After my divorce a few years ago I decided to find out what I did wrong. How did I go from "Sweetheart, you are all I ever wanted and I want to have your babies" to "Honey, I don't love you anymore I'm leaving"?
I enrolled in a 9 week dating class, became friends with a guy who wrote a book on relationships and helped facilitate his monthly seminars, went to a couple of relationship therapists, learned about Mars and Venus, hired a relationship coach and dated as many women as I could convince to go out with me (please note I said dated, not slept with).
I enrolled in a 9 week dating class, became friends with a guy who wrote a book on relationships and helped facilitate his monthly seminars, went to a couple of relationship therapists, learned about Mars and Venus, hired a relationship coach and dated as many women as I could convince to go out with me (please note I said dated, not slept with).
Early in my educational process I realized that I had never spent any time thinking about relationships I was either playing or watching sports, building my business or having dinner parties with my friends. Typical guy stuff.
The dating class was a riot I had been separated for over a year but my divorce wasn't final yet and I wasn't interested in dating. I was talked into taking the class by the instructor who also happened to be teaching a sales class I was taking. The 9 week course was kind of a dating for dummies class. The smallest details were covered like telling the men wearing a "clean" white tee shirt was not considered dressing up and how we needed to understand what our non-negotiables were in a relationship (for instance, smoking or nagging could be a couple of things you don't want in a relationship).
One of the requirements in the class was that you go on a practice dates with your classmates. There were 25 men and 25 women so there was a good variety to choose from. My most memorable practice date was a 60 something year old widow that always wore a tennis skirt to class. Her husband had died of a heart attack a couple years before and for the first time in 40 years she was dating again.
While having a cup of coffee at a restaurant overlooking Mission Bay in San Diego we quickly established we were not compatible because of our age difference. So we just kicked back and started to talk. After a half an hour of talking about relationships and laughing a lot she leans in and signals for me to do the same thing.
She then whispers "Do you know what I really want?". She said "What I really want is for a man to take me in the bedroom, pick me up and throw me on the bed and have his way with me!"
Before I leaned in I had just taken a sip of my coffee and my finger was still hooked around the handle. Her statement so caught me by surprise that I jerked back and coffee went everywhere. We laughed so hard that my jaws hurt and she had tears streaming down her face.
Another thing we did in the class was go out 1 night every week as a group so we could get the hang of meeting people. One woman in the class was from Argentina and was into salsa dancing and set up an outing to the local Marriot where they had free salsa lessons.
Before the class started our Latin classmate was trying to teach me some basics mainly the moving of the hips thing. After 10 minutes of telling me what to do she grabbed me by the hips and tried to make them do whatever it was that she was trying to make them do. She abruptly stopped and said "No, your hips don't work right" and walked away. Unfortunately she was right.
During the class we rotated partners because they said it would make us better dancers. At the end of the class I found myself dancing with a very attractive redhead. I offered to buy her a drink, she said yes and we went over and sat down at the bar.
One of the assignments we had been working on the previous week in the dating class was to always carry a card with 10 things you like to do in your purse or in your back pocket. With this reference list at hand I would have a source of things I liked to talk about (we were warned not to talk about religion, politics or ex-lovers until about the 3rd or 4th date).
Well I had not done my homework so I suggested to my new friend that we do it together. It was a lot of fun. First I wrote something down and explained why I liked doing this and then she would write something down. After a couple of drinks we had finished our list and laughed a bunch and decided we should get together again sometime soon and we exchanged phone numbers and email addresses. (During another class we were instructed to always have ideas for dates in mind in case we met someone I hadn't had that class yet).
The next day I received an email from the lovely lady asking if I wanted to go to Santa Barbara or Palm Springs on Saturday and that she would have me back by 4:00 pm. I live in San Diego and Santa Barbara on a good day is about 4 or 5 hours north and Palm Springs is a couple of hours north east. The date would start at 10:00 am.
Being a recovering civil engineer I knew the math didn't add up (once an engineer it is hard to lose some of your analytical ways even 10 years after I stopped being an engineer). If the date started at 10 we might make it to Palm Springs and back but no way we would make a round trip to Santa Barbara in that time frame.
So I sent her an email saying I was interested but wasn't sure how we could accomplish so much in so little time. Here response "Oh, didn't I mention I own a plane?"
I pulled out her card with the list of 10 things she liked to do and not one item included flying. Turns out she loved to fly and actually flew us out to Indio which is near Palm Springs. 2 of her pilot friends flew their planes out with us and after we landed we went next door to the George Patton museum.
Funny thing is my father served under Patton during World War II and trained in Indio before heading off to the Battle of the Bulge. It was one of the coolest dates I have ever been on.
Another homework assignment had us writing a personal ad to be placed in a local newspaper or for an online dating service. After the first drafts were completed the instructor told us men write ads that make their buddies laugh and women write ads their girl friends think are sincere and filled with emotion.
Our instructor's insight proved to be quite accurate when we traded our ads with a member of the opposite sex. In fact 3 women including the widow I mentioned above asked me to help them with their ads.
What they wrote made me want to hurl my lunch but since all 3 played golf I was able to take their copy and translate their wants and desires into a sports analogy something a guy could understand much more easily than an emotional outpouring.
All 3 women had dates the next week from their ads and when I ran into the widow 2 years later she was still dating the guy she met from her first ad and no, I did not ask her if her wish had come true.
During the classes on flirting, date etiquette, STDs, who is supposed to pay for dinner and what to do on each date up to number 10 when the big pay day comes I was being hit on by the instructor. Even though she was engaged to be married to a mailman who drove a Harley and had a safe full of guns at home. Even I knew enough to stay away from that.
At some point in the class I developed an interest in one of my classmates and I could tell she liked me to. So at our graduating ceremony I asked her on a date, a real one this time and she said yes. Both of us being fully educated and certified in the process of dating things were going quite nicely until the 3rd date.
At this point we were trying to decide if it was really our 3rd date or was it our 12th date because we had met the first day of class. Want to take a guess how that turned out?
During the class I didn't discover what had gone wrong in my marriage of ten years but I did have a lot of fun. Because of my own searching for answers people often tell me that I know a lot about relationships and ask my advice on dating and matters of the heart.
A few of the things I have discovered along the way is that many of the relationship gurus are single, we usually seek advice from friends who are in the same situation as us and we tend to repeat the same mistakes over and over. I may have learned a great deal over the last few years about what I want and what I don't want but I still haven't figured it out for me.
So the best I can offer is to share a few of my experiences and hope it leads them to the next step on their path. What I feel now, and this may change tomorrow or at 11:15 this morning, is that we should have fun, not take it so seriously and find love at home first. If we don't love ourselves how can we expect someone else to?
Mark Franklin is a water and energy conservation expert who along the way has discovered how to get along with his ex-wife, love being a dad and have a little fun while he is here on this planet.
The dating class was a riot I had been separated for over a year but my divorce wasn't final yet and I wasn't interested in dating. I was talked into taking the class by the instructor who also happened to be teaching a sales class I was taking. The 9 week course was kind of a dating for dummies class. The smallest details were covered like telling the men wearing a "clean" white tee shirt was not considered dressing up and how we needed to understand what our non-negotiables were in a relationship (for instance, smoking or nagging could be a couple of things you don't want in a relationship).
One of the requirements in the class was that you go on a practice dates with your classmates. There were 25 men and 25 women so there was a good variety to choose from. My most memorable practice date was a 60 something year old widow that always wore a tennis skirt to class. Her husband had died of a heart attack a couple years before and for the first time in 40 years she was dating again.
While having a cup of coffee at a restaurant overlooking Mission Bay in San Diego we quickly established we were not compatible because of our age difference. So we just kicked back and started to talk. After a half an hour of talking about relationships and laughing a lot she leans in and signals for me to do the same thing.
She then whispers "Do you know what I really want?". She said "What I really want is for a man to take me in the bedroom, pick me up and throw me on the bed and have his way with me!"
Before I leaned in I had just taken a sip of my coffee and my finger was still hooked around the handle. Her statement so caught me by surprise that I jerked back and coffee went everywhere. We laughed so hard that my jaws hurt and she had tears streaming down her face.
Another thing we did in the class was go out 1 night every week as a group so we could get the hang of meeting people. One woman in the class was from Argentina and was into salsa dancing and set up an outing to the local Marriot where they had free salsa lessons.
Before the class started our Latin classmate was trying to teach me some basics mainly the moving of the hips thing. After 10 minutes of telling me what to do she grabbed me by the hips and tried to make them do whatever it was that she was trying to make them do. She abruptly stopped and said "No, your hips don't work right" and walked away. Unfortunately she was right.
During the class we rotated partners because they said it would make us better dancers. At the end of the class I found myself dancing with a very attractive redhead. I offered to buy her a drink, she said yes and we went over and sat down at the bar.
One of the assignments we had been working on the previous week in the dating class was to always carry a card with 10 things you like to do in your purse or in your back pocket. With this reference list at hand I would have a source of things I liked to talk about (we were warned not to talk about religion, politics or ex-lovers until about the 3rd or 4th date).
Well I had not done my homework so I suggested to my new friend that we do it together. It was a lot of fun. First I wrote something down and explained why I liked doing this and then she would write something down. After a couple of drinks we had finished our list and laughed a bunch and decided we should get together again sometime soon and we exchanged phone numbers and email addresses. (During another class we were instructed to always have ideas for dates in mind in case we met someone I hadn't had that class yet).
The next day I received an email from the lovely lady asking if I wanted to go to Santa Barbara or Palm Springs on Saturday and that she would have me back by 4:00 pm. I live in San Diego and Santa Barbara on a good day is about 4 or 5 hours north and Palm Springs is a couple of hours north east. The date would start at 10:00 am.
Being a recovering civil engineer I knew the math didn't add up (once an engineer it is hard to lose some of your analytical ways even 10 years after I stopped being an engineer). If the date started at 10 we might make it to Palm Springs and back but no way we would make a round trip to Santa Barbara in that time frame.
So I sent her an email saying I was interested but wasn't sure how we could accomplish so much in so little time. Here response "Oh, didn't I mention I own a plane?"
I pulled out her card with the list of 10 things she liked to do and not one item included flying. Turns out she loved to fly and actually flew us out to Indio which is near Palm Springs. 2 of her pilot friends flew their planes out with us and after we landed we went next door to the George Patton museum.
Funny thing is my father served under Patton during World War II and trained in Indio before heading off to the Battle of the Bulge. It was one of the coolest dates I have ever been on.
Another homework assignment had us writing a personal ad to be placed in a local newspaper or for an online dating service. After the first drafts were completed the instructor told us men write ads that make their buddies laugh and women write ads their girl friends think are sincere and filled with emotion.
Our instructor's insight proved to be quite accurate when we traded our ads with a member of the opposite sex. In fact 3 women including the widow I mentioned above asked me to help them with their ads.
What they wrote made me want to hurl my lunch but since all 3 played golf I was able to take their copy and translate their wants and desires into a sports analogy something a guy could understand much more easily than an emotional outpouring.
All 3 women had dates the next week from their ads and when I ran into the widow 2 years later she was still dating the guy she met from her first ad and no, I did not ask her if her wish had come true.
During the classes on flirting, date etiquette, STDs, who is supposed to pay for dinner and what to do on each date up to number 10 when the big pay day comes I was being hit on by the instructor. Even though she was engaged to be married to a mailman who drove a Harley and had a safe full of guns at home. Even I knew enough to stay away from that.
At some point in the class I developed an interest in one of my classmates and I could tell she liked me to. So at our graduating ceremony I asked her on a date, a real one this time and she said yes. Both of us being fully educated and certified in the process of dating things were going quite nicely until the 3rd date.
At this point we were trying to decide if it was really our 3rd date or was it our 12th date because we had met the first day of class. Want to take a guess how that turned out?
During the class I didn't discover what had gone wrong in my marriage of ten years but I did have a lot of fun. Because of my own searching for answers people often tell me that I know a lot about relationships and ask my advice on dating and matters of the heart.
A few of the things I have discovered along the way is that many of the relationship gurus are single, we usually seek advice from friends who are in the same situation as us and we tend to repeat the same mistakes over and over. I may have learned a great deal over the last few years about what I want and what I don't want but I still haven't figured it out for me.
So the best I can offer is to share a few of my experiences and hope it leads them to the next step on their path. What I feel now, and this may change tomorrow or at 11:15 this morning, is that we should have fun, not take it so seriously and find love at home first. If we don't love ourselves how can we expect someone else to?
Mark Franklin is a water and energy conservation expert who along the way has discovered how to get along with his ex-wife, love being a dad and have a little fun while he is here on this planet.
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