How To Guarantee I Will Never Date You: Little Thing Called Love

I am brand-new to dating. I say "brand-new" because I was married for a long time and for years, I read the online laments of single people in this new era of dating and thanked my lucky stars I didn't have to be out there looking for a lover.

Alas, the Universe had other plans for me! Last fall, I had to kick out my husband because of a wicked drug addiction and dangerous mental illness; I've been officially divorced for about a month. I haven't even "put myself out there" (I'm not ready to date yet), but I'm getting plenty of daily offers that bother more than excite me.

In this series, I'll be sharing my apprehensions with returning to the dating pool. In this second installment, let's discuss what not to do in regard to romance and sex.

Sex is the Most and Least Important Thing in a Relationship

I lost my virginity at a pretty young age, not because I was molested but because the opportunity presented itself and I was eager to participate. It's always been an important part of my life and relationships, and although the quality was sometimes poor, even bad sex can lead to great friendships.

I've never had sex with someone I didn't know or like. Personality is far more important to me than looks; some of the worst experiences I had were with people who were exceptionally attractive yet woefully untalented in the bedroom. When I was younger, I was willing to give myself in that way, but as I grow older, I find that I am not at all willing to overlook character flaws and behaviors from men that are mostly my age.

You weren't allowed to act this way in your prime (and thankfully, a lot of the technology didn't exist), so why would you act this way now?

Please stop with this nonsense as soon as possible:

• You're not doing me a favor by hitting on me. If I don't know you and you send me a flirty message online, know that there are at least a dozen other messages in my inbox from a dozen other complete strangers that said exactly the same thing. Also, if I seem less than impressed or ignore you, don't get an attitude about it, like talking to me is some sort of heroic gesture. I have a vagina. If I turn you down, there will be 20 more guys there to pick up the slack. So again, you better have a blindingly fantastic personality - that has nothing to do with sex - or you're just going to blend in with the rest of the creeps on the internet.

• Ask me to sleep with you or ask me to send sexy photos of myself within the first day of meeting you. If the internet has taught me anything, it's that men want pictures of women - ANY women - and that most men will sleep with any woman, totally ignoring that's she's fat, toothless, pregnant, disabled, fore-shortened, or her face picked apart during meth hallucinations. Unless you're willing to pay several months of my mortgage for just one time, don't count on that happening within an hour of me accepting your friend request on Facebook.

• You have cutesy names for sex. The word "playtime" should not be uttered in regard to, before, during, or after sex. This is not playtime. "Playtime" has something to do with children, and thinking about children and sex together creeps me the hell out. So talk dirty. Curse. I would, a million times over, prefer that a man call me "bitch" and treat me like a whore than whisper "baby" while plying me with stuffed animals and candy to get me to sleep with him. No, really.

• I've had more sexual partners than Princess Di and less than Madonna. I was married twice and have three kids so obviously, I've had sex. Guys seem comfortable knowing about those two partners, but don't really want to know about any other men. They certainly don't want an exact number, especially if it goes over 10. My number is over 10. I'm not bragging, nor am I ashamed. I am, however,a stay-at-home mom in middle age, so most of those encounters happened a very, very long time ago. Just enjoy my abilities without knowing how I acquired them.

• I felt the spark, too. There was a connection. We're both interesting people who have trouble finding people with whom we actually enjoy talking. But if you call me a couple hours after the date, gushing - completely overtaken with emotion - about how I'm your "Soul Mate?" Please back off, you're creeping me out. I have been in a couple of really bad relationships, so this "instant forever companion" thing you're suggesting makes me want to go get a restraining order, not a marriage license.

• I prefer physical imperfections. Even at my physical best, I didn't like men who worked out until their muscles felt like giant rubber chew toys. Six-pack abs? No thanks! Manscaped? Ew! Dad bod?  Hell yeah!  I do have types I like more than others, but generally, if you have a non-psycho amount of confidence and a decent personality, I'll at least give you a date. The only thing I ask is that you don't smell like you've been bathing in foot sweat, exclusively eating raw garlic and your clothes should fit the body you have now, not the body you had 3 kids ago. (And yes, women are not the only ones guilty of "letting themselves go" after kids.)

• I'm trying not to laugh at/be creeped out by/post online for all to ridicule the picture of your penis. I've had my fair share of partners. It was ability, not size or shape, that made many of them good in bed. Also, I sometimes watch porn. So unless you have something that would impress Ron Jeremy himself, please don't embarrass yourself by sending me unsolicited photos of your privates. It makes you look insecure and desperate.

• Getting me drunk to "loosen me up." If you think you need to get me drunk to sleep with you, every drink you buy makes me more and more certain of how bad you are in bed. Also, you must not think your personality is enough to win me over, so we're pretty much done 20 minutes into the date. Sad, because a night that could have led to at least mediocre sex is now taking a creepy turn that makes me wonder if you're a serial rapist.

• You'll have plenty of time to buy me gifts when we're dating. Flowers and candy are great, but if you bring a pile of gifts to our first date, I'll get the impression you're trying to manipulate me. Calm down, be yourself and let's have a good talk. You can buy me a fancy new car in a couple years. (Kidding, KIDDING!!)

How To Guarantee I Will Never Date You: Your Kids

Trust me: Your kids being obnoxious isn't the problem.

I am brand-new to dating. I say "brand-new" because I was married for a long time and for years, I read the online laments of single people in this new era of dating and thanked my lucky stars I didn't have to be out there looking for a lover.

Alas, the Universe had other plans for me! Last fall, I had to kick out my husband because of a wicked drug addiction and dangerous mental illness; I've been officially divorced for about a month. I haven't even "put myself out there" (I'm not ready to date yet), but I'm getting plenty of daily offers that bother more than excite me.

In this series, I'll be sharing my apprehensions with returning to the dating pool. First installment? The way you're dealing with your kids is making it impossible for me to date you.

Your Kids

I don't care if your kids are badly behaved. I'm naturally empathetic and believe me: My kids test me, too. My kids can be rebellious and mouthy and annoying. No one knows this better than I do.

I will probably like your kids; I like most kids and I let my kids' friends come over all the time. If your kids act up, I will express my displeasure with them just like I do with my own kids. The only difference is that I know my kids better, so I can anticipate meltdowns and know how to stop problems before they go nuclear. Give me time to get to know your kids and everything will be swell.

But you will never date me if you - not your kids, but you - do any of the following:

• Complain about your daughter's period. I'm assuming that you know where babies come from. And since you frequently disparage your ex, I'm assuming you made this little girl with a woman, not a turkey baster. So if you fought for sole custody of your 13-year-old daughter, don't complain about having to go to the store to buy maxi pads for her. How do you think she would feel, knowing you were talking about it with strangers outside her little brother's grade school? She'll have to live through it every month for the next few decades, so believe me, she has it worse off than you.
• Make me be the bad guy. I understand that it's hard to say "No" to your kid. Maybe you don't like doing it because they'll have a meltdown; maybe it's because you can't handle that look of disappointment they get when you won't them play with that pack of rabid dogs. Either way, don't make me do it for you. If your kid is having trouble with his asthma and can't come to our house for a sleepover, then tell him that. I'll be the bad guy and tell them, "Sorry! We're busy with something else that night," if you ask me to. But know that you just lost any respect I had for you and any chance of ever dating me. I won't date a coward who will put all the burden of delivering bad news on my shoulders. I have enough to carry as it is.
• Our kids being best friends doesn't mean we're dating. I was so thankful when my kids grew out of the toddler stage. It meant I could just drop my kids off at a birthday party or a friend's house for the afternoon and not have to sit and make awkward small talk with people I didn't really like. Sometimes it was nice to sit and talk with other moms, but just because our kids were best friends didn't mean we were going to be best friends. Are you making the leap here? If I didn't even want to have casual girlfriends because of my kids, why would I date you, just because our sons like to build forts in my backyard?
• Tell me that your world revolves around your children. I get it. A grown-up woman hurt you. I get that you focused on your kids to numb the pain of a bad break-up. What I don't want to hear, though, is that your kids have taken the place of adult hobbies and interests. I don't care if your passion in life is sculpting mythical creatures out of jello, just be passionate about something besides the children you seem to be trying to live through. I have my own kids and all their friends, what I'm looking for is adult interaction.
• You think the only way that I'll watch your kid for free is if you date me. I'm sorry that you're divorced. I'm sorry that you have a difficult work schedule that isn't good for your kids. I'm sorry that you're struggling with being a single parent. But I've been a stay-at-home mom for the past 14 years and believe me, I know when someone befriends me so I'll watch their kids for free. Guess what? When your kids come over, my kids quit bugging me about there being nothing to do, so it works out well for everyone. The minimal stress I feel when there are 5 extra kids in the house is so much better than the extraordinary stress of maintaining a boyfriend I don't like. So just FYI: I'm not going to marry you because my kids need a dad and certainly not because you need affordable childcare.
• Don't acknowledge that your kid is "crying for help." Divorce stresses kids out. Maybe you're not spending enough time with them. Maybe they're having trouble in school. Kids act out when they're upset. They make up lies out of jealousy to hurt other children and break things out of frustration. I learned a long time ago that if I want to keep the nice things I have, they needed to be put away until my kids were older. I also learned that kids are pretty simple creatures and that if you make the effort to talk to them, they'll tell you what's wrong. It might be stupid to you and 99% of the rest of the world, but if it's important to them, you need to work through it with them. So if I'm telling you that your kid just cut the heads off 20 stuffed animals, don't say "that's kid stuff." If I tell you that your kid just threatened my kid with a knife over a toy, you don't get to pretend it didn't happen. If your kid is showing signs of troubled behavior and you seem like you're unable to cope, I will still be there for your kid. But if you had any desire to date me, your inability to be an adult and a advocate for your own child removed that option from the table.

Best Pickup Line of All Time: "He's in Jail"

The Lion Tamer

I always preface my relationship stories with, "I sure know how to pick 'em!"

No matter how carefully I consciously choose someone "different this time," they turn out the same. It's not because I pick the same "kind." I've had army officers and criminals; academics and activists. It's not me choosing a "type," it's my supernatural ability to choose people with that same little broken part down deep inside, the part they are afraid to show anyone else. Something makes them show me that black rot. Some of them do it right away, some of them keep it hidden for a long time. It's not always in the same place; the reasons for it are numerous. After they show me, I feel their pain and I understand it but I can't take it away from them. I can't fix them, but I won't judge them.

My ex husband is in jail for domestic violence against me, just about at the end of a 6-month sentence for doing a lot of relatively minor stuff that was escalating into "Genuinely Disturbing and Downright Scary" Territory. I had to kick him out when he refused to get help for a wicked painkiller addiction and a mental illness that had him insisting he was deploying with the army to Africa to build ebola clinics. He left our family destitute and orchestrated our eviction. And that was just the stuff he didn't go to jail for. His trial was finally over on April 15. Finally over and done. No more court dates. The divorce was final a couple weeks before that. I could move on.

And then, a week ago, my friend allegedly shot someone. I have no idea whether he shot someone or someone else shot a third somebody. All I know is that my friend - my lover and sometimes boyfriend - now had an online profile at the county jail and his mugshot all over the news. It was incredibly painful to see his mugshot; one shoulder was a little higher than the other, so I knew a deputy was holding his arm, his hands most likely handcuffed behind him. He had that look I know so well, the one he gets when he's crushed by stress and ready to give up; as a previous offender, he had that look often. They had already taken all his piercings out. Piercings he never removes.

So then it begins. The "Did You See??" calls from the friends ballsy enough to ask. The "Did You Know??" calls about his prior arrests. But no calls from him, because he only knows his mom's number by heart. So you think and try to work out what happened from the 20 lines of the news report. Two men. Altercation. Woman involved. Shooting.

The only thing I cared about during these months my husband was in jail was that I didn't want him to get out. I kept having to see him in the courtroom and it was scary and painful and I hated him and what he did to our lives. And until the bitter end, he never saw anything wrong with anything he did to us. He didn't care that he hadn't paid the electricity bill for 6 months, his son sobbing from fear when the electric company came to turn off the power. He didn't care - in fact he was quite proud - of his trick that had all of us, including his 10-year-old son, evicted from his home. He saw nothing wrong with telling his son that Daddy is going to Africa and might not come home, because he could die of ebola.

I was ready to be done with even thinking about my husband and then my friend - allegedly (that ridiculous word) - shot someone at a gas station.

It's a week later and I still don't know what happened because he can't tell me. Oh, he called me. He called me four times today because he wants out, but his bail is astronomical. His bail is so far to Jupiter that no one can possibly pay it. The bail bondsman needs a house in addition to the bond. And I learned something: You lose the bond. If your bond is a million dollars, you have to come up with that 10% $100,000 cash bond that you never get back. Ever. And if your guy runs, then prepare to pull one million dollars out of every pore of your worthless ass and probably also lose something you love or live in.

I saw my friend in court, but I didn't hate him. It hurt, but I didn't hate him. The bailiff told us, before they brought in the prisoners, to not make so much as prolonged eye contact with an inmate or you will be removed from the courtroom. So no possibility of knowledge there. Public defender appointed. All knowledge withheld.

And at the jail, it's not like on TV where you sit with a thick slab of glass between you. No, it's a video screen and a phone, you're not in the same building, and you can't talk about anything. Not won't but can't. Not out of embarrassment but because everyone tells you not to. Say nothing. Don't guess. Don't assume. And whatever else you may do, never voice any assumptions while you're in video visitation or on the phone from the jail, no matter how bad your inmate looks, no matter how low they are in detox, no matter how bad they may sound, NO MATTER WHAT.

Imagine MY Surprise

But back to picking up guys.

As I said, these last few months have been really, really terrible. In October 2014, I lost my life. I had to file for divorce to get the restraining order that I desperately needed to protect my family against my husband's increasingly bizarre and unpredictable behavior. My husband's mental illness and raging addiction terrified, then finally broke, me. I had to go on food stamps, welfare and Medicaid for the first time in my life, while dealing with a husband thinking I left him not because he pretended to go to work every day for two months or that he wasn't actually being recruited to work at the International Space Station in Belgium, but because I obviously wanted to marry another man.

This was bad enough; I couldn't fathom the whole new frontier of insanity awaiting me in the form of single, middle-aged fathers overwhelmed with parenting the children they made with women they now despise.

Men think that because my ex husband did me extra dirty, I am ready to plunge into the icy waters of dating. Actually, they don't even care if I'm ready. They want it, so they're making an offer to buy. What they don't know is that my friend (lover, quasi-boyfriend) is the only man I can look at without wanting to claw his eyes out.

The more stressed I am, the more pathetic, the more I back off?  That's when they think sex will make everything better. And if they're super aggressive and persistent, I'll totally give in. Because what a recent victim of domestic violence really wants is a guy who won't take "no" for an answer.

They try to soften their approach while still being uber sex-offenderish. They use the word "play" for "sex." Uh ... I still have a kid in elementary school, the last thing I want to think about in relation to sex is "playtime." They say they want to go out for beer. Yeah, I learned those tricks in college, try again. And no, I'm not going to send you pictures of my boobs.

I'm also not ready to be a stepmom just because you have a difficult work schedule and need an ally in the battle against your ex-wife.

But last week, Obnoxious became man, put on pants and is in my face with a sleazy smile every time I open my mouth. "Jail" is apparently a magical term that translates as, "The woman is easy and the guy is locked away where he's not going to cause you any trouble for messing with his woman." Jail, the place where women with loose morals and a looser grasp on intellect send their men. After uttering "jail," there's not even any build up to going full-on creep. What they don't understand is that because my friend has most likely done something so horrible, and because he has a long felony record, that he won't get out of jail for decades. He's not dead, but I may never have physical contact with him ever again, not even to hold his hand. He's not dead, but my heart hurts just like if he had died.  I'm GRIEVING, leave me alone!

Two days ago, I had to call my friend's landlord. Within about a minute and a half, he asked me to send "sexy photos," in exchange for a phone number I needed. After I said I just wasn't ready (but was ready to report him as a sex offender), he said it was just for "beers and play." This is after an entire week of warding off guys intent on taking care of me and giving me a relationship that I "deserve" because if my friend is in jail, he obviously wasn't "taking care of me." Guys who blessedly left me alone through my divorce lost all civility upon hearing my friend was in jail. A mutual friend even offered to "steal me away" and be the muscle in my male-less life.

So ladies, this is my advice: If you really need to get laid, pretend your man is in prison. Put on a dejected but kind face and go out and ask for help. Make the charges against your imaginary friend really serious, like attempted murder, so your target assumes your guy will be away for a long time. You will have them crawling all over you like flies. Trust me, it brings out the virile hero-cum-villain in them all.