Thoughts on love and jackets

So I've thrown my hat into the dating ring again. It is hard to tell when one is "ready" to date again after being in a relationship, but my life seems so much the same now as when I was in the long distance relationship, I feel ready. It seems callous to say this, but, having been on both sides of it now, it is easier to disengage from the relationship when one is the dumper instead of the dumpee. A lot easier.


20 years ago, heck, 10 years ago, I would never have predicted that I'd be in my mid 40's pondering on what love is. I always assumed I'd be like my parents, til death do us part, etc. And I'm not writing today to boo-hoo myself on this. I feel like I'm as engaged in life as I've ever been, and am looking forward to the future.


But I wonder. I mean I have my list of things that I'd like my partner to have, and it's a lot of the characteristics that I have (no surprise there). I assume I'll end up with someone who has been married before, I can't see training a newbie in his 40's. I also figured he'd have kids, although this isn't a deal breaker. So I'm looking for someone like me.


Or am I? I read something once that resonated with me that went something like, we are attracted to people who have what we feel we lack. We fall in love with people who are examples of things that, if we had this thing about ourselves that we wanted to be like, they show us that. That is a clunky sentence, but there you go. So the trick is to get people together whose deficits cancel each other out?


Then there's chemistry. That elusive something that absolutely must be there to progress from friend to partner. Undefinable, hard to quantify, unpredictable even, but necessary.


I went on a coffee date yesterday, and I likened this process (online dating) to running outside in a hailstorm for me. I can do it for a short time, then I gotta come inside. The person I met yesterday was very nice, we have quite a bit in common and I'm interested to see where it goes. Stay tuned.


And jackets. I picked out a wool jacket yesterday (look at yesterday's post for details), and I'm all excited now to get it. It's not just that it will be perfect for much of Colorado's winters, not just that it will look good with my hand-knit accessories, not just that it has a high degree of built-in coolness because it's from Bemidji, MN (and thus is the real deal). It's that my brother and SIL thought to buy me this. Gestures like this remind me how much I am loved, and how much my fam means to me. I will post pictures when I get it.