Relationships

Red Flag #1: He Loves a Martyr.

I was dating a guy. Let’s call him Jim. The sexual chemistry was so strong that the first time I met him, I jumped onto his lap when we were having drinks at a bar. I did a little more than just sit on his lap on the second date.

Jump ahead a month and we’re in a “Relationship.” On the surface it looks like I’m still the same me, but in fact me has gone on an extended vacation to one of those places far away with no cell coverage. That left me minus me and you know what that means, him. In other words, I had given up my hobbies, interests, dreams, my clumsy ways, and even my beloved foul habits and crazy friends, only to take on of all his, becoming him.

Like a sailor raising a finger to the wind every ten minutes, I followed his every emotional shift and tightened my sails accordingly. I plotted political revenge on his boss. I wrote polite but strategic emails to his ex-wife, hoping to keep her from hauling him back to court for more money. I pretended to find his coworker accountants fascinating. I even started shaving in the morning, giving him some extra snooze time.

It was my greatest disappearing act. In the course of two months, I had lost myself, developed a bad case of depression, and become the perfect female Jim. Which brings me to the Red Flag: he was the happiest man in the world. He loved me this way. For him, it was the perfect relationship: woman sheds her life to orbit around man; man continues orbiting around his life (buoyed by her extra centrifugal force); all is well in the world.

This perfectly horrible perfection became glaringly obvious at an Italian restaurant one evening. We were talking about moving to his corporate headquarters, located in some small town in the middle of some small nowhere. The real me flashed back for a quick guest appearance, laughed dismissively, and announced it was “San Francisco or bust.”

I got the “bust” part, alright–a busted relationship. He exploded, quickly remembered we were in public, contained his fury, and then said hissing, “The topic is closed.”

As Me had already bolted from the scene again (no doubt to returning to her favorite beach in Goa, figuratively speaking),  I started salting the lasagna with my tears.

Why I didn’t read the writing on the wall and break up then and there is beyond me, though it no doubt was connected to the fact that my head was lodged up my vagina. But more than that, it was a testament to the powerful effect of female conditioning. Nobody seems to notice if you’ve given up everything you are for a guy. In fact, they glorify it and call it romantic love. Well, I say, no thank you! Any guy who doesn’t notice your Joan D’Arc martyrdom routine because that’s what normal looks like to him is sending up one giant Red Flag. Take the sex and run.

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How to Find True Love Over Forty

I took some time off from the blog. Maybe you noticed. Anyway, it wasn’t by choice. I was having a little content crisis stemming from the following all too frequent response to my blog’s subject matter:

“You blog about sex!? Sex and the older woman? Who the hell am I having sex with? Because it ain’t my husband. [sarcastic snicker]”

What I took from that was “limited readership.”

After that, the emails from guys in their twenties started. Young cubs asking my advice about how to meet a hot cougar (older woman fond of younger men).

Example: “Dear Pink Wrangler, I work with a married woman who gave me a photocopy of her giant boobies. What should I do?”

I wrote back something to the effect of, ‘You must be gay if you’re asking,’ and sighed deeply. Maybe this whole blog thing was a bad idea.

Eventually my mood perked up and it occurred to me, ‘Why throw the baby out with the bathwater when you can just rename it?’

So that’s what I did. Seasonedsex.com is now Funnyinthehead.com, a blog about how sometimes you gotta go crazy to figure stuff out. It happens over forty, when nothing seems to make sense anymore.

Like dating for instance, something I’ve been doing a lot of lately since I broke up with my cub almost a year ago.

Few things make me crazier than having to go on a date. If you ask me, dating ranks right up there with water boarding as a form of torture. We do it because we’re looking for love and it’s one of the injustices of life that dating is a means to that end. There you are putting yourself through an at-home extreme makeover that costs too much and never comes off quite right. Then you sit through an interminable dinner getting all bloaty from the dinner rolls and counting down the minutes before the Spanx can come off and you can fart freely.

Now since I hate dating and since I’m tired of my friends telling me to do something useful for a change, I’ve decided to put my writing into the service of single women over forty. I’m launching a series aimed at minimizing or hopefully eliminating dating agony. It’s called The Red Flags of Dating Over Forty.

The Red Flags document the warning signs that should cause you (a woman with everything to offer) to run fast and far from him (a man doing all he can to hide his fatal flaw). Thanks to the Red Flags, you’ll see through a guy’s performance to the real man. Knowledge is power. Need I say more?

Few side notes about the Red Flags. First, they don’t deal with the obvious stuff that I’m sure you’ve figured out by now. Second, they’re based on actual events. Also, some of the Red Flags may ruffle feathers but, hey, no one said saving true love would be easy.

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How to Turn a Guy into a Sex Toy

Oh my. How we gals do go on about our vibrators and other sex toys.

Yeah right. I think I’ve had two friends in my almost five decades of life mention their vibrators to me, in an embarrassed, under-their-breath kind of way. Just two.

Even less talked about are sex toys for guys. I hate to admit it but it never occurred to me that a heterosexual guy would want to use a sex toy, let alone know how to use one.

Recently though LELO, the luxury sex toy company out of Sweden, set the record straight for me. They sent me a “BO” to try.

I opened the elegant box it arrived in, noting to myself to keep the matte black box for the collection. (I collect empty boxes. I have no idea why.) Then I pulled out the BO, a small donut-shaped pliable ring with a tiny motor that slips into the ring, activating the vibration.

I held the buzzing BO in the palm of hand as though it were some curious little creature I’d found under my bed and called my new boyfriend, Thorben Klaven III. I explained the situation. With a rising voice, he insisted–no let me rephrase that, begged me–to meet for a trial run.

[Dear reader: due to onerous and often surprising censorship rules that tax our world, along with my distaste for being on the wrong side of ferocious finger-waggers, the so called, “trial run,” has been edited down to well, err, nothing. I leave you instead with the aftermath.]

“TK?” I whispered to his chest hairs. I was resting in the crook of his arm, poking him in the ribs to rouse him.

“Now, now, sweetness” he said patting my head with his big mitt, “You know I prefer, Thorben.”

“Yes of course, darlinginko,” I said patiently. “What did you think, Thor-bo-bo?” I snickered quietly.

He rolled over and snuggled closer, indulging me like a toddler who just never learns. “It was Bo-delicious,” he said. “I felt bionic, like some cyborg sex toy. I could have climbed a skyscraper. You?”

“I’ve never experienced anything like it,” I said with genuine amazement. “Everything was vibrating. You were like a giant human sex toy. Incredible.”

“Better than Dunkin’ BoNuts, huh?” he said laughing.

“Seriously Bo Vibrations,” I quipped back.

“Bo and Quiver,” he retorted.

“BoFinger,” I snapped.

“Bo that rocks,” he crackled.

“Bo Derek,” I popped.

[Dear Reader: This went on for another fifteen minutes. I'll spare you and pick up the story here:]

“Thorben?” I said sitting up in bed and reaching for the notebook I always kept on my nightstand. “How would you describe the quality of your orgasm?” My pen immediately moved into my mouth for that serene, contemplative look.

Thorben looked at me lovingly. “You’re so cute when you do that journalist thing,” he said sweetly.

I gave him an affectionate nudge, pressing him for an answer.

He thought about it for a moment. “I would say the orgasm was multifaceted. I had to negotiate the pressure from the tight ring that kept things, err, backed up and full, if you know what I mean, with the intensity of the buzzing sensation. It was curious but exciting.”

I scribbled furiously. “Anything else?” I nodded encouragingly.

“Why, yes, there is,” he said mysteriously. “If I press it against the mattresses it makes a loud funny sound.” He activated the Bo again to demonstrate—a giant Nordic-type of a man bouncing and buzzing on my bed.

“You’re so silly!” I said trying to restore a certain journalistic gravitas. “Would you mind rating the experience on a scale of one to 10?”

“Oh, that’s hardly scientific,” he said. “To each his own.”

I gave him my best crestfallen look. “That’s your answer?”

He squeezed me affectionately. “Nope,” he said. “Here’s my answer: It’s for any woman who wants to experience a live, super-sized sex toy and any guy who’s wondered what it’s like to be one.” He looked at me with a big grin.

“Oh, Thorben,” I said throwing my notebook aside with a devil-may-care air. “Let’s recharge our little friend.”

“Just what I was thinking dearest,” he said dashing butt naked to the nearest electrical outlet.

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How to Get Married Over Forty

Calling all 40 Over Women. If you want to know how to get married (because it’s next to impossible) then start with this relationship help for older dating from the new book, How To Meet A Man After Forty (And Other Midlife Dilemmas Solved).

Take a look around you. How do you compare with other women over 40? Do you look good for your age (GFYA)? Or, do you look more like Every Inch Your Age, or EIYA? Because if you look EIYA, then will probably never have sex again, and you will definitely never ever get married. At least that’s what I got out of Shane Watson’s new book, How to Meet A Man After Forty, And Other Midlife Dilemmas Solved.

Categorizing women 40 plus into GFYA or EIYA is just the beginning of the book’s silliness. Check out her idea of a “midlife dilemma” (hot off the back cover):

• Should I wax my mustache?
• Am I told old for a leather jacket?
• Am I having the right amount of sex?
• Am I good for my age?
• Why do I hate my best friend?
• Am I turning into my mother?
• Can I be single and happy?
• Is it just me, or is life getting much, much weirder?

If those are midlife dilemmas, I’m a disposable cell phone. Clearly somebody’s been spending a little too much time shopping or sucking up fumes at the local nail salon.

Weird.

Are You A Natural or a Plastic?

The, so called, “Naturals,” (women who [stupidly] think they can age naturally) better start worrying. Plastic surgery and youth worship have so affected our perception of beauty, the author argues, that even though “The Plastics” (women who believe plastic surgery can stop aging – think [yikes] Faye Dunaway) might look “weird and inhuman” next them, “you [The Natural] look crumpled and saggy and ill…the exhausted old crone who let herself go.”

By way of supportive evidence, she later informs us, “there is a cutoff age—let’s call it 38 for the sake of argument—after which some men think single women should be supplied with gray uniforms and kept in camps on the outskirts of towns so that they don’t interfere with normal, healthy interaction between the sexes.”

Oh, oh, now I’m feeling insecure being the dreaded Natural Camp. I sure hope she’s joking but then again, how can she be? She’s not funny.

Weirder.

Some Things You Must Know to Get Married

Her advice on friends gets down to editing out the ones that make you look old or bad (because they’re better at something than you – those “showoffs”).

If challenged about being single at your age, lie. Here are some suggestions: “Who says I’m single?” Or, “Well, it could be that I shouldn’t have spent the nineties on Easter Island.”

She unravels such mysteries as:

• Do men prefer heels? (They “adore” them)
• Do men like underwear to match (“It’s a bummer, but they do.”)
• What do men make of unfitted or unisex clothes (“Men just don’t get clothes that have no desire to be sexy.”)

Tips for Turning A Date Into A Mate

If that isn’t helpful enough, she really shines with her advice for turning a date into a mate (or at least a second date). The key, she warns, is to not be so intimidating – “tone it down, way down.” For all you professional powerhouses out there who have forgotten what that means:

• Smile
• Forget your work
• Don’t take control (at least not all the time)
• Don’t tower over him (if you’re taller)
• Keep it light
• Don’t sound like you’ve done it all
• Go easy on the irony (he might not get it and it may come across as nasty)
• Laugh a lot, “like a madwoman”
• Be intensely interested in everything he says
• Don’t talk about yourself, unless pushed and then keep it brief
• Disappear at some point (create a little mystery)
• Make him responsible for you (Say, “Would you get me a drink?” Or, “Would you let me lean on you while I do up my shoe?”)
• Flirt with other men (while still making sure he knows he’s number one)

Get Married And You’ll Be An Expert Too!

Watson’s claim to relationship gurudom rests with the fact that she got married for the first time in her mid-forties. Apparently, this single act is so improbable, so verging on impossible, that it’s enough to launch her to “iconic status.”

At the end of the book we learn she married an older guy (“men get better with age”) with three teenagers. Hmmm, all that doing-every-thing-it-takes-to-not-look-40-ever and then acting like nothing’s changed since the fifties only to end up as a Stepmom who has mastered the art of making drop-scones?

Weirdest.

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