friends
Would you want to spend time with… you? That’s a strange question, isn’t it? But I’m serious. The way you present yourself when you sit down for coffee at the local coffee shop or the way you introduce yourself to a possible love interest; would you look forward to hearing what you had to say? Let’s look at this.
I spend time with lots of single women over sixty and one thing I can tell you about us women, single or married, is that as we age, we get a little grouchy (the same goes for men but I don’t care about them right now). Let tell you the things we gripe about immediately when we sit down to a table of, well, anyone who will listen: the weather, the heat, the sore ankle (knee, hip, elbow, foot, shoulder, wrist, neck), what’s on the menu that causes gas, bloating, heartburn, acid reflux, diarrhea, constipation, irritable bowel syndrome, inflammation of anything, swelling of anything, insomnia, and general pain. And, we can’t stay too late because we have to get home before dark because we can’t see to drive in the dark. The humidity makes my hair frizzy. The humidity makes my hair flat. The humidity makes my feel swell. I can’t sit here at this high top because it hearts my knees. The air conditioning is blowing on my neck. It’s too cold. It’s too hot in here.
This is all before the first glass of water has been served! You think I’m kidding: I am not. I have heard every one of these complaints when women have just arrived at the table to sit down. Who wouldn’t to spend time with that? I wouldn’t. I don’t. I don’t want to spend time with that woman and I don’t want to invite her to another opportunity to waste my time with her moaning! I just don’t.
Here’s the thing, most women who hit the ground running with this dialogue don’t even know they are doing it. They just moan on and on and wonder why their phones aren’t ringing off the hook (that’s an old fashioned expression, isn’t it?) with invitations to more get togethers. Well, wonder no more, it’s because that’s not fun to be around. That isn’t happy one bit. And, why would I want to be around that again?
Guess what, everything we just said as we strolled up to the table is true. Everything does hurt and it is hot outside and our hair is a collective mess, but, no one wants to hear that. No one cares, at least no one cares right off the bat.
I don’t want to talk to that woman and neither do you and neither do any men who she is considering for a relationship. And, I am not saying we have to be fake. That’s not the message either. Here is the message: if you want to continue to be social and active, if you want people to invite you to join them for various outings, if you want to be asked on a date, you need to present yourself in a way that makes them want you around.
I am working in my Sisters Program on this very topic and I am working with a couple of clients in the WingWoman program on the same. I think it is making a difference in how these woman are being perceived and will continue to make a difference as they work on creating m ore and more relationships.
In order to remain socially active, we must each put our best foot forward. We must be women who others enjoy spending time with and with whom others want to engage.
So, for the rest of the month and into September I am going to be focusing on how we want to present ourselves to others and what we can do, how we can reframe our conversation, to make others want to spend more and more time with us. So, I go back to my original question: would you want to spend time with…you?
Read MoreI was having a cocktail with my friend Bart after returning from the holidays, and we were just rehashing our past couple of weeks and talking about what we each have to come in the months ahead. As we were clinking our glasses to the new year, I said, “You saved my life last year.” I meant it. I know it sounds dramatic, but he really had saved my life: he was the person who swept me up when I was a puddle on the floor. If you have been through a divorce you know what I am talking about. Or if you have been through any life-altering tragedy, you know.
He was the friend who dropped everything when I called sobbing and listened while I droned on and on about the daily issues I was facing as my 30-year marriage was collapsing around me. He was also the friend who told me I was wrong when I was wrong (which did not even happen one time, I must say).
Then I started thinking about other friends who, whether they knew it or not, had been a bridge for me to cross from one day to the next day when I wasn’t sure I would make it. It may sound dramatic, but if you have been there, you know. Each and every one was my lifesaver on one or more days. Whether it was a friend who told me he was proud of me or a couple who invited me over for Tuesday dinner, those have been as important to my forward motion as attorneys and accountants.
So my charge to anyone reading this is to remember to be a friend. That’s it, just be a good friend. Easy right? You never know what’s going on behind the scenes in someone’s life.
Read MoreAs single women, we know the importance of friendship. For many of us, our friendships are our primary relationships: we have family and we have friends. That’s it, that’s everything. So, it’s important to be a good friend. But recently I was faced with the fact that I hadn’t been as good a friend as I could have been to a couple of my besties and it made me mad at myself.
For the last 3 to 5 years I was the one who was dealing with something: I was moving out, I was leaving my husband, I was waiting for the divorce to become final, I was moving into my own place. Me, me, me. Honestly, I have never been this interesting in my life! But, what happened was that I became the topic, always, and I got used to it. I got used to feeling like my life was way worse than any of my friends. I was the story, not them, and I became indifferent to what was going on in their lives. I hate to even admit it.
Recently it came to my attention that plenty of my friends were going through transitions, too, and I had stopped being sensitive to that. I had become so used to being the one, the one who needed support. The one who needed a shoulder to cry on. The one who was putting on a brave face through this tough time in her life. That became my identity and my story. And, really, I am sick of being that woman.
So, friends of Paula, look out. I am putting all my effort into being the friend who I haven’t been over the last few years. I am at the other end of the phone just waiting to hear from you. Wait, I’m not waiting for you to call, I am calling you. I want you to get yourselves all worked up about something so I can talk you down. Just kidding.
I am not kidding about being a good friend, though. I want to get better at it and I want you to get better at it, too. As single women, our friendships are everything and those relationships need to be nurtured constantly. Our friendships are not static, but a dynamic, living piece of our lives that we want to remain solid as we change and age.
I hope this spurs you on to think about your friendships and what kind of friend you are. The good news is that you can change how you are as a friend at any time, so give yourself an assessment and if you need to, do better. Just be a better friend.
Read MoreAging isn’t for wimps, is it? And, there are times when it seems that as a single woman I am falling apart without a support system. It’s easy to have a pity party, isn’t it? But, if you need a pick-me-up just look around you to feel pride. Look at the people who you have helped, the people you have raised, the people you have lifted up in your world and I don’t care who you are, you will swell up and send that pity party packing.
I was at an event this week to honor my uncle. When we were assembled to take a family photo, I thought, “Who would have ever imagined the paths that our lives would take and the families that we built around us? Who would have thought all of this would be possible nearly forty years ago when our lives looked pretty bleak?”
My uncle and I both lost our parents in our twenties (my mother was his sister). He lost his wife to cancer in his early forties, just one month after cancer took my mother. I can remember being at my aunt’s funeral and feeling like the sky was falling. We were a couple of sad sacks, and we were the last ones standing in our little family. Mark was left with a six-year-old daughter to raise. We had both had a lot to deal with in each of our short lives.
My uncle remarried and has lived happily ever after. And, while my marriage wasn’t a happily ever after situation, I have three wonderful adult children who are proof that I did something good.
Now, here we were at a photo-op, my uncle and his wife, his daughter, their grandchildren, and me with one of my sons. This was our family that he and I could never have imagined all those years ago. This is the family that we both wish our mothers could have known. For me, it was a moment. I felt so much pride, even though nothing was about me that day. I just kept thinking about where we came from and where we are now.
So, again, I say that aging isn’t for wimps, and sometimes it feels like the Titanic. But once in a while, you get a glimpse of what your life has been all about and I can’t imagine even one of you not being able to look back at your lives and think about what you have accomplished and the people you have helped or nurtured along the way. And, again I say, just look around you to feel pride.
Read More
Being a newly single woman in my sixties leaves me a little untethered. What I mean is that I don’t feel anchored, I don’t feel like I am the center of anything any longer. I don’t know where I belong, where I fit in whether it is with friends or out and about where it seems that everyone is a couple.
When I was married, I knew that I was the tent pole of the family. All my children are adults now and are living coast-to-coast. I love that. I get to visit really fun cities and spend time with my children. What could be better?
But, I always knew that I was the center of the family functions, the family issues, the family travel, the family holidays. I was the facilitator. When someone was graduating, I pulled the travel together for the siblings so we would all be there. For the holidays, I made the arrangements for what we were doing. Travel? Here are your tickets and here is the hotel reservation and this is when we will meet. I know it sounds crazy but I can even picture myself standing in my driveway, the driveway to our family home, while the kids are pulling in from a long distance drive, or from being picked up at the airport. That was where I stood 100 times saying hello or goodbye or Merry Christmas.
Now, I am in a small apartment. Don’t get me wrong, I love it. But, I am no longer the tent pole, or maybe, there just isn’t a tent. And, I can feel that very strongly. I wasn’t able to verbalize it for a while but something was off, and it was not about the divorce or anything about my day-to-day life. It is just under the surface. I am not unhinged, just at loose ends a little.
My Friends are the Best
The other piece to this is that I have lots of wonderful friends who include me in anything and everything. However, I spend all of my time with couples. Most of my friends are married, of course, they are. I was married for all of the years that we have been friends. We have traveled together. We have spent holidays together. Our children grew up together. I love spending time with them but when the evening is over, I go back to my apartment and they go home. I don’t feel like a whole team. They are still the tent poles of their families. And when it is a holiday, I am either on my own or I am the person they feel sorry for so they invite me to join them. So nice, but I am used to being on the other side of that.
So, this is not woe is me: far from it. I am a happy girl. But I need to find that tethered feeling again. I am looking for something that I can hang my hat on as I move forward in this chapter of my life. I know I will, but if you have any suggestions…
Read More
Search through my blog posts