My Christmas tree. It isn’t the tree itself but the memories that each ornament brings to me as I decorate it

Of course it can. Thousands of people, millions probably do it.

A relationship build on real love can withstand anything. Think about soldiers on deployment for months or years at a time or couples where due to illness or physical problems. The live doesn’t disappear.

There are a lot of reasons why sex isn’t part of the equation. Look at Chris Reeves who played Superman. After a fall from a horse he was disabled from the neck down. His wife didn’t leave. She stayed with until his death years later.

If it is real love and the couple are committed they will find ways to make it work.

New love can be the same. Believe it or not there was a time sex before marriage was not accepted. People dated and sex didn’t happpen until the wedding night. And many of those couples stayed together for the rest of their lives.

One of the main trouble for many relationships is where one person is coercing the other to have sex as some “proof” of love. Coersion has nothing to do with love.

Yes I was thinking about that too

Yes that is what I mean. Studies show that even the suicide rate increases among people vulnerable people

So people aren’t alone for the holidays?

All of a sudden there are more responses and interest, I haven’t changed anything in my profile,

I know people get more depressed and fell lonely over the holidays. So is there some attempt to find someone perhaps just anyone so they won’t be alone?

Very true.

From my daughter’s experience with her ex he went to work everyday while she stayed home with a baby and her very sick mother-in-law who had Alzheimer’s and should have been in a home. The rest of the family left it to her to bath, change and feed her. I would not want to do what she had to do.

I recently had a man with 2 kids under the age of 8 and he said his wife died. (How can there be so many widowers on these sites?). He was looking for a new mother for his kids and thought I would be wonderful for the job.

Excuse me? In 4 years your oldest kid will be 12 and I will be 70!!!

He didn't see that as a problem.

BLOCKED him

You have a good point. I think a revolving door of mom's boyfriends is very damaging to the kids. And once an attachment has been made it is damaging to the adults too.

I did not date while my kids were at home.

Yes I can understand that. Mine live in another city so they are not underfoot. I think I would hate that. I love them and all but they have their own lives and I now have mine.

yup That is exactly how I felt.

This last one was out of my age range and younger than my kids so that was strike one. He didn’t live near me. Strike two. Lived in another country. Strike three and I told him so. He sends a message back, “Do you have kids?”

Dumber than a doorknob. And yes, I blocked him.

Over the last couple of days I have had 3 men ask me almost immediately whether I have kids.

When a person contacts me I check their profile and check if they have kids and eventually will ask how old they are. When the profile says they have kids but they don't live at home, is that because they are:

Grown and on their own?
Young and living with their mother and he only gets visitation?

I have no problems with grown and gone. Mine are grown and gone.

I do have a problem if they are young. I'm retired and I don't want to raise more kids.

So I totally understand a man that doesn't want to raise more kids either and therefore asks the question.

Research supports the belief that some men who are more interested in children than they should be (sexual abuse) specifically target single mothers. So I do find it peculiar that 3 men have contacted me and all three asked about children immediately.

Now don't jump all over this. I don't suspect every man. If I did I would not be here. But this should be a question all single mothers think about before they bring someone home to meet the kids.

If you do have questions there are websites that will help you know what to look out for.

Agreed it isn’t for everyone. I would like to see my family more often not less often.

I married a man who lived in Canada just from a different province. BIG MISTAKE. He hid so much from me even during the 2 years we lived together before we were married. Missing the holidays with my family was really hard. And it cost a few thousand to move back. But the lies and his reactions to things when they weren’t going his way were deal breakers for me.

A very costly lesson

And I like being spontaneous and LDR don’t allow for that

I have done long distance and that didn’t work well for me. I’ve also done international and that didn’t work and was totally unrealistic.

First for the long distance is contact. Phone calls add up so you better have a really good plan. Then the visits. Some men think just because they came to meet you that means you will jump into bed with them. Ummm No. you are still a stranger to me. Getting to know a person face to face is very different that emails, phone calls and Skype. I still need to find out who you are and whether what you said before matches the person in front of me. No matter how long we talked to each other meeting for the first time is a new beginning and it takes time to see who that person is. I’m not into booty calls no matter how far you travel.

Then there is an international border. If you do hit it off someone will eventually have to move. This isn’t like moving from one city to another or one province/state to another. A little something like immigration is involved. So first you take time to build the relationship but one has to move. That means leaving your family, grown kids and grandchildren if you have them.

If money for family visits is tight them you might have some difficult choices to make.

And the immigration process can take at least 2 years and often longer. If you have not retired you would also need a work visa AND a waiting job for you. Or your partner should be rich enough to support you (sponsor). For some it might mean losing their pension which means you would be entirely dependent on the other person.

And it means that if you want to try an end run around the immigration process you need to get married.

Add in the cost if moving your belongings.

And what happens if it doesn’t work out?

So I have men say they will move anywhere. Today one person thought Ottawa was in the US. As far as I know Trump has not invaded Canada and the last time the US tried that we burned down the White House.

So geography. Washington is the capital of the USA. Ottawa is the capital of Canada. We even have different flags.

So if you try international then a few months or longer to get to know one another and at least another 2 years before you can legally immigrate and be together.

Personally this is just not interesting to me at all.

Different than what?

I totally agree but writing my profile was tough. It didn’t help that some men were professing a deep abiding love for what I said. Someone said a lot of women said, “Hi”. Then I read the women’s profiles and saw some pretty smart women here.

So I wrote what was authentically me. Either they get it or they don’t. I don’t need the ones that don’t.

This is when a healthy dose of anger is justified. I’m not talking about the revenge kind of anger. That is toxic to you and everyone around you. And you could do something that makes matters worse.

There is another kind of anger, though, that is protective. It warns us away from danger. It puts up walls so that person can’t hurt us again. So we don’t keep hurting ourselves.

It involves repeating to ourselves things like:

I didn’t deserve that.
No one has the right to treat me that way.
I refuse to allow that person to take one more minute of my life.
I deserve better and I am going to find it.
In the meantime I will work to become the best me possible so I will be ready when the right person comes along.

Notice the statements are about you and how you want to be treated. They aren’t about her and they aren’t about pity me.

Make your own statements knowing you have a right to be angry and you choose to use that anger to protect yourself.

I said the JWs believe that when you are dead you are dead not burning away in some hellfire. There is nothing incorrect about what I said.

I also said that when a person states that something was hell to go through they are using the term symbolically to say it was terrible. They don’t mean they were actually on fire.

My last words on this

Older may mean she has more money to sponsor his move to another country

Mind you he doesn’t say what he means by that “elder” part - 10, 20, 30 years older? Is he looking for a mommy, a wife or a sponsor?

^ ^. ^