Look Ma, No Hands

As I sit here in hair curlers, getting prepped for this evening's date, I've decided to review a few of the suggestions I've collected from some of my more successfully coupled friends.

At the top of my list is Liz, who separated from her husband around the same time I did, but who has been seriously involved almost as long with the second man she went out with. Her advice: Become a good person. Then, guaranteed, a good person will find you.

I love it, on one hand. But then on the other, I can't help but wonder whether the converse would also be true. Because a "good man" hasn't yet found me, does that mean I'm "bad?"

Next up, my friend Casey, who was dead set on remarrying after her second divorce and sure enough has. She treated looking for a man as if she were looking for a job with the emphasis on LOOK. "There's a lot of competition out there," she'd often say, "so you got to look like a million bucks." Or in her case, make that a billion.

She's right, I suppose. But unfortunately, I don't have the time, the money, the skill, or even the interest.

Which is why I'm hoping that the way in which a model friend of mine met her husband, will happen to me. She was living in Paris then and one morning, without even brushing her teeth, she'd rushed outside to get a baguette, when voila, there in the boulangerie, standing in line behind her was...need I say more.

Granted, I'm not a model, but I definitely have other strengths which, a happily married friend who is a dean at a prestigious university insists, can work just as well for me.

If, that is, I do what his old girlfriend did. She joined Match.com and immediately pulled out all the intellectual stops, giving great thought to every email exchange, religiously doing her homework. Sure enough, she and her brain are today engaged to a Harvard professor.

Sound good? You bet. Like all my friends' advice, it's...well, advice. Whether I take it or leave it, I tip my hat and offer a hearty thank you.

The Next Round

Okay, okay. I know I've been gone, almost three months now. Just like that, poof, as if I'd given up on this whole thing, this searching seriously for a soul mate.

Not at all. It was just that my escapades with various man, dating willy-nilly this one and that, none ever evolving into so much as a passing fancy, got me wondering what was up with my inner workings.

Which in turn led to some serious investigation that earlier in the summer seemed too intimate to share. Better to stop cold, without even a simple goodbye.

Wimpy? Yes it was. Right when I was getting to the good stuff, the heart of the matter - that being my shtick - sure enough, then and there, I wimped out.

It's easy to see others' flaws, particularly those of the opposite sex. But to say, "Whoa, stop right there honey, and take a good look at yourself, blemishes and all," is another business entirely.

But I did it. And here I stand, makeup-free, ready to climb back into the ring. No running scared this time, or at least I'll try not to, when, as inevitably will be the case, I come face-to-face with the difficult task of being human.