Living Happily Ever After
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The Conversation

Date: August 30, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

Right about that time a co-worker, my age and also a single mother, asked me about the men in my life. She checked in with me periodically about how things were going in my unexpected and single life, and although I gave her the 411, she wanted to know more about Bachelor #5. She said, “Of everyone I’ve heard you mention, Bachelor #5 is by far the most appealing to ME. I don’t understand–what’s your issue with him?” (I think I heard echoes of other co-workers saying the same thing in the background as they kept an ear on our conversation!)

I launched into my usual explanation that he was very nice but “older,” he had gray hair, he was a grandpa (ie. too old), but she stopped me. Those were shallow excuses. She wanted to know the real reason. I thought for a minute and said, “I think my problem with him is that we are too much alike and have too much in common.”

She looked at me like I was absolutely crazy. A complete idiot. And asked, “How can you have too much in common with someone? And why WOULDN’T you want to have so much in common with someone? Why is that a problem?”
Then she opened my eyes to the benefits of having a lot in common with a man as she shared her experience of being in a relationship with a man she had everything in common with, her soul mate.

I’d been very different from my first husband; we had very little in common except our faith. But I’d been happy, had loved him, and had probably come to believe over the course of our 20-year marriage that it was our differences that made him so appealing to me and kept me interested in him for so long. (It certainly kept our conversations lively and very educational!)

Talking to my co-worker, I began to open my mind to something I’d never considered before. I started to take note about what it was like to have a lot in common with a man I dated. I decided to observe, take notice, see what it was really like, and what I really thought about spending time with someone I had a lot in common with. (And can you believe it only took me four months of knowing him to get to that point? Sometimes I can be incredibly clueless.)

“Did you have an epiphany? Is that why you waited so long?” (Mark Geragos)

Then It Was Gone

Date: August 25, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

“Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious.” (Oscar Wilde)

I heard from Bachelor #5 again.

He emailed me, thanked me for going to dinner, told me I was a trooper for living through what I’d gone through and remaining positive and seeking to create a happy life… and then he continued with his busy life, the holidays, and travel.

He was organized, planned his life and was sort of on a “schedule.” He kept in touch via email about once a week. He texted me about once a week. He asked me out once a week, depending on his travel and schedule, and as busy as we both were, I’m amazed I was usually available the nights he asked me out. He took me to dinners, a dance class, musicals, plays–always fun and unique things, especially compared to most of the men I dated.

I met his friends and some of his children. He always had a story to tell about something, and was always very nice. He was also my divorce expert: he had been divorced three years longer than me and had lived through everything I was facing. He was very thoughtful to check in with me after my “firsts” (first Christmas, etc…) to see how things went.

But that’s as far as my analysis of Bachelor #5 went. I had pre-determined he was too old for me; I certainly didn’t think he “liked” me! He was just a nice, older bearded man that I assumed felt bad for me, a newly single mom.

Then one night he picked me up for a date. I looked over at him as he was backing out of the driveway talking to me and I was struck by how different he looked. I felt like I was looking at a stranger! I couldn’t figure out what was causing my confusion. I thought I knew him, but all of a sudden I felt like I didn’t.

And then it hit me. He had shaved, the beard was gone.

I was stunned by how young he looked and how nice looking I thought he was. It was like I had never seen him before. (And I probably hadn’t. With the gray beard, I had never really looked–had never let myself look.)

“And when I heard this thing, I rent my garment and my mantle, and plucked off the hair of my head and of my beard, and sat down astonied.” (The Bible)