L A Affairs On our third date I dropped a potential deal breaker I’m

TVNET3 November 4, 2021 4:14 pm

By the time I turned 49, I hadn’t dated in 10 years. As a divorced, single mom raising a son, dating wasn’t a priority. But it was soon time to get back out there and meet someone on a dating app. Ryan, my young “neighbor husband” was burned out from fixing anything and everything around my house. He was eager to toss the baton to a permanent honey-doer. I had reason to be cautious. Santa Barbara has its benefits, like the ocean and mountains, but I’ve found that the pickings are slim in this dating pond. I settled on Bumble, OKCupid and, reluctantly, Tinder. I thought it had a reputation as a hook-up app, but Ryan explained that it used to be like that and now it’s just like all the others. “It can be totally relationshippy, ” he said. “Good, ” I thought, as Ryan fed me advice about how to word my profile. He encouraged me to write something a bit sexy, but not too much. Ugh, that sat like an uncooked biscuit in my stomach. Hard pass. Frowning at my disdain, Ryan decided to focus on my pictures. “No one reads the bio anyway, ” he said. Yeah, well, I read every word of these bios. I’m a visual person, so when I saw Brian’s photos, I was stopped in my tracks — but not in a Cinderella meets her prince courtesy of Disney kind of way. Brian looked like a young Eddie Vedder, the lead singer of Pearl Jam. I made the first move (because I’m a go-getter) and we messaged back and forth with the initial cursory questions about work, schools and hometowns. Soon we moved to texting, calling and the occasional video chat. Unlike me, Brian was painfully shy, but I didn’t mind since he lured me in with a Texas drawl. It was like warm honey mixed with steel guitar. He said I sounded like warm milk and cookies. Although Brian was seven years younger, he seemed like home. On paper, perhaps, and to outsiders, we were worlds apart. I have two degrees, while Brian earned his stripes at continuation school. (He’s smarter than most of my friends with PhDs; he was just more interested in skateboarding than homework. ) I’m an entrepreneur and he drives for FedEx: I sit and Zoom with clients all day long and try my best to fit in workouts. He gets his 10K-a-day steps in within the first few hours he’s at work and is in incredible shape without trying. As a friend in her 60s remarked, there was only one thing that mattered.“Was he patient and kind? ” Yes and yes. Brian and I didn’t meet in person for months because we were following quarantine protocol, and because his dad is considered a vulnerable population. Brian would tell me heart-melting stories about his dad, who has dementia. There was something sweet and genuine in his cadence, and in his words were empathy, kindness and patience. These were the things that mattered most my second time around the block. When we finally met, it was for a batting-cages-and-tacos date. Something clicked that day. Within a month of meeting, we spent every weekend together. All data is taken from the source: http://latimes.com Article Link: https://www.latimes.com/lifestyle/sto… #brian #newstrump #newsworld #newstodaydonaldtrump #newstodayheadlines #cnnnewstoday #

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