What I Wish Someone Had Told Me About Dating After 40

Listen up, young people.

When I was in my twenties, I never thought I’d be 40. It didn’t occur to me. I was too busy drinking, rarely going to class, and chasing women.

Sadly, not too much has changed. I still keep myself occupied with drinking. I should probably take more classes focused on self-improvement, and while these days the women chase me more than the other way around, I still spend a lot of time on the pursuit.

While the game is easier now than it was twenty years ago, there’s still much to learn. Society has changed so much since then; some rules are different, but many of them have stayed the same.

Here are a few things that I wish someone had taken the time to tell me about dating in my 40s.

I used to get into crazy, over-the-top, emotionally-soaked fights with my girlfriends when I was in my twenties. She’d get mad at me about something, I would overreact, she would cry, I would cry, and we’d kiss, scream, and make absolute spectacles of ourselves.

Much of this had to do with the amount of vodka we drank that night, but more of it had to do with neither of us knowing ourselves well enough to regulate our emotions.

I met a woman recently who is 46 years old, and one would think she’d be stable enough to handle me telling her I don’t think we should move in together after going on one date. I was wrong. She blew up at me and accused me of using her and all kinds of other wild nonsense.

If I were a younger man, I would have matched her intensity and fired back with my own barrage of misguided emotion. Instead, I told her that deep down, she knew I was right. She calmed down a little, but not before getting very drunk and leaving me a voicemail so laden with vitriol I was forced to block her number.

No muss, no fuss. Onward.

I guess I didn’t have any forty-year-old friends when I was in my twenties, and I suppose my parents didn’t feel the need to delve into what sex was like in their forties…

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