believe in the people around us. The trouble with that is that so often, the people around us are telling us exactly what their intentions are, but we choose to interpret what we want their words to mean. I had a guy in my life once that I had clearly told that I didn’t want to date him. One day, his mother showed up and asked me what was going on between us? I replied, “Nothing. I’ve told him we aren’t dating.”…She seemed surprised and asked, “Then why the prolonged game?”…huh?…I was actually very upset by this. I mean…we were hanging out in the evenings and having dinner with his family but I thought that the underlying relationship issue had been dealt with by having the conversation about how we weren’t dating….right?…wrong!…My actions were apparently negating my words. I decided that we were spending time together as friends and that it was apparently all right with him. Judging from his mother’s words, he saw things (or at least she did) differently. So what could I have done differently? I suppose I could’ve told him to go home due to the fact that we weren’t “seeing each other.”…BUT- it’s the old, “Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free?” adage…only more like, “why send the guy home if he wants to have dinner with you and you’ll only sit here alone if he does … it’s his choice…he knows where I stand… I’m proud of myself for being so honest… I’m glad we’re not dating anymore… if you can watch a movie with the cow for free while free to roam the pasture for a cow you’d rather watch a movie with” adage… I call it the common acronym “WSTGHIHWTHDWYAYOSHAIHC”…It’s likely that the acronym isn’t catching on though (too many ‘W’s). It’s better known as self-preserving behavior that rationalizes away the affects it is having on the other person who cares too much about you to make their own judgment call about what it is!

We have all done it at one time or another I guess. I have a friend who has been with a girl since she was 21 years old and now, 8 years later, he is still adamant about telling her in no uncertain terms that he will never marry her. I hope, for her sake, that “he’s changing” because in another 5 years or so, she might find herself on a lecturing circuit selling my books to 30somethings who have wasted their time with people who hid behind the truth throughout most of their adult lives and have waken up and asked, “What now?”

We can try to make a difference in this area by really being honest with ourselves about the reasons we spend time with certain people. If it’s a fear of being alone, it’s not really a good enough reason to waste the time of another person. The trouble is that explaining that to someone who is begging to stand in front of the train is often a fruitless effort! It’s not easy to protect someone else if they won’t at least try to protect themselves a little. Ladies- Do you really want to end up standing in front of someone blaming him for stealing your life as he takes his line of defense: “but I told you so.”…

Oops...Late to Work Today...

I was a half hour late to work today…oops…I was picking out the perfect earrings! I worked out and had an amazing morning. The top I put on was such a great color of blue that I couldn’t slight in the accessories department! I actually have to pat myself on the back though. Usually I am an hour early everywhere and then wonder where everyone is? Good for me!

So my boss came up to me and said “Where were you this morning? I was able to get 3 children and a husband out the door for school and still make it here on time!”…I smiled and said, “Whoa…That sounds like a lot of work! … What do you think of my earrings?”

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Nice Job Citizen Bloggers! At least someone is reading!

hmm...it seems that all of these citizen blogs are going completely unread? Has anyone noticed that? Too bad too. This was a great idea if it had been connected to the Betty Confidential site. I am going through all of your blogs now. Even if no one is reading or commenting due to the fact that they are buried deep in the depths of this site!  I thought I would at least take some time and acknowledge all of your hard work! You are truly a great community of good people and hard working writers! Nice job Citizen Bloggers!

You Can't Act More "Breezy" than that?

Have you ever noticed that when people act too excited about the possibility of a new “relationship”, the person on the other end gets scared off and disappears?…This seems to always be the case and yet even though we know it, we still get that way. I have run into guys who I might’ve been interested in but wanted to just see where it would go. Within a few days, they would be acting too anxious to get together. On occasion, I’ve had my best friend try to talk them down! She’s said, “You just need to act breezy like on that one episode of Friends.” It’s never worked though. Some people just aren’t breezy in anyway. The funny thing is that I am hardly ever breezy myself. I’m more like a tornado. It’s really not my fault I guess. I’m just a little too intense when it comes to productivity. Come to think of it, on those occasions when a guy seemed too interested in me, maybe I just wasn’t going to be interested in him to begin with. It just shouldn’t be that hard.

Here’s a tiny play I wrote entitled: “Un-breezy!”

Cue lights please…

Guy picks up girl for dinner (…this is already way out of my comfort zone…can’t we just meet at a high school dance or something?…clearly I am not a big fan of the word, “DATE!”)

Guy hands girl flowers at the door (um…thanks…that was really nice…but definitely not breezy!)

Guy: I got you these. You are the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met!

Girl: (you don’t have cable?)…Thank you!

Guy: So... I was wondering how you feel about having children?

Girl: (uh…tonight?)…uh…tonight? (oops…Couldn’t stop that response.)

Guy: My ex says I’m going to meet someone right away because I’m really good looking and have a ton of money.

Girl: (then why didn’t she keep you?)…hee hee…that’s lucky for you.

Scene change…dinner is over…guy walks girl to the door…

Guy: This was fun. Do you think you’d be interested in flying to Italy on my private jet for 2 weeks next July?

Girl: (does that mean I’d have to hang out with you for the next 8 months until then?)…Um…I’d have to check my schedule. You should get back to me about that in May.

Guy: Well. Think about it. I need to make arrangements in the next 3 weeks.

Girl: (hmm...no pressure then!) Oh. I’m sure I have to sing those weekends. I’ll check.

Guy: So. I had fun. I’ll call you when I get home.

Girl: Ok. I have some things to do so if I don’t answer, I haven’t heard the phone. Thanks for everything.

Guy pulls out of driveway…scene fades out…girl sells her house and leaves the state…

So obviously there is somewhere in between getting to know someone slowly and making a commitment the first time you meet to fly to Italy nearly a year later. Again…in a few cases, I have been the one who has made myself too available. I will be sure not to do that again because clearly I can dish it out, but I can’t take it!

"OH! Hot!"

My nephew is 14 years old. I watched him touch a glowing ember that had recently flown from a campfire the other night. He said, "oh. hot" as he pulled his finger away...We shared a moment when he looked at me and realized that logically, he should’ve known it was hot without touching it at all.  After staring at each other in silence, lost in complex thought about what had just happened, we started to laugh...and then he ran his finger under cold water...

What is it about people that makes us feel the constant need to find things out for ourselves? Sometimes I wonder why we aren't able to learn from each other's experiences. How many girls do you know who have gotten involved with guys who were "taken" and then ended up being surprised when eventually someone else took him from her?…”Oh. Hot.”…If he will cheat with you, he will cheat on you. We all know this to be true, but somehow believe that rules don’t apply to us as individuals. It's the same at any age. I would bet that if another kid had watched my nephew burn himself on the ember, it is very likely that the second child would try to touch it too…Yep. It’s still hot! I have often spent hours with friends talking through all the reasons why the direction they were heading wasn’t a good one. I have used my own experiences in addition to common sense on subject areas where one’s judgment may be clouded. Do you think anyone has ever heeded my advice?…Nope! It’s as though I can tell them, in vivid detail, what the negative outcome will be, but they continue on as if they have never heard me. It’s funny because eventually all of the details come true and they ask me why I didn’t warn them…Oh. Sorry…Hot!…I feel like that Greek Goddess who was given the gift of prophecy, but when she angered the God, he altered the gift to make people think she was lying about it and they refused to believe her…What was her name?…Don’t remember…Cool story though!

About a year ago, I was helping a friend through a rough time in his life. He was leaving his wife of nearly 20 years and desperately wanted to find a girlfriend. I have about 400 or so emails talking through the repercussions of meeting someone too soon by flaunting his money as his only asset. I worried that he would meet someone immediately and she would get pregnant and then he would start the whole cycle all over again. He agreed (on paper) that I was right and that he would proceed cautiously while he was getting his life in order…He is expecting a baby in 2 months….hmm…If only someone would’ve seen that coming! I guess he’d better work on getting that divorce now. I’m sure it’s true love this time!…Good luck with that!… “Oh. Hot!”…

Do Nice Guys Finish Last?

It’s interesting how we see things sometimes. I ran into a guy who has recently decided that in order to get a girl to like him, he needs her to think he isn’t nice! Okay…that’s the old “nice guys finish last” stuff. It is an age-old speculation. The problem is that “nice guys” who have convinced themselves that they will in fact always “finish last”, perpetuate it…geez…which came first? The chicken or the egg?…or should I say “the nice guy finishing last” or the “nice guy who got to the finish line first and when the gold ribbon turned out to be all tarnished, had to go to the back of the race?” The truth is that a healthy, nice girl, wants a nice guy. The catch is that the guy has likely chosen the previously broken girl who expects to be treated badly in order to set both of them up in a self-fulfilling prophecy of defeat!…Combine that with the pattern of believing that girls don’t want “nice guys”, and we have a recipe for serial relationship failure! Well that’s just freakin’ terrific! So does that mean that he’s screwed?…No. I just know that he will likely read this and by now he has already decided that he is. Oh well…don’t worry! You’re not screwed…yet…(hee hee!)

What is a guy supposed to think if over and over again, he watches guys who don’t seem to be as nice as him, constantly walking away with the girl while he stands alone? If he is “nice” and he feels like he’s “last”, then “all nice guys finish last.”…It is an inaccurate syllogism. Unfortunately though, he is right about the fact that some girls are attracted to the “bad boy!” BUT…what he is wrong about are the reasons she would be attracted to that bad boy. It is not that he is “bad”, it’s the confidence he walks into a room with that she is drawn to. It’s likely something he developed from many years of superficial praise from meaningless relationships. From a woman’s point of view, she unknowingly thinks, “maybe I’ll be different and he will treat me well…blah blah blah…I’ve got to have him!” Yeah…you’ll be different! Good luck with that!…The only thing that would make it possible is if “he” were different! The problem is that no “healthy” woman wants a bad boy for much more than to write blogs about!…Oh well…it’s all in the way you spin the story I guess!…Anyway…the issue is the level of confidence that anyone would be able to exude when they are on the heals of realizing that someone they put their trust in has let them down…. another problem with the fact that you can’t be in a “relationship” all by yourself!…Of course if it was possible, you would only have yourself to blame when it went bad…possibly a thought for another time though…The truth is that the confidence does come back once all of the trouble has been sorted out, but sometimes a little bit of “something” in the attention from the opposite sex area would go a long way towards jumpstarting the process. That being said, that little bit of something could dangerously set you in motion towards another unhealthy relationship simply because that feeling of having someone showing you attention on the heals of feeling nothing but pain for an extended period of time, can easily make you think of that person as your “savior.” It’s never what you think. “The soul mate” will show up in your life when you are ready for her – not when you intend to meet her. No games are necessary. People need to realize that their lives aren’t a race to “finish first.” Staying true to yourself and believing that there is someone who is looking for someone exactly like you, is the only way to be sure that what presents itself is the real thing. The catch is that she won’t get here until you’ve stopped speculating about previous, fresh experiences while the "variable" will only give you her version of the truth as she sees it at the time she decides to torment you with it. It’s really not worth it.

The magic eightball would say "outlook not good, try again."...Oh boy. Does that mean that people need to wallow in their own discontentment for the unknown period of time it takes them to heal? Unfortunately it means that everyone has the right to need that time, and annoyingly, it's during that time that people believe they need someone new more than ever. The most important thing though, is to use it to regain one’s confidence! The "self contentment" a person learns from using the negative experience to grow, coupled with the fact that “I’m happy in this moment, I just want more!”, is the magic that will eventually shine out of you when you walk into the room where your soul mate will be. That’s when you’ll look ahead at the people who ran the race on the low road as they are wheezing and tired with very little to show for their light-hearted efforts at taking the “easy way”, and be rejuvenated on the path you were meant to be on all along. In this case, the “nice guy finishes happy!”

Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t notice you sitting next to me…

I was listening to my ipod at the gym the other day while I was on an elliptical trainer. I was carefully pretending not to notice the man flagging me down by peering deeply at the closed-captions of CNN as they scrolled along the bottom of the screen on the television up above my head. This guy has been a recurring admirer. He is very nice but doesn’t seem to take ‘no’ for an answer…and I’m not exactly in love with his knee-socks. I noticed that everyone in that place was pretty much doing their own thing. We love to ignore each other there. What a community of friendly people. The strange thing is that I can’t tell you how many conversations I get into with people who say that they don’t have the opportunity to meet people…um…of course we could possibly take our headphones off or put the magazines down and interact?…nah…

 
Is it possible that we so content to complain about the fact that there “isn’t anyone out there” that we are actually ignoring each other on purpose? I can’t imagine that anyone wants to dwell in loneliness. I suppose some of us are good at resolving ourselves to it though. The funny thing is that it seems that many of us aren’t really all that lonely until someone points out that we should be. How many people try to set us up when they find out we’re single? If I had a dollar for every person who knew “the perfect guy” for me, I’d be a billionaire!…Of course, what they usually mean by “perfect” is that he is single too...um…ok…I have to admit that this is a little bit closer to “perfect” for me than married, separated or has a girlfriend, but in most cases these set-ups have been awkward and paled in comparison to sitting on my couch and eating cheese sticks! These “well-meaning fixer-uppers” are just trying to help but I have to admit that from the outside view of their relationships at times, sometimes I suspect that their motive is one of wanting everyone to be equally as miserable as they are. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-relationship! In fact, I reiterate from a previous entry that I have met a nice guy. He really is a good person who goes out of his way to make me happy!- and I am so good at being single and complaining about it, that I sometimes make his life miserable! He paid for my groceries the other night- and I cried…Um…Calia?…the words are, “Thank you! That was very nice of you!”…I’m going to do my best to be the kind of person he deserves because if my need to maintain my “act” that there isn’t anyone nice out there ruins my new possibility, I’m gonna look like a complete idiot!

So then…what are people looking for that they are so afraid to look up from their engrossing reading material and pounding music to notice?…It may be time to figure out what we really want for ourselves because I am pretty sure that we can have exactly that! If what we want is to complain that there is no one out there, we will be right. If what we want is to meet someone great and include that person in our life, possibly turning to the person next to us and saying “hello”, is a great place to start!