Okay, I started with Facebook, with an ad for seniors who want to date. It led to a website where I would have to pay money so I quit filling in my information there.
Then Helen remembered a site that she thought might be solely for non-heterosexual people. It’s called Plenty of Fish. We looked it up and it turned out to be both free and quite comprehensive. Not only is it for all types and all ages, but it gives lots of advice on how to create your profile, what to do on the first date, what not to talk about, etc.
I signed up and had four responses in less than 24 hours. Exciting!
Today is Mike’s last day until April 19th. We packed a lot in today since our lives overlap so much with both Landmark and Inclusion. However busy we needed to be, today’s activities included checking out the responses that came through this morning!
Before you know it I was “chatting” with a man who lives in Hamilton and is originally from Iraq. I am not a very fast typist when it comes to chatting and so I happily encouraged Mike to do the messaging. Once again, within minutes, I was pushing his boundaries, and in some senses he was pushing mine. On the one hand I was asking his advice on how I should respond. On the other he jumped in at least once to answer the guy’s comments before I had said anything. This led to a very productive conversation about what is weird and what is too much and the value to me of having opportunities to mix friendship, experience and support. Among other things I realized this morning that such boundary melding sometimes actually gives me more safety, not less, and it certainly gives me valuable insight into the worlds of younger people, walking people, and just simply people who get to see parts of the world that I will never see.
Anyways, I now have a coffee date for tomorrow morning. We are going to go to the Yalla Café. Not only do I feel welcome and comfortable there, but Helen and Michel, the café owners and operators, love me and will give me a very good perspective on how this new guy is as a potential relationship. If anything, Michel may be somewhat paternalistic and that at least will be funny.
It’s all very different from any time I’ve tried dating before. It’s funny but this thing about expressing myself with fewer inhibitions has really shifted my world and its possibilities.
I will, of course, write a story about how it goes. Now it is time to sleep.
Showing posts with label dating. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dating. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Sunday, April 3, 2011
April 3, 2011
A friend once told me that in the world of astrologers when Mercury is in retrograde (which means that it appears to the naked eye to be travelling backwards) all kinds of difficulties in the area of communication show up. I’ll bet if I were to check – which I’m not going to – Mercury has been in retrograde for a while now! Tonight my computer just stopped dead twice. Earlier this week I have been hassling with two of the City Team members, and other stuff has been breaking down or messing up, like the car door switch not working.
Just the same, aside from the pain being pretty bad all week, the most recent weeks of my life have been very powerful. For example, tonight on the way home from Newmarket, and while getting caught in a snowstorm, and while my hips and feet were tired and starting to hurt, Mike and I still had a very creative conversation around renaming our peace/Inclusion organization and around structuring it, resourcing it, etc.
My capacity to express myself is clearly shifting. I can see a kind of progression from black and white to shades of gray to colours breaking out. I find myself with the ability to experience compassion and to experience all sorts of things without needing to severely judge. I find myself laughing, and even genuinely being funny sometimes.
I am in the midst of a Landmark seminar called Sex and Intimacy. I came to it very reluctantly and mostly because I’ve been complaining for years that I don’t have a sexual partner and certainly not a lover. It is extremely ironic that I, who is absent of willing partners to support me to have a sexual expression, have been avidly sought out this last year by people who want to know more about sexuality and the experience of being physically limited in mobility. I am sure this has lots to do with the play – the Book of Judith. But even here, expression is breaking out. When I was interviewed for the Trillium funding research project on personal assistance and supporting sexual expression, I was asked very powerful questions about the nature of personal assistance and what it is like to be assisted. I felt genuinely free and grounded in answering these questions and left one of the interviewers moved to tears. I was clearly in the zone of my personal gifts.
It is emerging in the Sex and Intimacy seminar that one of my major blocks has been what we call in Landmark a winning formula. It works for me to be a strategist who builds my efforts on eliminating the likelihood of failure. In other words I always have at least one back up plan and often two in case something is not working out in my life. This way of thinking is very helpful for dealing with issues like staff people not showing up because they got ill overnight or breakdowns in my wheelchair, my car or my own body. However, it is from such a world view what clearly shows up for me is failure. In other words, when you first buy a Chevrolet, all you see is Chevrolets, or when you first find out you’re pregnant, suddenly you are surrounded by strollers. I have been causing myself to experience failure in the area of my sexual expression.
So I have decided to play a game with myself. I am going to start dating again. In fact, I promised to have one date this week. Anybody know of anybody I could go on a coffee date with??? Helen came up with a brilliant idea that if the date goes well, no problem, but if the guy turns out to be boring or annoying then I can write a story about it in my blog. Either way, it gets to be expression and I get out of the failure loop.
It also solves a problem of what to keep writing about in this blog. I do not believe I can get back to the once a day schedule, but I believe I can get this out twice a week.
Anyways, that’s it for now. I am going to bed.
Just the same, aside from the pain being pretty bad all week, the most recent weeks of my life have been very powerful. For example, tonight on the way home from Newmarket, and while getting caught in a snowstorm, and while my hips and feet were tired and starting to hurt, Mike and I still had a very creative conversation around renaming our peace/Inclusion organization and around structuring it, resourcing it, etc.
My capacity to express myself is clearly shifting. I can see a kind of progression from black and white to shades of gray to colours breaking out. I find myself with the ability to experience compassion and to experience all sorts of things without needing to severely judge. I find myself laughing, and even genuinely being funny sometimes.
I am in the midst of a Landmark seminar called Sex and Intimacy. I came to it very reluctantly and mostly because I’ve been complaining for years that I don’t have a sexual partner and certainly not a lover. It is extremely ironic that I, who is absent of willing partners to support me to have a sexual expression, have been avidly sought out this last year by people who want to know more about sexuality and the experience of being physically limited in mobility. I am sure this has lots to do with the play – the Book of Judith. But even here, expression is breaking out. When I was interviewed for the Trillium funding research project on personal assistance and supporting sexual expression, I was asked very powerful questions about the nature of personal assistance and what it is like to be assisted. I felt genuinely free and grounded in answering these questions and left one of the interviewers moved to tears. I was clearly in the zone of my personal gifts.
It is emerging in the Sex and Intimacy seminar that one of my major blocks has been what we call in Landmark a winning formula. It works for me to be a strategist who builds my efforts on eliminating the likelihood of failure. In other words I always have at least one back up plan and often two in case something is not working out in my life. This way of thinking is very helpful for dealing with issues like staff people not showing up because they got ill overnight or breakdowns in my wheelchair, my car or my own body. However, it is from such a world view what clearly shows up for me is failure. In other words, when you first buy a Chevrolet, all you see is Chevrolets, or when you first find out you’re pregnant, suddenly you are surrounded by strollers. I have been causing myself to experience failure in the area of my sexual expression.
So I have decided to play a game with myself. I am going to start dating again. In fact, I promised to have one date this week. Anybody know of anybody I could go on a coffee date with??? Helen came up with a brilliant idea that if the date goes well, no problem, but if the guy turns out to be boring or annoying then I can write a story about it in my blog. Either way, it gets to be expression and I get out of the failure loop.
It also solves a problem of what to keep writing about in this blog. I do not believe I can get back to the once a day schedule, but I believe I can get this out twice a week.
Anyways, that’s it for now. I am going to bed.
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