Daddy Alone

Well, here it is Christmas Eve and I’ve just put the kids to bed. I think I have enough time to write a quick post and get myself to bed before Big St. Nick gets here.  One thing that I really cherish is having the kids Christmas morning and the whole unwrapping thing. Thankfully the Ex wife and I have been using the plan where she gets them Christmas Eve, and I get them Christmas Day. Its one of those things that I hope the kids will later in life look back on and think how normal it all was.

I apply the same rules to Christmas and I apply to everything else around here: Do what you can, don’t sweat what you can’t do.   So the presents get wrapped — badly — but they do get wrapped.  There’s no big Christmas Dinner tomorrow….Dad did all that for Thanksgiving, and he’s not killing himself again for a big meal so soon.  The Christmas cards didn’t go out….again :(   I think this year I’m going to start a "New Year’s Card" tradition instead.

And the best part of all about being a Christmas Single Dad:  Dad gets to choose what kind of drink Santa gets served.  ….And I tend to lean towards what the folks in Europe serve Santa — Alcohol.  In this house, Santa gets a nice shot of Vodka….no milk here Santa, sorry.

Merry Christmas everyone!  Happy Holidays!

During the course of my being single again, I’ve had the opportunity to read a few books on dating and relationships.  Some were helpful, so were not very helpful at all.  One book that I found to be interesting was Be Your Own Dating Service by Nina Atwood. 

It strikes me as being written with women in mind, but the items discussed in the book apply to men just as well.  Some of the examples seem more women related, but it was  written by a woman after all.  Its easy to read and flows quite well.

Ms Atwood talks about a number of topics that range from how to find your dates (as the title of the book implies), where you need to be with yourself before you start dating other people, what to do on your first three dates, what NOT to do on your first three dates, and on to the more interesting topics (to me at least) about how to spot if someone is ready or not for the kind of relationship that you are.  The analogy of North, South, East, & West-bound trains is used to identify the direction people are going in when they date. She also talks a lot about relationships, and the concepts of ‘Attachment’ and ‘Love’.  It was quite an eye-opener for me, as I saw that in some of my past relationships, I was ‘Attached’, but not really ‘In Love’ like I thought I was.

All in all its a great book and a great resource for single guys looking to find healthy relationships. I go back to my copy from time to time just to remind myself about the differences and to help figure out if my dates are heading in the right direction

Published by Henry Holt/Owl Books, $10.95 US, ISBN 0-8050-4097-8

So here I am on a Saturday night, sitting alone at home.  Kids are over at their moms for the weekend, and I’m a free man!   Trouble is, I don’t have a date….I’m alone again.  Its times like these that I start feeling depressed.  Some men would just go some place….any place….where there are people around.  I do that sometimes too, but most of the time I use my alone time for some introspection.  I think about what I can be doing to make myself better. What positive step can I make right now that’s going to be a good step in a right direction?  Maybe its a trip to the book store to look up dating books…or maybe its over to Amazon.com and see what they have.  Maybe its clean up the house, as no women would ever want to walk into my house the way it looks right now! But whatever it is, its going to be something positive that I can feel good about doing, and that has future steps along that path that will lead to one of my goals…like finding a date

Lately I’ve been thinking about an old girlfriend for some reason.  I think its the fall season that’s doing it. She used to go with me to Seahawks games all the time.  Last week one of the fellow season ticket holders in my sections asked where my wife was…that was a bit depressing to me.  You see I wanted to marry her, but she wasn’t interested, so we broke up. Those kind of thoughts got me sliding down into depression. So tonight I finally decided that I was, in fact, depressed, and needed to do something. So I started doing more push-ups and sit-ups than usual. When I do them, I focus on my loss and feeling sorry for myself, and that makes me push myself harder. Its a good way to burn off feeling sad for yourself, and its good for your physique too!  After doing all that, I felt so good that I thought it would be a good blog post here

People handle depression in different ways. For me the trick is to not dwell on where I’m at now, but to focus on what steps I’m going to take to not be here being depressed.

One aspect about being single again is that there now is no one around that can stop you from buying the things that you desire. Was your spouse stopping you from buying that horribly impractical big screen TV? Well, not any more! Did your spouse go through your closet on a regular basis to toss out the “old and frayed” clothes? (you know, the ones that you just got into shape for weekend ware?) ….Well, not any more!

Of course the down side to this is that you *do* need to show some restraint about buying all those “toys” that you always wanted. I haven’t thinned out my closet in over eight years, and what once was a walk in closet for two adults now can barely contain all my clothes (and shoes of all things. Ack!) My “nest” as one girlfriend used to call it is littered with dozens of half-completed highly impractical electronic projects (although I did finish the robots ). I have “dozens” of old and new computers in various states of running order that run my phones, host a few websites (not this one though), control my house lights, synchronize my Christmas lights, watch over my kids in the afternoon….I even have a computer that monitors the other computers.

Trouble is my place just screams that a bachelor lives here. There’s nothing fancy or stylish about it, but its got lots of manly guy stuff! ….I guess I really do miss someone telling me no to buy that, its just going to clutter up the place.

As a Single Dad, your best bet to meet women and get dates is using an online service like Match.com or Yahoo! Personals.  There are tons more, but these two are what I use.  I stay away from sites like eHarmony.com or Chemistry.com which claim that they take all sorts of parameters from you and find you women that are more compatible for you….but the one time I tried it was a dismal flop. YMMV.

The most important thing to remember about creating your profile on these sites is to be different!  There are thousands and thousands of guys on these sites that write their profiles with the idea that they should write about things they think women would find attractive…but of course the problem with that is that their profile starts to sound like every other guy on the site, and thus get skipped over quickly.  Leave out the moon-lit walks on the beach please.

Another thing to keep in mind is that women are about emotion and how someone makes them feel than they are about looking at great six-pack abs.  I wrote my profile with an eye (or ear as it were) towards evoking feelings and emotions in women.  I sat down one day and started to jot down all the things I liked about being in a loving relationship and how it made me feel…edited it down to an ‘R’ rating, and used the result. If you need an example, here is my Match.com Profile.  I’ve had great success with it over the years, and at times had to beat women off with a stick

Be sure to go in and change the Headline of the profile once in awhile….usually that puts your profile towards the top of any searches.  Over time you should refine your content to reflect what you learn as you date more women.