Frequently, she accepts a date and then immediately regrets it. That’s when the panic starts. How am I going to get out of it? Why did I say yes? I’m not really attracted to this guy, she will say. I tell her that she does not have to accept just because she is asked. She does not owe anyone a date.

Sometimes she will decide that no, she is not going out with a guy and she will have a good reason…he lives too far away and she would never relocate to his area, he drinks too much, he is too young, he is too old, but then  somehow she finds that she has agreed to plans at a later date.

I think that part of the reason this happens is that women are conditioned to be polite. We want to give someone the benefit of the doubt. We don’t want to appear cold or unfeeling or bitchy.  There has to be a balance.

I think we need to listen to our gut more. Have an open mind. Maybe a guy has more to offer than we thought. For example, he might be willing to relocate if you don’t like where he lives, he’s actually closer to your age than he looks, whatever, but don’t settle if it feels like “settling.” 

Any advice for my friend?  I tell her to say, “No, thank you.”  If she needs to elaborate, she can say, “I’m taking a break from dating.”  She’s not being impolite by refusing. Saying no in the beginning stings a whole lot less than a breakup farther down the line.

Image credit: Sxc.hu

Post from: Blisstree

It’s Okay To Say No

I was excited to recognize a few of these items from sexy women’s TV shows like “Sex and the City” and “The Real Housewives of Orange County.”

If you’re not ready to go completely out of your comfort zone and try some of the crazier items, they also have a beautiful collection of scented candles and beautiful massage stones.

Contour M + Afterglow Sensory Set $40.50

This set stimulates multiple senses with a gentle candle, warming scented massage oil, and a perfectly shaped ceramic massage stone.  Not too scary, but definitely sexy right?

Check out the rest of the range of products on sale at Jimmyjane.

Post from: Blisstree

Sale on Sexy Items at Jimmyjane

Today, I’ve got my daughter, Sarah, eating a cupcake at my sister-in-law’s 30th birthday this past weekend.  She’s got pink sparkles on her face and her hair is wet from the pool.  She obviously had a blast.

Sarah is 11 and she is going into the 6th grade in about a month. She’s my youngest - she’s quite a bit younger than her next oldest sibling, Bay, who is turning 17 in a couple of weeks.

The girls are at very different stages in their lives and they have a sort of love/hate thing going on. I have a hard time with that, because I’ve only ever been love/love with either of my siblings. I can’t fix this for them. I can guide them and lead by example, but I cannot make them love each other all the time.

Lately, they’ve been meeting in the middle more. Sarah has been handing out a lot of hugs and Bay has been in serious need of them. They are helping each other through a tough time and I am proud of my girls. It’s hard, but sometimes Mom has to step back and let the sisters work it out.

Image credit: Michelle Smith

Post from: Blisstree

Wordy Wednesday - Sarah the Youngest

Laws of the Jungle: Dating For Women Over 40, by Gloria MacDonald and Thelma Beam

Gives advice on how to get started: where to meet men, “The Seven Attitudes of Highly Successful Daters,” how to recognize what a man is looking for, what to do on a date, what to avoid on a date, and a test to discover if Mr. Right is actually Mr. Right.

Dating After 40: Finding Someone For the Rest of Your Life, by Keith Leust

Offers “tips, hints, insights…” that will help the reader to find long term love. This book is appropriate for single mid-lifers who want to learn the “art of wooing.”

Hhmm. These books offer quite a lot.  Do you have a good book recommendation for mid-life daters that you’d like to share with other readers? If you do, please leave the name and/or author in the comments. 

Image credit: Amazon.com

Post from: Blisstree

Books For Mid-Life Daters

I want to address the issue of the transition between being apart and being together.  When you are in a long distance relationship you look oh-so-forward to those wonderful weekends that you get to spend in the same place.  For one weekend you think that you will be like normal couples and get to do everything together.  Sometimes you plan trips across many miles just to see each other for a few precious moments.

If you haven’t seen your significant other in awhile and have been operating in a long distance relationship, there is definitely an element of awkwardness that will be introduced during the transition period.  As soon as you arrive at the airport you will imagine that you will become a completely “normal” couple, but there is always a period of time where you need to adjust.  You can’t just transition from being a voice on the phone to being a real live human body without some sort of tension.

I want to bring up this issue because I think that it is an important element in long distance relationships that needs to be accepted.  A lot of times visits are extremely short and it’s possible that you might not ever make it through the transition phase.  You might feel just a little bit “off” and blame the feeling on problems in your relationship.  The truth is that this is completely normal!

You have a long distance relationship and a “physically together” relationship and it takes a good amount of adjusting to get from one to the other.  Imagine how different your life is when your partner is in town and when they aren’t:  you spend zero time together and then you spend all of your time together; you spend all of your time talking and then you don’t need to spend any time talking!

If you find that sometimes you get in arguments or don’t gel as well you usually do on short visits, think about the idea of the transition period between arrival and being fully comfortable.  It’s entirely possible that you are a compatible couple, but you just have difficulties adjusting to being in the same place when you usually aren’t.  Figure out if this is a factor in your long distance relationship and maybe it will answer some of the questions that you have about planning trips to see each other and managing your time spent together.

Image: Flickr ] Jonathan [

Post from: Blisstree

Long Distance: Transitions Are Difficult

I felt both overwhelmed and scared. I’m someone who always needs a plan. Here are the baby steps I’m taking to get through the challenges ahead:

*I allowed myself a freak out, but I did it away from the kids. They knew that I was upset, but I had to set the tone and I did that by staying calm.

*Take care of the duty of the moment. At 8pm on a Friday night, there was no way we could fix the problem. Instead, we set it to the side, and enjoyed a movie and ice cream evening. This may sound counter-productive, but I thought a bonding break was in order.  That was the duty of the moment.

*Start making lists. I am already thinking about what we need to do in order to deal with the challenges ahead. Some changes are going to need to be made around our house and with our future, but this is do-able. I started with mental lists and now I’m writing it all out.  I keep moving forward a little bit at a time.

We are a family and we will get through anything that is thrown at us together. I like to think of myself as someone who can fix anything. Now it’s time to put that idea into action.

Image credit: Michelle Smith

Post from: Blisstree

Tackle A Challenge In 3 Steps

A few months ago my apartment in Brooklyn suddenly burned down.  Luckily I wasn’t in the unit at the time, but I did lose my home and a lot of my belongings.  Obviously the situation could have much worse, but I still see the situation as a small crisis.  I suddenly had no place to live and very few belongings.

In situations like these I realized that everyone cares and wants to help, but it is the people who make a specific offer that are truly helping you.  Lots of people say “I’m so sorry.  Please let me know anything I can do to help.”  Although these are kind and thoughtful words, I found that they weren’t in actuality helpful because I didn’t have the time or clarity of mind to figure out how different people could be useful to me.  And even if I did come up with something I needed, I didn’t really feel comfortable asking when they only said “let me know.”

The life-saving help came from those friends and family who took action.  They made specific offers like “You can use my truck to move your belongings” or “You can stay at my apartment this weekend while I’m out of town.”  I can probably say that I accepted almost all of these offers because it was actually helpful!  Their offers helped to relieve some stress from my situation.  They didn’t require me to do extra analyzing to try to figure out how they could be of some help in my crisis situation.

If you know someone going through a crisis in their life and you know that they need help, please offer something specific.  Home-cooked meals, beds to sleep in, babysitting, pet sitting, rides, use of vehicles…all of these things are great ideas.  It is helpful for you to do some thinking and analyzing on your own to figure out what you can do and offer.  Then propose to them what you can do to help and be prepared that they will take you up on it!

I guarantee that they will be forever appreciative and you will feel that you have truly done your part to be supportive and giving.

Image: sxc.hu

Post from: Blisstree

How To Offer Support In A Crisis

Closure represented a sort of door. Open door=pain. Closed door=healing.  No closed door ever truly changed the way I felt. It could not be that easy.

I was in a relationship that had no clear breakup. He simply stopped answering his phone. A few months later, there was a small amount of communication and eventually the whole ugly story came out (via another party, not my ex). I felt angry and closure was the last thing on my mind. I did not want to talk to him. I wanted him completely out of my head. I wanted him to disappear. I ignored contact from him. I got angry with my friends when they spoke about him. I got really angry when they relayed messages from him. The anger was bothering me and creating problems in other areas of my life.

Finally, I felt that enough was enough. I wanted any mention of him to stop. He did not mean anything to me other than a big ball of angry regret in my belly. I wanted to truly make him disappear. I wanted closure.

So, I emailed him. He answered. I said what I had to say and in very little time that anger changed to pity. Now I feel at peace. No angry ball in my belly - just the usual chocolate cravings. 

I feel free now that I’m out from under the weight of all that anger. Could I be friends with him now? Oh, hell no.  I still think he’s an ass. The important thing is that I don’t care enough about him to hate him any longer.

Here’s the key - closure is about you, not your ex.

I was wrong about the closure before. I did not understand it. It is important. It is healing. If you’ve been contemplating it, give it a try. 

Image credit: Michelle Smith

Post from: Blisstree

Got Me Some Of That Closure

Although the idea of roommates worked amazingly well in college and probably the first few years after college when you were still interested in constant companionship, I want to address the issue of an age where roommates are no longer the best option.  As we grow older and move away from our college years, we develop more into a unique and amazing adult.  It might seem a little daunting to have an apartment completely to yourself, but it could be an important key to your lifelong happiness and personal development.

Regardless of how long you have known your roommate or how much you enjoy their company, there comes a time in your life when you need to challenge yourself to establish a space that is completely your own.  You might have to downsize and sacrifice some of the luxuries that come with the apartment that you can afford with a roommate, but I see a great importance in adult development in living by yourself.

When you live by yourself, suddenly you are forced to understand your importance in the world without recognition from anyone else.  You will become strong and independent to know that you can be successful in life on your own.  It is a great challenge to live by yourself for the first time, but it is healthy and extremely strengthening.

If you are single and plan on getting married someday, embrace the opportunity that you have to live on your own.  You get to make all of the decisions, spend time by yourself, and create a space that is completely your own!

Image: Flickr Creative Commons

Post from: Blisstree

Are You Still Living With A Roommate?

I honestly believed that the idea that someone could be dating more than one person at the same time was something that only happened in movies or to extremely naive people.  But unfortunately I am finding out that it is becoming more and more common!  It’s one thing to have a mistress who is fully aware of her status, but it is quite another to convince each woman that they are in an exclusive relationship.  Married men are taking their rings off when they go out to bars and guys with serious girlfriends are starting new relationships on the side.

It might sound like a lot of work for someone to maintain more than one “exclusive” relationship, but I think the frequency in occurrence relates back to ideas of polygamy and a male desire for multiple women.  A male with low self-confidence gets a great boost from new interest from a woman.  Although they want what is new, they are also unwilling to give up the boost coming from the serious relationship they already have.  So the obvious solution is…why not continue both? I doubt that they fully think this scenario through to imagine how it will all be resolved, but I’m pretty sure the dream scenario involves something like two women fighting over one man.

It’s all quite crazy, but I just wanted to bring up the issue to draw attention to the fact that it is happening more and more.  Intelligent women who have had perfectly respectable boyfriends and serious relationships have ended up falling for these lies and getting into a hurtful and sticky situation.

Don’t be overly cautious or snoopy, but do trust your intuition and use your eyes and ears to catch any oddities that could tip you off.

Image: istock

Post from: Blisstree

Is He Cheating…With You?