FOFriend, Kara, has been divorced for years.  A lawyer, she has a 31-year-old married daughter, who lives across the country.  I ran into her at the nail salon yesterday, where we quickly caught up, as FOFs do so well. Kara’s daughter is expecting a child in the spring; she’s worked harder in the last year than she’s worked since she graduated law school (“we don’t have enough employees”), and she’s leaving in a few days on a two-week trip to Cambodia and Thailand, with a gay friend. When I asked if she’s seeing anyone, Kara shook her head and said: “I have no interest in meeting anyone. My life is full and I’d rather go away and do things with my friend.”

This is an oft-repeated FOF declaration. Many of us don’t need  a man constantly in our lives. Even when we have a partner, it’s energizing to go out with our friends, sans a man. My close FOFriend, Mary Ann, and I are going to Paris together in two weeks and can’t wait to return. The last time we visited, it was in March 1997, to celebrate my 50th birthday. I treated her and my aunt Sylvia for a long weekend. The weather was glorious.

Life can be so much fun when we “change it up.” No one does it better than FOFs. We thrive on it!

It’s always hard to fathom why some of the most determined, driven, attractive and successful women are also the neediest when it comes to men.

A FOF friend found out her (second) husband of 15 years has been a serial cheater. She’s filed for divorce but hasn’t left him and has persistently tortured herself ever since her discovery–two years ago. Intellectually, she knows his philandering is a symptom of some deep-rooted psychological problems that have absolutely nothing to do with her.  Yet, she feels demoralized and somewhat paralyzed and unable to move on. She’s afraid to leave and venture out on her own. She often talks about her unhappiness and tries to understand how be could hurt her so much.

Her husband apologizes over and over but she knows he will never change his ways. “His affairs validate him,” my friend says.

It all seems so complicated, when, in fact, it’s not. Some of us gravitate to “damaged” men, for a variety of reasons:  We think we can save them; we didn’t get enough love or validation from our fathers, so we actually feel comfortable with unloving men; put another way, we don’t feel deserving of a good man.

I have a 30-year-old friend who says she’s in love with a man who is clearly an alcoholic. He goes off without her, gets drunk and even winds up in bed with another woman. Then he tells my friend what happened, gets weepy and says he’ll stop drinking because he needs her so much. Of course, he doesn’t, and probably won’t.

Hopefully, my young friend will cut the cord and leave this man alone with his bottles and boo hoos. She’s sad now, but not as sad as she’ll be after she gives up the best years of her life.

One of the best parts of my job at FabOverFifty is meeting smart, passionate, driven, wonderful women who love to share their ideas and enthusiasms. Every week I talk to FOFs who are starting new businesses or looking for new outlets for their talents. We are a generation that doesn’t stop looking for new challenges and seeking new opportunities.

I love talking to these women, which I’ve been doing, nonstop, since dreaming up the idea for the website. Today, I chatted with FOF Shari Reihl, who recently launched a company called SugieWogie (I won’t tell you what she makes because I want you to go to her site, but trust me, it’s a cool product. Make sure to play the little animated video.)

Her dad nicknamed her "SugieWogie" when she was a young girl

 

Shari was one of the exhibitors at our recent FOF Beauty Bash and I volunteered to introduce her to retailers who might like her product. We talked for close to an hour about business, and touched, as well, on a few personal subjects (aren’t we all pros at talking about more than one thing at a time?)

Shari sent me this email soon after our conversation ended:

“I really enjoyed talking with you today.  It is wonderful to have someone that you respect to help guide you through the obstacles of being in this business!  It is not an easy process, as you know.  It is important to have a network of good loyal friends.”

Isn’t that the truth!

If you happened to read my blog entry on September 2, you’d know that my daughter, Simone, and her long-time boyfriend, Noel, went to City Hall on August 19 to be married. Since no one from our family was at the ceremony, we had a celebration this past Saturday at a wonderful Italian restaurant in lower Manhattan.

I ordered a cake from a local bakery and wanted to put a bride and groom cake topper on it, but every couple was white.  Noel isn’t white and so the groom on the cake shouldn’t be white, I thought. (Then again, my daughter wouldn’t be caught at her own wedding in a wedding dress, so the cake topper bride didn’t exactly represent her, either.)

I had a brainstorm, the results of which are shown below.

The real Simone and Noel

The cake topper version of Simone and Noel

The response was fabulous.  Everyone laughed and thought it was clever and cool, including son, Colby, who doesn’t hand out compliments freely. Everyone was, in fact, surprised that cake toppers are still traditional, since marriage is becoming less and less traditional.  “You don’t realize what an insignificant role religion and race play to many of us when it comes to choosing a partner,” Colby said.

“Of course I do,” I answered.  “Of course I do.”

P.S. Simone, “the sentimentalist,” gave the cake topper to her dad, Douglas, since he’s the family historian.