Dear Wayne & Tamara

A dozen years ago I wrote you about my impending divorce. You gave me great advice at the time, but now I have a different problem.
I’ve been everywhere locally, to all the dating sites and even overseas searching for nice women to date. I am told on the first or sometimes second date, there is no chance for romance. I am told we don’t click.

Some women offer to introduce me to friends. I understand they are trying to be helpful, but I feel insulted because my interest is in the person I asked out, not her friends.

I am polite and well-mannered. I have a professional career and am moderately successful. I clean up well. I have all my teeth and most of my hair. I was overweight a while after my marriage, but have trimmed up in the past year.

I only date women my age (within 6 or 7 years), but rarely get past a first date before being sent to the “friends only” category. I was married six years to the wrong person. Even though I loved her I was not the right man for her. Once I paid off her credit card debt and student loans, she divorced me.

I admit to being misguided at times, like looking for women overseas. To be honest, I am an introvert, but I have no problem with socializing one-on-one or in small groups. From friends and acquaintances I often hear, “You’re such a great guy, why don’t you have anyone?”

TREVOR

Dear Trevor

You strike us as the quintessential nice guy. There’s nothing wrong with you, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement. What is the you plus something? A passion, an interest, a hobby, a quest. Something you can share.
Some painters didn’t begin to paint until late in life. No person is guaranteed a relationship. You may not find your one for a while. It may not be fated for you. It wasn’t fated for Grandma Moses to start painting early. It wasn’t in her stars.
If we told you this person will not show up for seven or eight or 10 years, what would you do now?
Life is not a waiting room where we wait for someone to make our life what it should be. We have a friend like that. Good-looking, smart, savvy. And hopelessly in love with a woman who doesn’t love him. A woman he will never have. He’s waiting for his life to begin and it never will with her.
You have to breathe life to the fullest. Travel, scuba dive, kayak, learn to cook. Join Toastmasters. Change careers. Dive in and start doing it. Be fearless. If you feel defeated, you won’t show enough to be attractive.
We need passions in life. Sitting around and waiting for someone to show up is not an attractive quality. The more you focus on what you don’t have, the more you can’t see you are pumping out despair.
What did you tell us? You want something from them. Attractiveness. They will judge you, too. Since there is nothing wrong with your wallet or your looks, it must be your appetite for life, your awareness of life, your activities in life.
The woman you are interested in won’t be bought, she has to be won. Even if we are wrong about you, how could improving your life not make you more attractive to a woman.
If there weren’t more to this than looks and money, any two people could pair up. There has to be something inside both people that brings them together.
Let out the human being within you.
Make the most of every day you have on the planet. Don’t pick up a magazine in the waiting room of life. When that person comes along, she will be an enhancement to what you already have.

WAYNE & TAMARA