I Didn’t Want To Be THIS Divorced
I’m 55 years old and looking for a date.
I used to envy divorced people.
I had a protracted spinsterhood that lasted into my 40s and towards the end of my 30s I discovered that between the 1960s and 2005 being divorced had gone from being a liability to being preferred. A conversation with a man I’d met through online dating went like this:
“Have you ever been married?” he asked over the phone. We’d liked each other’s profiles and were chatting to see if we wanted to meet in person.
“No,” I said. I was 38.
“Have you ever been engaged?”
“No.”
“Have you ever lived with anyone?”
“No.” I was picking up on a pattern. “Have you?” I asked back.
“Yeah, I had girlfriend and we lived together for a couple of years.”
“Oh. Okay.” Pause. “Well, I — “
“I just kind of prefer to stick to people who have been in a committed relationship,” he said.
“Well, I have been in committed relationships.”
“Yeah, but I mean…it’s not the same.”
What I discovered from this man, and others, was that at a certain point, my never-married status had gone from being…
