I started dating intentionally about a year ago. It was partly for my daughters, because it's one way of building meaningful new friendship with people who are actively seeking new friends. Because my people are all coupled. I've spent my parenting and adult life outside that club, often sadly. Disappointingly, I haven't met a high caliber of people this way. No, I've met a lot of people who like sex, a lot of people I wouldn't introduce to or even tell my friends about. I've had fun with that, but not much I can tell my kids about, when they wonder - as they frequently inquire - if I have a boyfriend yet.
Yet. Like there's a deadline. Maybe there is, in their minds. It would probably relieve them considerably that I had someone else to worry about and crash my idiosyncrasies into. It's true that I started with a genuine interest in companionship, kept an open mind about that, but mostly faded out with skepticism. I'm not entirely surprised, yet it's disappointing to consider that in nearly a year of meeting strangers none have really made the qualifying friend grade. One, actually. He's a guy I'd want on my crisis team, so to speak. And there's arguably a second rather in the wings. He texts me every week or so (texting really changed the face of dating, I suspect), fueling an intelligent and hesitant, if not normal, undemanding friendship.
What I have discovered this past year reminds me that friends and women are still two different categories for many men, and we can have fundamentally different ideas about the importance and transparency of sharing friendships with our kids. If I communicate with someone with regularity and I know I'm not going to date them, my kids will eventually know. They are teenagers, they have a sixth sense about that stuff because having friends largely defines their worlds, and more importantly they have an undying need to know that I'm not just a mom. I want them to value knowing who I am, that I make friends too, that I'm worthy of friendship. And if I do make friends with a man with kids, eventually I'm going to to want to identify that he values knowing his kids know who he is, who he presents himself to be, worthy of friendship.
And that's how a cup of tea became my retrospective but backfiring exit strategy. Several months ago I met a man who challenged every ounce of my dating sensibility. I knew it right away when he said to me wonderingly, "You're such a catch, why are you even single." Don't get me started here - that's a terrible line or thing to say even if it happens to be sincere, and I cringe whenever a man pulls this out. I knew it again months later when I agreed to meet again and witnessed such an irrational, explosive outburst that I actually feared for his well-being more than my safety and invited him to come in for a cup of tea to calm the fuck down. That should have been the end of that, but there's something else I've discovered in the past year and it's how much I veer into caretaker mode when I don't have a romantic endgame in mind. So as I have weighed the risks of being a friend to this man (who calls and texts a lot), I have encountered things like phone calls that are terminated suddenly when his children arrive and announcements that he isn't ready to introduce his kids to female friends. Okay. But we are adulting here, and I renew my wonder, why is it that so many grown adults don't give more value to their kids knowing who they are, worthy of friendship.
When my old friend sent me the letter for my daughter (the one that made me weep), he was in transit on an airplane. He was adulting sincerely and effectively to support a teenager's growth. He may have written that letter for my daughter, but he also gave a phenomenal gift to me. He showed my girl that I was worthy of his friendship and embraced the platonic companionship we had nurtured over two decades. Especially because I am single, it's something I believe daughters really need to see in their mothers.
So I made that cup of tea to be a friend. And to protect myself from being the bitch that made a volatile man leave me on the street in the dark. It worked - too well. He calmed down, left with gratitude. There's no sign of how this man - that I am most definitely not dating - values that his teenage kids know he desires or even has friendship, let alone graceful interactions with women. It might be a lackluster reason not to be a friend, but it's starting to be a very important one that emerged from that cup of tea.
