The Simple Secret of Being Attractive

I have spent several years now living alone. At first, I railed at the thought of it: How unfair! Who could have predicted this. Me, a former Miss Skokie contender (well, okay, but I placed fourth or fifth or somesuch), with no husband or boyfriend to exchange the midnight kiss with on New Year's Eve or the candy and flowers on Valentine's Day.

My kids are grown up and off on their own, as they should be. My family is either living somewhere else or has gone to the big kosher deli in the sky. My former husband, as so many men do once they become successful (though who would have expected it of such a seeming "true blue"), decided he would feel younger with a younger woman, now that the hard years we shared were over.

I probably get a lot of offers to go to dinner or coffees or out for a glass of wine; as many as most "Women of a Certain Age" who do not live in Boca Raton can be expected to get. But here's the problem: either I don't "click" with them or they don't "click" with me. (Have things really changed very much since our early dating years?)

For me, this is an ineffable quality: "The Click". It's not looks, really. It's who a person is--and it's a certain kind of confidence, not the narcissistic kind. Rather, it's more like this: "I like you. But I'll be fine if you don't like me."

Here is the secret I learned very recently at a Twelve-Step Meeting I've been going to for the past 35 years.
My friend's husband, hearing about my latest disappointing relationship, said: "Businessmen all know this rule
about Bankers. If you want to borrow money, the one thing is..." And I (as I have a tendency to do) finished his sentence: "You have to look like you don't need it." "No," said my friend's husband, "You have to not need it."

So, here's the thing. One way or the other you can't lose. If you don't need someone else to give you a life, you have a good life, whether that someone is in it or not. And if you attract someone because you are whole within yourself, then you have a good life and a good partner; the kind of a partner who isn't threatened by, but attracted to, a woman with a life of her own. I think it works for men this way, as well. Try it and keep me posted.

And, perhaps, the end of my marriage wasn't just my former husband's quest for the young and the beautiful.
It may have been that somewhere within those hard years, his wife got so focused on his success, his trials and tribulations, she may have lost her own good life and, thus, become someone without a life of her own.
Married or single, 25 or 65; I don't recommend it.