Mid-Life Ex-Wife

by Stella Grey

  “You know the average height of men in the UK is 5'10 don’t you,” he replied. That happened to be his own height.

  “Luckily I’m not interested in averages,” I wrote.

  “You may as well ask for an albino who’s a billionaire,” he countered.

  It was hard to know how to reply to that, so I didn’t. I always replied to a first approach, unless there was something vile about it, but didn’t feel obliged to keep responding to people who replied to my reply, and especially not those I’d said no thank you to. Otherwise some pointless conversations would never have ended.

  I paused at the smiling face of a man called Dave who lived in Kent. “Hi I’m Dave, an ordinary bloke, forty-three years old and ready for a serious relationship.” What caught my eye was that Dave was fifty-two. The age updated automatically on the heading of the page, though he hadn’t updated the personal statement that appeared beneath it. His description had been written a full nine years ago. “Oh God,” I said aloud. “Dave’s been here for nine years!” Poor Dave. “I hope you find someone soon, Dave,” I said to the screen. “Unless you’re a bad man, obviously, in which case womankind has made its judgment and you should probably take the hint.”

  Most people’s dating site profiles say little about them. Some real-world interesting people have no gift for self-description and fall back on the generic; some people are careful to be bland and unspecific; and others are actually as dull as their blurb suggests. It can be tricky to deduce which of the three you’re dealing with, at first or even second glance. There are those who appear to say a lot, but actually give nothing away. Everybody loves holidays and music and films and food, and wants to travel the world. Everyone has a good sense of humor, works hard and likes country weekends; everybody loves a sofa, a DVD and a bottle of wine. Then there’s the problem of integrity. Some things that are said might prove not to be true: marital status for example, or age, or location, or general intentions (or height). “I’m looking for my soulmate,” doesn’t always mean exactly that. Sometimes it decodes as I’m not looking for my soulmate, but that’s what chicks want to hear. Inside the anonymity of the database, nothing can be relied on at face value. I’m not suggesting there are grounds for constant paranoia, but I learned to be on the alert. In the early days I had a conversation with a professor at a certain university, and checked the campus website and found that he wasn’t. When I challenged him his dating profile disappeared and my emails weren’t any longer answered. When I told a friend—who was also searching for someone—about this, she said, “Sometimes I’m confident, and sometimes taking on a secondhand man is like going to the dog refuge and picking a stray, not knowing what its real history is or how it might react under pressure.”

  Not that this is everyone’s experience of online romance. I know of dating site marriages . . . well, I know of one. Admittedly the woman in question is a goddess. The goddesses, the willowy ones with the cheekbones and the swishy hair, are probably swamped with offers. As for me, all the dating site gods (tall, articulate, successful, well-traveled; they don’t even have to be handsome) were swishing right past me.

  I asked my friend Jack for a male appraisal of my dating site profile. He said it was lovely, like me. That was worrying. I needed clarification.

  “Well,” he said. “You expect a lot. You make it clear you only want clever, funny, high-achieving men.”

  “I don’t say high-achieving. I don’t say that anywhere.”

  “You say it without saying it. And it’s clear that you’re alpha. That puts men off. I’m just saying.”

  “So what should I do? Claim to be a flight attendant with a love of seamed stockings?”

  “That would get you a lot of attention. But then you’d need to follow through.”

  “I’d have to study the British Airways routes and talk about layovers.”

  “Every middle-aged man in the world dreams of layovers,” Jack said, looking wistful.

  He helped rewrite the copy so that I sounded more fun, though not as fun as Jack wanted me to sound. There was an immediate response in the inbox. “Reading between the lines, I think you’re holding out for something unusual,” one said. “I believe I’m atypical. For a start I don’t have a television. When I had one I spent a lot of time shouting at it.” I replied that I couldn’t bear to watch Question Time, either. “No, no,” he said. “Countryfile, for instance. Countryfile’s really annoying.” I asked him what he did in the evenings. He said he spent a lot of time with his lizards.

  It was a grim Tuesday night, the rain lashing down. I went in search of someone friendlier. There were lots of men who claimed to be the life and soul of the party, but who looked like serial killers on Wanted posters. In general, using a bad passport photograph to illustrate your page isn’t the best of all possible plans. I rummaged through the first five candidates the system had offered and had a look at what they had to say. “Scientific facts are never true. If you know why scientific facts are never true, you might be the girl for me.” “Still looking for the right one, a woman who won’t expect me to be at her beck and call.” “Secondhand male, in fairly good condition despite last careless owner.” “I am a complex person, too complex to explain here, a hundred different men in one. If you want a dull life you are wasting your time. Move along—nothing to see here.” “Looking for intelligence, co-operation and a natural blonde.” (Co-operation?)

  Perhaps, I thought, I should narrow the search, by ticking some of the boxes for interests. A search based on ticking “Current Affairs” brought up a raft of virtue-signalers. “I’m dedicated to the pursuit of justice for all and hate political unfairness.” “The top three things I hate are liars, deceit and war.” (Whereas, presumably, the rest of us are assumed to approve of wars and lying.) Then I had a brief conversation with a man who said he loved world cinema. I messaged him asking what kind of films he liked. Back came the reply: “Hi thanks for asking, my favorite movies are Driller Killer, The Lair of the White Worm, Cannibal Holocaust, I Spit on Your Grave, Cabaret and The Blood-Spattered Bride.”

  The first dinner offer came from Trevor, an American expat in London. Trevor had been dumped and was only just passing out of denial and into acceptance, he said. He was doing the work (the therapeutic work on himself, he meant), but was finding it hard. Four thousand words of backstory followed this statement, and in return, I gave him mine. A few hours after this another great long email arrived, talking philosophically about life and quoting writers. It was charming, endearing; I reciprocated with my own thoughts, quoting other writers. We were all set. Then, the day before dinner, Trevor canceled. The last line of his message said: “To be honest, I’m not interested in a woman who’s my intellectual equal.” (I know this sounds as if it might not be true, but I’m sorry to tell you that it is.) He added that he felt honesty was the best policy. I didn’t like to tell him what my policy was, but right then and there it could easily have involved a plank, a pirate ship, a shark-infested sea and a long pointy stick.

  The first real-world meeting was for a coffee in town in the afternoon with an HR manager, between his meetings: a short, sharp interview that I failed. I didn’t mind too much. He was pursed-mouthed, unforthcoming, with dyed black hair and the demeanor of a vampire. Determined to exorcise the bad first date, I agreed to another, with an apparently jaunty tax specialist. Ahead of me in the queue, he bought only his own cappuccino and cake, leaving me to get mine, and then for twenty minutes I heard all about the many, many times he’d seen U2, told one concert at a time. By then my cup was empty. In all sorts of ways my cup seemed to be empty.

  It wasn’t just the bad dates that were ending badly. I had a good date that also ended badly: a success so tremendous—dinner that led into dancing, and after that a walk by the river, and then a glorious snog—that I couldn’t sleep afterwards, but lay awake imagining our life together, a fantasy outcome put to an end by his cutting me dead. Sometimes people have one great date with someone and that�
��s enough for them. A series of great first dates is all they’re hoping for; that’s all they need. I hadn’t anticipated this, not anything like this. I came from a much more straightforward, more traditional dating culture in which people got together at discos and parties and via friends of friends, and stayed together for a long time. We were open with one another, back then, and love was fairly simple.

  I decided that what I’d do was establish a real friendship with men, over email and text and sometimes even over the phone (I’ve never liked the phone), before agreeing to meet them. Talking people into being interested in you before meeting—that’s where you might expect the internet to excel. That could be a process designed to work in a middle-aged woman’s favor, circumventing the shock of her physical self when a man met her in person. Undeniably, I had been a shock to some men I’d met, and I wasn’t the only one to have had that experience (look, I’m not particularly hideous). I’d been talking to other women of around my age who had found the very same. It was agreed that there were notable (noble) exceptions, but in general men had expectations that a woman who’d “put herself out there” would dedicate time, effort and money to her appearance, so as to compete. Some men are of the opinion that the whole physical manifestation of a woman on the earth should amount to an A–Z of efforts to please, and that we’re all madly in competition with one another. There are men who think that’s all that lipstick means. There are tabloid newspapers that suggest that’s all that clothes mean, and who divide women into goat and sheep camps, the frumpy and those who flaunt themselves. There have been men, in the course of this quest, who have been openly scandalized about my lack of commitment to looking younger. But then as Jack kept telling me, “Men are visual creatures.” He was doubtful about the Scheherazade strategy, one involving telling stories and general email-based bewitchment. Nonetheless, I resolved to stick with plan A. I decided that I would be quirky, and bright, and a little bit alpha, and I was going to be my real age, for as long as it took. Initial disappointments wouldn’t deter me. I was going to beat the system and find the man I’d want to be with for the rest of my life. I was just hoping it wouldn’t take another 1001 nights.

  Trying to Write the Right Profile

  Here’s my first attempt at a dating profile. The additions in bold and parentheses are my reactions to reading it now.

  ABOUT ME

  Tall, dark, reasonably handsome woman, just turned fifty, hoping for second love after the end of a long marriage. (Is tall, dark and handsome a bit of a macho way to introduce yourself? I’m trying for witty, but I think I’m just coming off as annoying, to misquote Rex the dinosaur in Toy Story.) Intelligent, lively, curious, bookish. Not a skinny person. I’m just saying. Not obese, either, but if slender is your type, then I might literally be too much to handle. (Christ, no, that’s not even funny.)

  WHAT I’M LOOKING FOR

  A tall, clever, funny, loyal, lovely man. (Not much to ask, is it?) Ideally, someone to grow old with. Someone bookish, good-humored, sociable, kind. (You should probably have written: “Happiness; not interested in flings.” That’s probably enough.) I have a bit of a thing for big sturdy academics who rock a linen jacket. (Oh no.)

  MUSIC

  My music likes are catholic, as in wide-ranging and not as in Vatican City. (You’ve just offended somebody.) Jimi Hendrix, Kathleen Ferrier, Pat Metheny, Philip Glass, Rolling Stones, Talking Heads and all the usual classical. Not really an opera person. Fond of seventies and eighties tracks that remind me of being a student. Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Glen Campbell, Velvet Underground, John Martyn, Blue Nile, Marvin Gaye, Blondie, Pretenders, The Cure, David Bowie. Very fond of wordless film scores and ambient. Favorite guilty secret: Fleetwood Mac. (Accurate enough, though you’ve completely omitted the jazz you listen to all day. And I’m not really sure why you’ve written all this.)

  BOOKS

  Usually have a book stuck to my face. British and American nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the usual retinue of greatness: Dickens, Austen, Brontë, Wharton, James. Oh, and those Russian chaps, and those French chaps (that you don’t read much. Plus, your cuteness is already annoying). Currently on the bedside: Michel Faber, Richard Ford, Kazuo Ishiguro, Fitzgerald, Franzen, Forster, Iris Murdoch. Larkin and Eliot. Art books. A. N. Wilson’s The Victorians. (This is true but you might be trying too hard. Perfectly nice men who read only 99-cent Kindle thrillers will be deterred. It doesn’t matter what you read or what other people read.)

  FILMS

  Twelve random Desert Island films: Local Hero, Some Like It Hot, Philadelphia Story, Annie Hall, Hero, Blazing Saddles, Two Days in Paris, Stranger than Fiction, Rocky Horror, Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday, A Night at the Opera, All About My Mother, Blade Runner. (Except that’s thirteen.) I’m a big fan of world cinema of all sorts. Guilty pleasures: the Bourne franchise, popcorn thrillers.

  FOOD

  Basically Nigella. (You are embarrassing.) Very greedy and eat almost anything (you’re saying you’re fat). Cooking and eating are important, as you will see immediately you meet me. (You keep telling the boys that you’re fat, you know.) World food rather than just traditional British, though in reality there’s a lot of chicken. In summer, fish and chips out of the paper while sitting on a seawall. Restaurant pick for a blowout dinner—mussels to start, venison or duck, lots of cheese, a clever chocolate pudding. And wine. Lots of wine. Garlic with everything except custard. Death Row meal: steak and sweet potato fries. (Really not clear why you’ve written down any of this.)

  ART

  I’m an art nut and go to galleries a lot. I have trouble with some of the conceptual stuff but am not completely ungroovy. (Oh God.) I’ve even admired the occasional video installation. I like primitive art, Renaissance art, nineteenth-century art, early/mid-twentieth-century modernism. I like abstraction, color, some expressive work. Howard Hodgkin. (At this point you’ve probably deterred people who think this is a spec, rather than just your own ramblings.)

  HOME

  Home means a lot, physically and as an idea. I like to decorate, in different senses of the word. (No, me neither.) Having said that, heading off with a rucksack and being forced to be a world citizen would probably be good for me. At home I feel the pull between sleek functionality and a more cluttered, wildly colored nineteenth-century approach with some Moroccan-boho touches. (A chap might wonder if you’re asking to be housed and to be given a furnishing budget, at this point.)

  TV AND RADIO

  Radio 3 and 4. Not a live-TV watcher, in general. Low tolerance for commercials. No tolerance for reality television, of any sort. I like thrillers, crime, suspense, psychological. Quite partial to the occasional bonnet drama (I don’t mean cars). Culture and science docs. (You sound like a media snob. But that is accurate enough.)

  PLACES

  I haven’t been to enough places. I know bits of Europe well and tend to return to them. Ideal holiday: a place with swimming plus exploring opportunities, interleaving history/travel days with relaxing days. Wild swimming fan: lakes and rivers often preferred to beaches. No interest in the Caribbean or tanning. I want to see more of the world. (Add that trekking in Nepal and Machu Picchu are not on the list.) I want to see “Arabia” as the nineteenth-century explorers saw it. (Do not say this—people will delight in misunderstanding it.)

  POLITICS

  Sensible-compassionate left-middle. (Don’t use the word compassionate about yourself. Or charismatic, come to that.)

  SPORT

  No. Unless you count walking the dog. Or watching Wimbledon and Six Nations rugby. On the television. On the couch. (This is brave, perhaps, but necessary. Too many midlife men are gym-oriented.) I cycle, but rarely uphill.

  WEEKENDS

  An ideal weekend: eating, reading, going out for a mooch and a coffee, dipping into a museum, going to the cinema, making dinner and drinking wine. Or: off to a wild green place for walking and the pub. Or: gardens and NT houses with tearooms. Weekends away in B&Bs. Walks on
the beach in winter. (Beaches in winter are a total dating cliché.)

  What I think when I read this over now is: I wonder how many people thought they wouldn’t fit the bill, because they watched, read or did the wrong things, and because they interpreted a detailed account of myself as an equally detailed wish list. In a way this can’t be helped: the whole point is to give an idea of what you’re like and how you tick. It’s very difficult to get it right. Some of the reactions I had to this first attempt were “Well, you’re not expecting a lot, are you?” (sarcasm) and “You come over as a smug middle-class bitch.” But, you see, I wasn’t interested in the sort of men who would write to women to tell them that. So, perhaps, although some of the above is cringe-worthy, it’s on the right track, in being personal, at least. Smugly middle class and with high expectations, maybe—but personal, at least.

  First Bites and Backbites

  SPRING, YEAR ONE

  So, the plan was to make a man fall a little bit in love with me by email before we met. The idea was that this would make me feel less nervous about meeting a stranger.

  The project didn’t start well. The first attempt was utterly doomed, because the man in question wasn’t a communicator. To Ralph, texting was for making social arrangements, and emailing was for making more long-winded social arrangements, and he didn’t grasp that both could be used as a form of foreplay. I’m not saying this was a bad thing per se. Each to their own. But yes, Ralph and I were a mismatch, in this and in other ways. I persisted, though, for five weeks and seven dates, because he was an incredible kisser. We’re talking world-class osculation. It was the kind of kissing that could turn a person’s head and make them conclude, totally wrongly, that a lifetime of bliss lay ahead. Sex (sixth and seventh dates) was a complete disaster, though. I don’t mean that the mechanics of it were a failure, despite the fact that I was undoubtedly a nervous wreck. It was just unsexy: weirdly, profoundly unsexy for both of us. It was odd. The kissing was our sex. The kissing was as erotic as hell. The sex, however, was more like shaking hands with your bottom.