DATING…myself:)

Tinder.

I have wondered if I could ever sign up just for sex…when I hear a client struggle to please her boyfriend, who wants her to be “more sexually free.”

I am reminded of my fourth marriage where my husband wanted me to have sex with other men, come home and “make love” telling him he is the best lover. “In my gut” I resisted because I knew “my heart” wanted more than sex, then in my forties. And I was attracted to my husband, in love with him, not interested in other men.

Being a Marriage and Family Therapist, being aware of being triggered into some past emotional pain, I endured ten months without sex because Gregory refused, saying he was too depressed. I closed my private practice for a year to move to Venice, California to attend The Primal Center, hoping to become a certified primal therapist. We were required be in individual therapy and group therapy weekly. After six months Gregory agrees to go to therapy as a hope to save our marriage.

We had met through a personal ad in a local newspaper, The Ithaca Times. Before Gregory, I had found loving boyfriends through personal ads before the advent of cell phones and dating apps. I met interesting men on match.com and spiritaulsingels.com. that I ultimately leave, still looking for love that lasts.

After leaving Gregory, my interest in dating sites, or apps disappeared. Finally, I was happy living alone, until living with boyfriend, Steve, a past client from 2004-2005. Future boyfriends I met on the dance floor. “In my heart,” I felt I would someday be married a fifth time.

Now I recognize that healing emotionally in order to trust myself and the Design Of the Universe (DOU) brought a fifth marriage into my life. Being a lover of waterfalls, led by and shared with my best friend, Gayle, for nine years before she died of cancer in 2019 – I continued on my own to find new waterfalls using her guidebook 200 Waterfalls of Central and Western New York.

On a hot day in July of 2020, I drive to Skaneateles, NY to carry on my love affair with waterfalls, but first decide to cool off in Skaneateles Lake. While swimming laps, a man joins my swim, applying a big smile saying, “A beautiful day for a swim.” I continue swimming laps as he shares his gratefulness to swim but cannot keep up with me due to a heart operation a year earlier causing a near-death experience.

He remembers me saying, “It must feel great to be alive.” Not just okay. Or wow!

We are now together two years, since I asked Dave to spiritually marry me the day before Halloween 2020, knowing and feeling we were meant to meet while swimming, neither of us being in our hometowns!

Tender.