Ask Elisa Podcast

PODCAST EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Ask Elisa the Good, the Bad, and the Ick is a podcast about dating in your late 30s, 40s, and older. I’m Elisa, and I found myself unexpectedly single right before my 40th birthday. And now, with two years of dating under my belt, let’s talk about it.

Today, my guest is Morgan. Hi. Hey.

Morgan, will you please give us a quick introduction into who you are? Yeah. Hey, I’m Morgan. I’m 41 years old, and I’m a nonprofit director in the Seattle area.

When it comes to dating, I firmly believe that if you choose to date, that it should be part of your life and not your whole life. So before we talk about dating, let’s take a few minutes to share something about ourselves or our lives that’s exciting, interesting, that we’re happy about or proud of that has nothing to do with romantic relationships, because we are so much more than our love lives. Agreed.

I love this. Something interesting, I guess, about me is that I just ran my second marathon, and I beat my first marathon time by 15 minutes. So that was super exciting.

I had a great day running a marathon with my friend, and it was like one big moving celebration. That is exciting. Congratulations.

Thank you. Looking forward to the next year. So I will share that when I was a little child, I was an extraordinary swimmer instantly.

I was one of those babies who could swim. Yeah. My mom would just drop me in the water, and I would swim.

At the mommy and me swimming lessons, everybody would be like, oh my God, look at that baby. That baby can swim. Yeah.

Did you just immediately get onto your back, kind of? I have no idea. The way babies do. I don’t remember.

That makes sense. But I started synchronized swimming when I was about five, and I was super competitive. I was a hardcore synchronized swimmer.

Wow. Which they call artistic swimming now. I went to nationals when I was really young, and I quit when I was around 13.

But it was a big part of my life growing up. I missed school for it. It was a big deal.

Do you wish you were doing it now? Not to get us sidetracked? No, I do not. I still appreciate it and like to watch it when it’s on the Olympics and stuff, but I don’t. I still love the water so much.

I have to get myself into water regularly. One of my favorite things is to be soaking in a hot tub and staring out at a lake or the Puget Sound or the ocean. I call it my mermaid time, and I just need my mermaid time sometimes.

Love it. Good for you. Thank you.

The exciting thing about today’s episode is Morgan is here to talk about how Morgan makes the choice to not date, and we’re going to talk a bit about what it’s like to be single in your 40s. Let’s do it. Okay, so first just tell us a little bit about your reasons for not dating at this time in your life.

Well, short answer is I’ve discovered how enjoyable it is for me to be on my own. I really value my alone time and the chance to do all the hobbies that I enjoy, the chance to go on trips and see friends and what have you. Long answer is I’ve ended up here, I think, because of ultimately falling into a pattern of dating emotionally unavailable men.

Once I finally… After about three of those experiences, I said, you need to take a break and kind of recenter and do some work on why this situation keeps happening to you. And so I took a vow of being single, and then it just kind of morphed into here I am three years later, not having gone on dates, not really doing any online dating, and I feel like I’m thriving. So for me, it’s something that just kind of morphed into something really enjoyable that I’m really happy that I’ve found myself here and I feel really fulfilled.

You talked a little bit about the things that you’ve been doing. Can you tell me a little more detail of what your life looks like, what do you do, and what is making you so fulfilled? I have a lot of hobbies, like I said. I recently ran a marathon, so I was in a marathon training group for four months, and so I did a lot of running, met a lot of people that way.

I read for two hours every night before bed, one to two hours. I really enjoy that kind of self-care time. I take accordion lessons, which I’ve done on and off for 12 years.

That’s a really great way to both connect with my heritage and challenge myself, and it really fills my heart with light. I also have a side gig. I dog sit for quite a few different friends and families in the area, and so that takes up some time.

It’s really fun to go stay in other people’s houses and get snuggle time with their pets. And then something else I feel really fortunate that I can do is to take longer kind of solo trips. So for the past, this will be the fourth year that I’ve done this, I’ve taken three weeks off and gone to Europe.

I know it’s a privilege to be able to do that, and it’s really wonderful to have that time. Oh, and I also have been doing ballet for the past six months. I did ballet as a kiddo for 10 years, and then took a 26-year break and reconnected with it about six months ago, and it’s awesome.

So it’s like an adult ballet class? Adult ballet. Yeah, there are some folks in there who have never taken a class, and they pick it up really quickly and just really enjoy it. It’s all levels.

There are people who you can tell have danced their whole lives, and what I really love is that you don’t kind of feel the anxiety that you did as a preteen when you were either doing ballet because it’s just what you’d always done, or you had expectation maybe around it from family. Everyone there now, you can tell that they really want to be there, and they really enjoy it. And I love that.

It’s very body positive and just fun. I’ve made friends there too, and we go get gelato afterwards, and it’s super fun. Yeah.

And then something that we have in common is we have a lot of friends in common, so I know that you do spend a lot of time with friends and have friend dates all the time. We have a lot of fun, our friend group. Absolutely, we do.

So in our society, romantic relationships are kind of centered and considered important, and what kind of reaction do you get from people when you tell them you are not interested in dating, that you like being single? Yeah, a lot of people I would say are kind of taken by surprise. I think we’re getting more used to this idea of people choosing to be single, which I think is a positive thing, but I think there are folks who that concept just doesn’t really occur to them, or maybe they don’t interact with individuals who are in that situation. And so, yeah, sometimes there’s some surprise there.

Most recently, I got a reaction from someone that, I don’t know, it was really heartwarming. This individual at a business meeting asked me if I had kiddos, because I was asking him about his kids, and I said, no, no kids, never married, and he just said, good for you. And he really meant it.

He was really genuine about it, and I haven’t had a ton of reactions like that, and it really meant a lot to me. It kind of showed me like, okay, I see you. That’s good for you.

That’s great. You don’t have to do this thing that is kind of expected of you. Yeah, and it’s totally normal and understandable for people to ask, do you have kids? Are you married? That’s just kind of a thing to ask when you’re wanting to know what’s going on with somebody and wanting an update.

So it’s not a bad thing to be asked that or to ask that of people, but I did want to ask somebody once who was moving for a new job, and they were moving to another state, and I wanted to know if they were moving by themselves or if they had a whole family that was moving, and I didn’t really know how to ask it, so I asked her, well, do you have a family that’s moving with you? And she said, I am a household of one. Love that. And I was like, awesome.

I’m a household of one as well, and it felt like, oh, that is a great way to say it. So I learned from her that when I ask people now, I ask how many people in your household instead of asking like, you know, that’s a way to ask, you know, what’s your household makeup without centering romance or kids, you know, like it just lets, it leaves it for a more open ended answer and more possibilities. You ask how many in your household, as opposed to, do you have a husband? Do you have a wife? Do you have kids? You’re not highlighting what they may not have, you know, you’re not saying your response doesn’t have to be, oh, I don’t have a husband.

Oh, I don’t have kids. I’m not married. Your response can be like, I am a household of one.

I live alone. And it’s, you know, it can be a little more, it’s just a way to frame it more positively without showing like shining a light on like how they’re different supposedly from so much of the norm. It also gets at a concept I’ve been thinking about lately of, so I’m not married.

I’m technically single, but if I’m not actively dating, do I really consider myself single? It’s kind of making me think about like, what is my identity and how do I express that to people if some question like this comes up? Yeah, because single implies that you are maybe, maybe implies that you’re looking for a partner. Like you’re single and ready to mingle, right? But what if you’re like, you are solo, right, I guess maybe that’s a way to say, oh, I’m solo, which is like, oh wait, that’s a new thing. I want to start instead of saying single, you’re solo.

I’m solo. I’m flying solo. I am the pilot of my life.

Yes. And that’s good for me. The queen of my life.

Yes. I have recently, okay, because I’m doing this podcast, I’ve been listening to a lot of other podcasts about dating and relationships, about gender dynamics and about, and also books. And one of the things that’s happening now is that a lot more people are choosing to be solo and a lot of the blame is going on dating apps.

There’s like blame, like people don’t want to get married and people don’t want to have kids and like, it’s a bad thing, but I don’t, I think, you know, society shifts and morphs and, you know, there are ebbs and flows in, in family dynamics. And I think that this is just one of those times. Maybe it’s a wave of people choosing not to have partners.

And it’s the first time that people can do that because society is not requiring women to have a husband to, to do a lot of things, right? That is because of the women who fought for our rights. So our rights to have a credit card, right? To own a home. To own a home.

That’s right. You’re a homeowner. I am.

Yeah. So are you. Yeah.

I co-own though with my mom. Oh, I love that. I would do that.

If I had that opportunity. Yeah. So we are two solo women.

Yes. Who co-own property. We have two different houses on the same property.

I love that. It’s our little, uh. That’s awesome.

Little homestead. Little gift. Yeah.

Or hacienda. That’s what we call it. I, I think it’s interesting in a sociological viewpoint that this is the first time really in history where women are able to be independent and not really rely so much on men for, for their own survival, right? And that we can choose to be in a relationship based on the quality of that relationship versus what they need to provide for us.

And in a previous podcast, I talked about how men were not handling that very well. Oh yeah. I think that it’s a, it’s a tough pill for a lot of men to swallow because it’s a huge shift in our culture.

Huge. Absolutely. And men are not really raised to, to really think about all the different things that they need to bring to a relationship besides the strength and financial stability.

Right. And some cultures are still very much, you know, this is kind of like broadly speaking, but there are cultures within the United States, like certain religious cultures and stuff where the men still call all the shots or they think they call all the shots and they’re told they call all the shots. But really, usually the women are the ones doing all of the actual like labor around the home and the emotional labor and all of the emotional labor.

They are the ones who know everything that’s happening. They’re the ones who know their kid teacher’s name. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen some of those birthday.

Yeah. Those social media things where they stop men on the street and they ask them their kids birthdays or who their kids teachers are, who their kids doctors are, and they don’t know. And then the mom knows and like that should not be the case.

Like men can do better than that. You are capable. Yeah.

It’s such a tough situation because I think for our generation, for instance, if you are a man and you suddenly find yourself in the situation where you’re like, oh, people are maybe not being responsive to me in the dating world or like have given me feedback that I’m not, I guess, delivering what they need. For instance, like emotional labor, emotional support. Like I’ve been thinking about this.

Where do you start? How do we, how do we empower men around that when you weren’t raised that way? Exactly. Yeah. And you know, maybe not raised by your family, but also the cultural around you supports that.

And maybe your people, a lot of people around you are still resistant to that too. So I think that it’s, so I had, I’ve had Claudia on the podcast, one of my friends a few times. And one of the things that she said is that when she in dating apps, when she like, she’ll like respond to tell someone she’s not interested and she’ll like, she explained like the things she says in that message.

And I was like, oh, I just say something short and quick. And then she said, I kind of like modeling, you know, being, you know, how like that for men. And for me, I’m like, that’s not my responsibility.

I’m, I am not going to be teaching a man that I went on two dates with how to let, let someone down. Right. I mean, I’m kind of like, I’m a little bitter about those things.

Like I’m, it’s not our responsibility. And I, I really do think that there are plenty of resources out there. What, what we need to do, I think, is support men into using those resources and learning how to listen to the needs in front of you and respect those needs and learn and be growth minded and how you teach someone to be growth minded.

That’s, I mean, for me, that’s what I look for in a partner. Like they have to be growth minded because we’re all learning and growing. And if you are not open to that, what are you doing in your life? Like, how are you living your life? And I think that the, the men that can’t be growth minded, don’t want to be growth minded, are going to suffer because, because of this cultural shift is happening.

Yeah. Spot on. One of the other things is neither of us have kids.

Right. And a lot of times, like women not having kids is seen as like being selfish or empty somehow. When I was in my late twenties, and I think I either was about to get married or just got married.

There was an older woman that was retiring where I worked and she asked to take me out to lunch one day before she left. Where’s this going? I was like, sure. So we went to this Mexican restaurant and she, we’re just having lunch and she wants to tell me that you don’t need to have kids to live a full life.

You don’t need to have children to be fulfilled as a woman. And I was very young and I’m just like, okay, it was kind of weird. Yeah.

You were not expecting that. It’s not like it was kind of a different concept. We’ve never gone out to lunch before.

We’ve never been really friends. She probably thought there’s a young woman who is primed to hear this and needs to hear this in her life. And I don’t know if she has anyone else to tell her this.

So I’m going to take her out to lunch and tell her. Yeah. So I thank you for that to that woman, Julia.

I think it’s absolutely true as aunties, aunts, I’m Tia, Elisa to my, my kids in my life. We have important roles too. Absolutely.

We have important ways of giving love and sharing what we have to give in our communities that women who are focused on raising their kids are not able to do. And the kind of love and support we can give is sometimes, maybe more often than not, undervalued or just not really seen, I think, because it doesn’t involve, you know, having our own child, being attached to a child. I’m attached to so many little children that I love in my life.

Yeah. I call them my kids, like, even though I know they’re not with me all the time, I know they trust me. I know they come to me when they need stuff and they’re all pretty young now, but I know when they’re teenagers and they’re feeling like they can’t stay at home, they will come to me.

And I know that their parents will be very glad that they have someone to run to when they want to run away. Right. So what a gift.

Yeah. Seriously. And, and, you know, the saying, like, it takes a village.

Like we are, we’re important, but we’re part of the village. Yeah. I’m glad you said that because, um, yeah, sometimes it doesn’t totally feel that way.

Yeah. Right. It feels like we’re kind of not in the margins, but just kind of in the back or on the outside looking in.

Another thing that I see like in you is you have an amazing career as, as running, running a really complicated and important nonprofit that serves a community that absolutely needs and relies on your service and knowing that you’re, you’re the one doing, like you are taking care of, of, uh, of a community in need and you’re, and all the people who are also working to support that community and you have, that’s a way to give some, like people think like, Oh, I have, I have this love to give. I have to have a child, but there are so many ways to give love. And I think I see you do that in the work you choose.

Thank you. I really do. Um, so next week is going to be my third anniversary there, um, as a side note, and I really do love and cherish what I do there.

They’re really there. Maybe there’s been one or two, but I have, there’s, there have not been days where I have not wanted to go to work. And I just, I have these thoughts that run through my head every day that are like, this is so meaningful and it’s so fun and creative.

And I feel really lucky that I ended up here and can give so much time to the organization. I mean, I’m salaried. I probably work 60 hours a week.

I’m kind of always on, but, um, I’m really thankful that I can give, you know, my time and my love to this organization. My, my motto sometimes is short-term pain, long-term gain, because a lot of it has been building and, you know, then thriving and then, okay, what are we going to do now? Yeah. I’m really proud of you.

Thank you. And I remember when we were much younger and we were just graduating from college and you decided you wanted to get another college degree in community health. And I was thinking like, that’s, that’s kind of strange because you were coming to do another bachelor program basically.

Right. And I was like, why are you getting a second bachelor? Like that just seems strange. And then you went on to get your master’s, um, at an international program.

Yeah, I did a double master in public health in England and Poland. Just so cool. Thank you.

Yeah. Morgan is one of the coolest people you will ever meet. Oh, thank you.

And I… Thank you. Yeah. I mean it.

So I think that another thing about romance, just kind of bringing it back to romantic connections is that people kind of say like, we’re not meant to be alone. We need to have these romantic… You need, you need a partner, you need connection, you need… And I think people don’t see all the other connections we have as valuable compared to romantic connections. And that’s such a tragedy.

It is. And I, I believe there are some individuals who truly cannot fathom either being alone, meaning not having a romantic partner or actually wanting that and enjoying that. And one thing I’ve found is just, just speaking for myself, how enjoyable and fulfilling that can be to really just be in charge of my life.

Well, think about like the women who came before us who never, never could have imagined this and probably just longed for it. And there’s probably a lot of women who are in relationships who long for it as well, but are, you know, they can’t see themselves doing it. It’s too scary or, you know, it’s, it’s a lot of work.

If you, if you’ve always had a partner to, it’s a lot of work to deconstruct all of that narrative, that romantic connection, well, first of all, is necessary, but also that it needs to last forever, right? That concept of always having a, you know, you’re looking for your person, you’re looking for your forever, you know, even just in marriage till death do us part, that there’s this concept that you have to, it has to last or it’s not worth it. And I think from my experience, I’ve had two significant long-term relationships and, you know, one ended relatively amicably, like nicely, it wasn’t like a nasty divorce or anything, but that was a significant relationship and it ended. And then, and then I had a partner who was absolutely amazing and we had a beautiful connection and that ended up not working out because we just didn’t, and what I’ve said, what I have explained it as we fell out of alignment with what we wanted and what we wanted for a future.

And I think that that’s okay. And if you are in a relationship for any other reason, other than this is where you want to be, it’s okay to think about how you may leave that relationship. It’s totally okay.

Totally okay. If you are unhappy, if your partner is unhappy, like with my, with my marriage, I saw my husband at the time, incredibly unhappy and it was hard to see him that way. And I, I saw, I knew this brilliant, talented man and I, I felt like I had to let him go so that he could find himself again and thrive.

And I mean, of course I was unhappy too because it just wasn’t working and it had to end. It was the right thing to do. And with the second relationship as well, like it was just, we just came to a point where like, wow, we have to break up and I don’t know what it is about me, but neither time was I incredibly devastated.

I just, it’s just kind of who I am and actually had to research if something was wrong with me. I don’t know if I ever told you this. No, but I do.

I do stuff like that too. I like had to look up like, why am I like, what is wrong with me? Like why am I not, I don’t remember exactly what I looked up, but I looked up like, like how, how come I can get over relationships so quickly? And I thought like, I’m going to find out, this is how I’m going to find out that I’m a sociopath or something or a narcissist or something. But then it was like, you have a strong sense of self.

I was like, oh, actually it’s because I’m so amazing. Obviously. Well, I, I’ve done something similar with like when I really started to realize how much I enjoy being on my own.

I would research that because you know, you, you grow up with the expectation to want these certain things, like to want a partner and a, and a marriage and kids. And when you don’t necessarily want that, it can be kind of scary because you’re like, is something wrong with me? And obviously not, but, um, there’s a lot of work around these things, these issues that we have to do. And that work too is really fulfilling.

I think. Yeah. The stronger your confidence gets in who you are as a person, the easier it is to do things like make decisions and feel good about the decisions you make.

The easier it is to go through life and find joy in everything. Right. And to just embrace whimsy.

Right. I may or may not have said embrace whimsy before. I mean, I’d say we both do that.

Yeah. I think we’re whimsy embracers. Yeah.

No, that’s so true. I feel, um, I feel like the more I’m kind of on my own, like you said, the more I know myself, the more kind of intentional I am about everything. I moved through life and everything’s meaningful.

Everything has purpose and I get to say, you can’t get those things in relationship with other people too. No, not, of course not. Yeah.

But, um, but I, I think that, you know, when you are busy in a life with your family and building these things, maybe you have less time for the self work and to like deconstruct all of those ideas that have been social, that we’ve been socialized to believe are good and the norm. Like when, and for me, you know, a lot of people believe that, you know, you having kids is fulfilling, which I’m sure it is. Yeah.

Um, and I, I know a lot of people who have, I want to be a mother, I long to be a mother. And then I know a lot of people who are like, ew, no, I don’t want kids. I am so neutral and I’ve always been neutral.

I don’t have a strong feeling either way. I think I’m the same way. And that, that feels like, oh, that’s never represented like around us to just, well, you know, the woman is always represented as somebody who is, if they’re single, either somebody who is, can’t have kids and is dying to have kids or just loves every baby they find and just is dying for that for themselves.

Or they’re like given a baby and they’re like, ew, take this baby away from me. I don’t know what to do. They’re holding a baby in a weird way or something.

So it’s kind of like the extremes are represented. There’s like a missing piece of just the woman that is, that is, and that’s responsive to where life takes her. Did I articulate that okay? That’s responsive to the, yeah.

Instead of, instead of having this mindset of like, I’m going to have a kid, I need to have a kid. It’s more like, okay, this may or may not happen for me and I’m okay with that. Yeah.

And I mean, I guess that’s, that’s not a story, right? Like so. Yeah. Yeah.

It’s not, it’s not interesting. Maybe. Yeah.

Well, it’s uncomfortable for people, but. Every time I have taken like screenwriting classes and stuff, everybody, like the characters have to have a want and they want you to know what they want. And so this kind of like wanting to be strong and healthy individual and live my life and feel joy is not a very compelling story, I guess, for, for that kind of thing.

So we were talking about this idea of finding somebody for, to have forever. And I felt like if I didn’t, I just can never say forever with the experiences I’ve had. I remember that about you and I’ll never forget.

It was shortly after you were dating your, your last partner of how many years was it? Oh, if it was around the time when we had just started dating, it would have been in like 2016. Yeah. Yeah.

Um, and I remember, cause you know, you were excited. I was excited for you. And I said, Oh, do you see this as something long-term? And you know, I was different then I had a different kind of mindset a decade ago.

Yeah. Um, and I remember, I’ll never forget it. You said, you know, I can see, I can see myself being with him right now.

I don’t know what the future is going to hold, but I know that I want to be with him right now. And I had never heard a response like that or, or kind of had that concept explained to me. And it meant a lot to me.

It was for the time it was profound because it was, I think we’re conditioned to want to hear yes forever. I’m going to marry this person. I can, I know he’s the one, but your response was a lot more, um, I guess pragmatic and honest.

And it’s, it’s funny cause I, I guess I was also kind of afraid to like, cause I was pretty freshly divorced still. I think it hadn’t even been a year since my divorce when I got together with him. And I still look back at that time and think of how magical it was.

One of the great things about falling in love again after a divorce is it’s like I, for me, I savored every moment of it. I really, I, cause I never thought I would experience that again because I got married. So that was forever.

And also having gone through, um, you know, a rough relationship before where I, you know, I didn’t feel super cared for and I didn’t feel loved the way I wanted to be loved or I didn’t even know because I got married so young and you didn’t really know what was possible. Yeah. I just, I was, I got together with my ex husband when I was 25 and, and, and that’s just it.

I got together with him when I was 25 and just before I met him, I had remembered telling a therapist. I felt so behind at 25 because I hadn’t had any real relationships I’d had at my high school boyfriend. And then I had like one boyfriend for like three months and just some dates here and there.

Situationship. Yeah, definitely had situationships in college for sure. So I remember telling her like, I want to meet the man I marry soon at 25 so that we could date for three years, get married when we’re 28 and so we’ll be ready to have kids in our thirties.

And then I, yeah, like that is what I wanted to happen because that is what I thought needed to happen for my life to look the way it needed to look and to be accepted and validated by people. And that’s what success looks like. And so guess what I did? The next guy I dated, I met, we dated for three years, got married and we were 28.

He and I were the exact same age. And the night before the wedding, I remember thinking, well, if it doesn’t work out, we can always get a divorce. Looking back, who says that the night before their wedding, somebody who probably shouldn’t be getting married.

Right. But because what I did was what I, this is something that I have kind of thought about recently. I think that sometimes when we are, we want something, we lay out and what we want.

And then when it’s happening, we don’t, we don’t listen to our gut anymore. And so we, we manufacture what we think we want to see. And so a lot of people will be like, oh, I manifested it, but I’m like, we need to know the difference between manifesting and manufacturing.

Like I think manif manifesting is something where you are being very intuitive and you are listening to yourself and you, you are really, um, reflective in what you want in your life. I think manufacturing is a little bit more influenced by external factors or expectations around you. You have always said, this is what you wanted.

This is what you think you’re supposed to do. So you do it. And that’s completely what I did.

And I don’t regret it or anything. I learned a lot. I, I had a lovely time with so many things.

I still look back at my wedding as like the most beautiful wedding ever and love it with all my heart. So no at all hard feelings about it, but I do recognize now that I was, was just going through the motions of what I thought needed to happen. Yeah.

I was manufacturing. I like to say that I am womanifesting. You are what? Womanifesting.

Woman. Yeah. Like a woman.

Womanifesting. Yeah. Womanifesting.

There’s a distinction. What’s it called when you put a portmanteau, when you put two words together, I’m getting a blank stare from Morgan. Okay.

Not a word nerd. Got it. Yeah.

Had those experiences made me realize that, you know, it doesn’t need to be forever. It helps me now live in the moment and enjoy the moment. It helps me feel good about where I’m at and not worry about what may or may not happen in my life.

Yes. There are things that I want for myself for sure that I can stress out about sometimes, like, you know, financial security. I don’t know what millennial does not worry about that.

So I, but I try to not let it like influence my everyday and my joy and my like getting a latte if I just want a latte where I’m at and not think like, Oh, I have to get a drip coffee here or I need to go home and make a latte. You know what I mean? Like I try to not let it run my life and there are stressors all around about life in general because life is hard. It is.

And people, people think that you need to have that partner, that romantic partner to navigate life with. And a lot of the groups I see, the people I see who are married are, are pretty effing alone. Mm hmm.

They feel alone in their partnership. And they, they, I see them acting alone and not so, like, I feel like oftentimes in my friendships with people who are married that I want to jump in and support them, you know, because I see their partner, their spouse, not navigating the ups and downs of life with them. And a lot of times people say marriage is hard, marriage is hard, but life is hard.

Life is hard. And your partner shouldn’t be making that life harder. Totally agree.

Yes, there are ups and downs, of course, but there’s ups and downs in all relationships. Yep. There’s ups and downs in our relationships with ourselves.

Oh, so true. I like to say I’m in a healthy, committed relationship with myself. As a side note.

Yes. I know I, I be, if you’re not committed to yourself, then that is probably a recipe for depending so much on other people for, for validation that it must be a hard life. Yeah.

I really, this sounds cliche, but I remember, um, when I was a kid seeing a poster somewhere that said your best friend should be yourself. And I really, especially these last three years being solo, is that the term we’re going to use? Yeah. Um, I really, I feel that way.

I feel like I, I’m my best friend. I love myself a lot. It’s always a journey.

It’s, you know, it’s a, it’s an ongoing journey, but it’s really validating. And ultimately if I do sometime in the future, meet someone I want to be romantically involved with, knowing how to love myself so hard is ultimately going to make that a more fulfilling relationship. So you see it in your future? I don’t see it, but I think I like to think I’m open to it.

It’s not something I look for or right now want, but I mean, I’m only 41 who knows what the future holds. If it happens, I want it to be a by-product of a life well lived, a life of joy, a life of purpose, a life where you embrace whimsy, a life where I embrace whimsy. Yeah.

Yeah. I absolutely love that. If it happens, let it be the product, a by-product of a life well lived.

Yes. Yeah. Let it be kind of a bonus.

And I remember a few years ago, my dad said that to me because, um, we, we have ongoing conversations about this and, you know, relationships and a lot of life things. And he said once, don’t let your focus be marriage. Let it be, if it happens, a healthy relationship.

And if marriage ends up being part of that, like, let that be a by-product of a life well lived. Let it be a bonus. That’s, that’s so wise.

He’s so wise. Wow. Lucky.

My dad’s never said anything wise to me before, ever. Well, and just a couple of months ago, my dad and I were taking a walk and kind of spontaneously, he said, you know, you’ve done the right thing by not getting married. And, and what, what he was saying was by not jumping into a marriage, just cause that was kind of expected of me from society.

I think he was kind of saying, you’ve made your own decisions that are, that work for you. Good for you. When I was taking out loans for school, my dad told me, no one’s going to want to marry you with all this debt.

Thanks dad. No one asked you. Joke’s on you.

I definitely got married just a few years later. And guess what? Debt’s paid off. Yes.

Yeah girl. I got no student loans, everybody. In every episode of Ask Elisa, we take a listener question.

And so I have a question, actually, sometimes they’re questions from my social media followers. And so this is from a TikTok follower and they ask, should people wait until a divorce is final until their divorce is final before they start to date? What an interesting question. I have a personal boundary around this, which is that I will not date someone who is still divorced.

I understand. You mean still getting a divorce. Oh, sorry.

Yeah. Should I start? You’re not going to date anybody who’s ever been divorced. That’s a crazy boundary, especially at this age.

My boundary is I will not date someone who’s still married. I understand and believe that someone can be emotionally, I guess, over a relationship, but you’re still in whatever ways legally tied to this person. And I would rather go into a relationship with someone that didn’t have those complications.

And a lot of that has to do with just my experiences with, again, dating men who are emotionally unavailable for different reasons. But that’s my boundary. Yeah.

What do you think? I think that you are entitled to your boundary for sure. For myself, I will date people who are still going through a divorce. Who are still divorced.

People who are still divorced. I would. Oh, you know what’s interesting this whole episode, I didn’t mention that I currently have a boyfriend.

I all acted like I’m solo too. I just want to, I don’t, he’s going to hear this. Wait a second.

Wait a minute. Are we or aren’t we? Um, no, I am currently not single and, but I have been single in, you know, in my forties and, but I have dated, I’ve dated men who are still in the process of getting a divorce. And I think that that in itself is not enough for me to say no way I, you know, if I find somebody interesting that I would like to get to know and go on a date with or two or three to see where they’re at and, you know, and make my own call, I will.

I think that for each person, they should be able to decide for themselves whether they’re ready to date. And I, I don’t believe, I don’t believe somebody has to be fully healed. And I honestly don’t believe somebody has to be fully and completely over to start dating.

But I think that they should communicate where they’re at and if, and understand that, say, Hey, I am, you know, I want to date casually right now because I want company. I want to get, I want to get the practice in. I want to go on dates.

I want to get out of my house. Yeah. So I think, um, you know, each person can decide for themselves.

When I was just out of my relationship and starting to date in 2024, I would match with men on the dating app. And I’ve had, I had a few ask, you know, like, when was your last relationship? When did it end? And I would say, Oh, well it ended in May and it would be like September. And they are like, well, that’s, I don’t think that that is long enough.

And I won’t date anybody who hasn’t been, you know, single for this much time. And cause I don’t believe you can be over it. And I, I find that a little insulting to me, like, I mean, I think it’s fine to say I’m not comfortable dating someone that are, that they are just five months out of a relationship or four months out of a, you know, whatever they’re want to say, but I don’t want the way that they worded.

It was like, you can’t possibly be over it. And I had one person like say, however many years you were with that person, it’s this many, this many months per year is what it takes to get out until you’re ready to date again or month. Like they had a formula for it.

And I’m like that it’s so different per person that, you know, that’s just, that’s kind of silly in my mind to have to come up with a formula like that. But I do think it’s fine to say I’m not comfortable dating somebody. And that makes sense.

Like if your experience is that people you’ve dated have not been over their ex, um, but you know, you could find somebody two years out of a relationship and still not over their ex. So, um, no, the way you phrase that makes total sense. So the issue for you is, is, um, the person making a judgment that you are not ready.

Yeah. Like, like I shouldn’t be dating because I’m too new. I’m too newly out of a relationship.

Like you don’t know me. You don’t know what kind of work I’ve done. You don’t know how that relationship ended and you don’t know how much, how much work I did during the relationship or, you know, like, and a lot of times when people end relationships, they are done and they are ready.

Like I felt ready to date immediately after my divorce and immediately after this past relationship. And I, I, but I waited, I waited a few months because I thought I had to. When I met my last partner and when you, like when you asked, Oh, do you see this as a long-term thing? I, I felt like I should not have met someone this soon.

I need to date around. I need like, this is, so I was embarrassed. Like it took me a while.

Like I told him I just wanted to be friends for the first few months that we were seeing each other because I was like in denial that it was possible to meet someone because that is, it’s always, I feel like it’s kind of just a narrative. Like you need to be single for a while. You need to work on yourself.

If you’re out of a relationship that might be true for a lot of people, but it’s not true for everyone. And so when people place their narratives on me, I get a little feisty. So really it’s about each of us having our own unique boundaries, but not projecting those judgments onto other people.

I like how you phrased that. How you phrased it. Well, I phrased it.

I paraphrased it based on what you said. I like how you paraphrased it. When I tell, I tell my dating stories on TikTok and I was talking about a man that I went out with who was newly divorced and he had actually put that he was interested, not interested in like jumping into a relationship.

And at that point I was also just not like, oh, I need to find a long-term relationship or a stable relationship at this point. Cause I was pretty newly out of my relationship. And so when I told the story about this guy who was a total red flag, I called the story red flag dad.

And people are like, why are you going on a date with a man who’s not fully divorced? And the judgment was on me for going out with him. And I’m like, I went on one date with this guy, saw the red flags and told him no, thank you. Have a good, you know, like that is totally fine.

And that’s how it should be. Like you go on a date with someone like, I think a lot of times dating again, another narrative around dating is like, you have to put all this effort into it. You have to try and it’s going to be hard and it needs to be forever.

Yeah. And like, it needs to be, it needs to be, um, that you’re, you’re committing to dating. And so you’ve got to do all these things.

And really it’s like, you have control the entire time. You get to say no, thank you. At any point, you get to walk away whenever you want to.

Yeah. And just because you decide to go on a date with somebody who might like, I had a lot of judgment from a friend when I decided to go out with a guy who was newly divorced only like six months since he moved into the basement of the house where his had lived with his wife and kids because his kids, he didn’t want to leave his kids. Right.

So if you, if you move out, it can be seen as abandonment. And so instead he moved to the basement apartment. He seemed like a really cool guy, like my kind of guy.

And I’m willing to go on a date with, with this person who has this complicated life to see if, if there is anything there. And I ended up going on three dates with him. But the friend that a friend of mine was just like, there are so many red flags here.

I’m like a red, having a complicated situation in your life is not a red, red flag in and of itself. A red flag is a sign that you are, you are unsafe. A red flag is, it’s like a real, it’s like a sign for danger.

A red flag is not complication. This person was so mad that I was doing this and I’m like, first of all, it’s my choice. And at any time I’m going to say, actually, I don’t want to be involved in this situation.

And that’s what dating is, you know? And I felt like this person was completely emotionally detached from their, from their wife and ready to date. And I went on three dates with them and lovely person. And we’re, we still chat sometimes.

We still text sometimes as a friend, but I was like, Oh, actually, I don’t really feel like this is like the kind of connection for romance, but I’m happy to be friends with you. And he said, yeah, sure. And guess what? He met somebody on the apps like two weeks later and they’re still together now.

It’s just, yeah, it doesn’t hurt to give something a try. Yeah. It’s like when you’re dating, you are in control.

It’s not like just because you go on one date with somebody who has some, you know, there might be some things that you are wary about. That doesn’t mean that you’re committing to them in any way. It’s just a date.

Yeah. It’s not a big deal. Yeah.

I’m glad you have that mindset because I’m at a point where I don’t even have the energy to go on a date. Like that to me sounds awful. Cause I think like, Oh, I’d rather go to the gym or, um, I don’t know.

So I think that’s cool. And one thing, one thing about me is that I am, I’m such a lover girl. I always, I think I’m always going to want a romantic connection.

I like having that. I don’t, but I’m happy to live in the moment with it and not, I don’t need to, I mean, I used to not be that way. That’s why I think I feel like I’m successful with dating.

Not because I met somebody and I’ve been, I have a boyfriend now, but because it doesn’t run my life, I don’t get too hung up on the outcomes. The way that you can just enjoy connecting with people and not be so hung up on the outcomes can, can really make dating so much better. And for me, it’s because, like I said, I really do like having romantic connections.

I like having one in my life. And so I’m probably always going to seek it. And there may come a time in my life where, I mean, I’m sure there’ll be times where I want to take breaks if I’m single and just don’t feel like dating that’s happened before.

But usually it’s like, I’m going to take a break for like three weeks to two months. You know? Yeah. That’s a break for me.

Not three years like you, but maybe someday I’ll want three years. I can’t, I can imagine myself if I’m single and in my seventies to be like, hell no. Like that sounds exhausting.

I don’t know if I ever want to get married again. That’s not important to me. Yeah.

I’m not against it completely, but it’s not super important to me. Yeah. None of those milestones are important to me anymore.

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Thank you for listening to Ask Elisa, the good, the bad, and the ick. I’m your host, Elisa Sparkman. This episode was produced by me and a guy I met on a dating app.

Audio engineering, editing, and music by Jacob Patterson.