Jeanette and Randy
The following is the transcript of this podcast episode.:
Jodi: Jeanette, welcome! Thanks for being our guest on the podcast. I’m pleased to have you here to tell us about your date with Randy. Let’s start off with you sharing a bit about your background with us.
Jeanette: I was born in London and finished university in London. I met a Californian while I was traveling. We eventually married and moved to the States to live. We were married for about 15 years and we had a very amicable divorce. We were very good friends and he went his way and I went my way.
I soon met someone at work that I ended up living with for a period of time. It was a very unhappy relationship and I stayed in that relationship much longer than I should. I think things like “I have a big house” become the important things in life versus “Am I happy,” “Am I doing what makes me, Jeanette, happy?”
And finally, I realized I was completely unhappy. I started drinking too much. I would drink so much that I would just pass out every night and do it day, after day, after day, because I had nothing in my life, nothing in that relationship. I tried to get out of it, but I think a lot of women are in relationships where their finances are controlled by the men in the relationship and it certainly was in mine. My paycheck would come in and go into a joint bank account and be moved immediately into a bank account I had no control over because I trusted that person that he was investing for us. But I had no money, no cash.
When I brought this up, it was, “Well, you can buy anything you want. You have a credit card.” But it was a very controlling relationship. I was in this relationship for more than 20 years, very controlled. If I went to the gym, I’d always be asked, “What time are you getting home?” Sometimes I want to go to the gym and maybe go and have coffee with a friend, but I’ve been told I have to get home.
I eventually became isolated because I had to be home at a certain time and any friends I brought over, he would indicate that he didn’t like that individual. And did that person have to come over to the house? So I became more and more isolated and more and more miserable.
I realized this is not my life. This is not me. This is not what I want to do. So, I stopped drinking and I started to establish girlfriends. I started to build up my relationship with friends at the gym and I started to go over to their house, or meet them for coffee and realized that there’s a life out there that I wanted to embrace.
As I was gaining my independence and my strength, I started to go out with girlfriends and I would go out to the bars and one night I met a man. It was the first time in decades I felt like a woman again. I just felt head over heels in love with him! I thought he’d fallen head over heels in love with me too.
Jodi: At the bar…the two of you…you felt that magnetism right there?
Jeanette: Yes!
Jodi: What was it about him?
Jeanette: Well, he was physically what I find attractive in men which is slim and athletic, like me, successful, social, and outgoing. We met at the bar.
Jodi: Did you walk up to him? How did that meeting happen?
Jeanette: It was interesting because this particular bar, it’s in a very exclusive part of where I live. Affluent people hang out there and it’s a very comfortable place to go as a single woman. I went there and I was waiting for my girlfriends to show up. They were running late. It’s hard to get seats at the bar in this particular grill. So, I was waiting and there were two men sitting at the bar and one turned to me and said, “I’m leaving in a minute, but he’s staying. Why don’t you take my seat?”
I sat down next to this gentleman while I was waiting for my girlfriends to show up. We struck up a conversation. Because I had been in a relationship, so suppressed and so isolated, it was energizing to be out in a bar sitting next to an attractive man that I was immediately attracted to because I had the visual connection and then I had the intellectual connection and then the physical connection¾the feeling good about this gorgeous man paying attention to me. He gave me his number and I texted him the next day.
Jodi: You didn’t give him your number?
Jeanette: No, I never do that.
Jodi: Why don’t you do that?
Jeanette: Because I always put my safety first.
Jodi: That’s smart.
Jeanette: Yeah.
Jodi: I completely agree, as someone who was single for over two and a half decades, I was always thinking “safety first.”
Jeanette: You have to. So, he gave me his number and then I think the next day I texted him and he texted me. It was a saucy texting that went back and forth. We made a date for the next day, which happened to be Friday. He liked to dance, which is one of the things that I love to do. If a man likes to dance, that makes him very attractive to me.
We went out dancing and we probably looked like the sexiest couple on the planet because of the way we interacted. We just connected physically. During the evening, he said to me, “I bet everybody thinks that we are sleeping together tonight” because we were just so connected, which wasn’t going to happen because I had to go home.
Jodi: How did you feel when he said that to you?
Jeanette: I felt great that you’re with an individual that you have such chemistry with that everyone else sees it. You’re not doing it for show. You’re doing it because you feel that chemistry.
Jodi: Right.
Jeanette: And it’s enjoyable and it’s lovely. When you’ve been on a desert island for 20 years and someone offers you a long cold drink of water, it’s very refreshing.
Jodi: I am sure it is.
Jeanette: We had a gorgeous evening. We danced. And then, of course, he kissed well. Men that can’t kiss, you don’t want to go any further.
Jodi: That kiss tells you a lot, doesn’t it?
Jeanette: Absolutely!
Jodi: There’s so much to take away. So, did he move in for the kiss? How did that kiss come about?
Jeanette: Oh, well, and it wasn’t only that, he knew how to touch a woman’s body, to just run his hands up the side of my body. There was nothing inappropriate. It was sexy and sensual, but he wasn’t going right for the boob, or the inappropriate places. It was foreplay. What real men should know how to do, you know, not just like kiss- tongue-hand on boob. No! No. Sorry. That’s not it.
So anyway, we were physically connecting really well and then I have to go home because I’ve made up some lie. I was going to go out with my friends and I went home and felt absolutely awful having to sleep in a bed with the “Berlin Wall” running down in the middle of it. My whole body was tingling. I had nowhere to go with that energy.
We had really good texting and sexting and all of that and then we went out on another date. I could never understand why he didn’t want to meet on the main downtown avenue. We’d meet off the main drag. If we went and met in a bar, it wouldn’t be the nice joints on the avenue. It would be one or two blocks off the avenue. At the time, I was just so enthralled with him, I didn’t really think about it. And then he told me he was separated.
Jodi: But was he?
Jeanette: To a certain extent. They had sold their house and he had moved somewhere and the ex had moved in with friends. To me he was separated and he was going to follow the process…the relationship’s broken down and he would pursue a divorce.
Jodi: Did you tell him about your relationship?
Jeanette: From the beginning.
Jodi: How did he respond to that?
Jeanette: I don’t think he was particularly interested in my situation because he was getting someone who was enamored with him and would have freely given him sex. We had a lot of foreplay. I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t want sex because I did. I was ready for it. I wanted him. So, we continue to meet off-piste, so to speak, and then I started to hear, “You know, I’m separated, my wife moved out and went to live out with friends and I went into therapy.” And I’m like, “Why are you going into therapy? I thought you wanted to get a divorce.”
“Well, you know, we want to try and see if we can work it out,” and I started to realize that, “Geez, I’m just a little bit of entertainment because he’s not getting sex at home because his wife has moved out and he actually wants her back. I’m just a little bit of entertainment in the meantime until he can get his wife back!”
Jodi: What did you want out of this whole thing?
Jeanette: Oh, I would have married him. I wanted him for the rest of my life. Yeah, I went in innocent and open and loving and giving and just wanting to be with him so much. Meeting him was instrumental in me telling my partner “This is it. This is it. I am moving out.”
Jodi: Okay!
Jeanette: I moved out. I went and found an apartment and carried hardly anything with me, left a huge house on the top of the hill. It wasn’t important to me because relationships and love are important to me.
Jodi: Randy awoke all of that in you?
Jeanette: Yes.
Jodi: He was the catalysts for you to get on with your life?
Jeanette: Exactly! I saw him on the avenue one day and I said, “I have to tell you, Randy…”
Jodi: Was he alone? Or was he with his wife?
Jeanette: I’d seen him with his wife, but one time I saw him alone on the avenue. He was extremely nervous seeing me because he has his wedding ring back on.
I said, “I just have to tell you, thank you for helping me get out of that relationship.” I took the higher road. I didn’t want to be “Well, you just used me!”
Since I’ve been single, I’ve probably met 400 men. You know, the ones I don’t like, I just will say, “It’s so nice meeting you, but thank you very much. I don’t think we have anything in common.” I’m upright and I’m truthful and I have found the ones I like and they’re few. Maybe, you know, you start thinking you having a relationship with them. They just got separated from their wife, they’re horny, they want someone that’s pretty decent and they don’t need a brown paper bag over her head for sex.
And when you think you’re going into a relationship and they haven’t got their sex yet, and you’re going, “Well, you kind of got to get the brain first, then you get the heart, then you get other parts of the body,” they just vanish. They don’t have the balls to say, “You know what? I don’t think we’re going to click,” and be nice and terminate the relationship, which is what I’ve always tried to do.
Jodi: Often I found that there are a lot of men who are still healing from those previous relationships who are just going after one or two things. But they have to get through their mourning and also fulfill their needs, as you spoke about.
Jeanette: Yes.
Jodi: And then after that’s done, and they get to a different place, they stop running away and they are more likely to be open to actually being in a meaningful relationship. So, it’s about timing.
Jeanette: It is about timing.
Jodi: There are so many men out there, especially ones who are separated and recently divorced, who run for the hills when commitment is even muttered.
Jeanette: I can totally understand. When you know you want a relationship, you just have to be resilient, as I mentioned. I’ve gone on 400 plus dates. Most times I will have 45 minutes of interesting conversation. I’ll go to a place I haven’t been to before. I’m staying alive. I’m living life and it’s much better than staying at home having that third glass of wine and getting depressed.
Jodi: It is.
Jeanette: I’ve met some very nice men. I may not be physically attracted to them, but some of them have been very pleasant. I do online dating because there’s no other way to meet single men. Everybody I know is in a relationship or married. Most of them are miserable, but they don’t have the tenacity that I have to get out of their misery and enjoy their own life and enjoy it that you can be happy as a single person.
Jodi: Yes, you can, very happy.
Jeanette: Yeah. Yes, it’s nice to have a lovely partner, but it’s not lovely to have a horrible, miserable partnership. Knowing that, I’m very picky…the other thing is, make sure the guy is either widowed or divorced.
Don’t go for separated guy. He usually wants his wife back because she’s kicked him out and it’s hard because the statistics are against us. Go for the guys that left the relationship, versus they were left. Guys that were left are in a daze. They don’t know how to live. So those are some of the lessons that I’ve learned from my journey of being single in my 60s.
Jodi: That one date, that one meeting, changed your life forever.
Jeanette: It did. So, I look at it positively. Was I sad? Yes, because I really was attracted to him. But, I will not carry bitterness.
Jodi: Thank you very much for being on the podcast.
Jeanette: My pleasure.
