By 40, Things Become Much Clearer

I'll say one thing - it's good to be at an age when reality is making itself very obvious in people's lives.

I mean, when I was in first year university and living away from home for the very first time, and tasting that blissful freedom of thought and of action, the men around me were in their early 20s, and like me, they had their whole lives in front of them.

Unencumbered by belongings or debt, and the majority of us still child-free at that point, College and University days were so full of promise and dreams, experiencing joy with friends and lovers, and seemingly only dotted with heartbreak and hard work to mire the otherwise perfect surface.

The men I looked at had so much "Potential", and while I had hated having that label applied to me as a child, I couldn't help but apply it to the ones around me as well. I couldn't help but look into their futures and dream a little for them. That's what life's like when you're 20.

And sure, it was great, but now that I'm closer to mid-life, I'm learning to put value on a man's "current" (position/mindset/values/whatever) as a large indicator of his "future" and the lessons I'm learning now are much easier to read and deal with in reality.

A Second Evening With The Dusty Ex

Last night I went to a small-venue rock concert with the Dusty Ex. This was the result of our first evening re-connecting out of the blue about a month ago, and plans having been made that night when talking about our mutual need to get out a bit more this spring.

Before we went to the concert, however, we chatted for a while at his place, smoked a small joint, and generally laughed and talked about life.

After only two evenings of chatting with him, it's very clear that although our paths have crossed, he's very unsure of his direction in life and has been weighing a thousand different scenarios in his head over the past year at the very least. He's also in a semi-stable financial position right now, but the future doesn't look very bright and he doesn't seem to have any real thought about how to mitigate the damage.

And, since I really want to be with a guy who has a strong sense of purpose and direction and a solid grip on financial matters, it inspires me to continue collecting quarters and filling my social time with my Mantris and my Friendtris.

Thankfully, he hasn't brought up any kind of "talk" as to what these meetings have been, other than general re-connection with someone from our 15+ yr past. But knowing that I left him and it was devastating for him emotionally, and that the woman he ended up marrying years later only recently left him (a year ago? not sure), I know he's in an emotionally vulnerable situation.

Sounds like a(nother) man who needs man friends around him. I'll definitely be letting him do that by simply not being available. Easy to do after only a couple of times seeing each other.

What's The Difference Between 2.25 Man and 3.5 Man?

As I think about my own Mantris, and how to decide when a man moves from Quarter to Half to Whole to more, there's a lot that I can turn to The Four Man Plan book for, on its own, and that's great.

I'm finding that I'm struggling a bit with the 2.25 Man vs the 3.5 Man internally, even after having read the book a few times over.

So, this morning I pulled out the book again and went to the chapter about the 3.5 Man, and read what Cindy Lu's definition of the man was.

In short, without mentioning marriage or engagement or anything, there's a level of monogamous commitment on both sides of the relationship with a 3.5 Man.  A 2.25 Man, on the other hand, is a Plan Man that a 4MPer is sleeping with, yes, and monogamous with from her side, but there is no guarantee nor verbal commitment from the Plan Man's side that he, too, is being monogamous.

And of course, since according to The Four Man Plan structure, we women are not to initiate "the talk", we're also encouraged to continue keeping our Mantris filled even if we have a 2.25 man, up until the point that he initiates "the talk", or until we find that the relationship fades and another blossoms with more promise before us.

Shouldn't A 3.5 Man Commit To Engagement?

This is the thought that is going through my mind that I'm trying to reconcile in some way.

For me, it's been super easy to find a guy who wants to be in a monogamous relationship with me, but those ones that want to jump into them early on (ie: he asks to go from a Whole Man to a 3.5 Man in one fell swoop) don't tend to want to do it for healthy reasons.

This one realization makes me want to treat a 3.5 man like a marriage proposal instead of just a "commit to me, I'll commit to you, and let's see if this will work" thing.   Meaning, up until the point that we actually know that we mesh well enough to get engaged and plan our futures together both emotionally and financially, a Plan Man can get to a 2.25 status at maximum, and while I will agree to sexual fidelity, the 2.25 status is a limited time offer and either progresses to 3.5 or goes to zero.  Within what length of time?  I don't know.

Six months?  At my age, that should be enough time once we've entered into the "I won't let anyone else touch me under my clothes, just you" sexualized 2.25 phase of the game - and if a guy isn't ready to commit to more by that time, I'll need to continue with the other men on my Mantris, probably having to ramp up on getting new quarters and focusing my attention ahead and moving on, so I can squeeze him out of the Mantris completely.

At any rate, I guess I have to think about how to communicate this expectation - but not yet, since I'm not at that point, thankfully!

Filling My "Four Man Plan" Mantris

I've decided to jump on this Four Man Plan bandwagon, and have signed up for some online dating sites, and have some conversations going on there, but when I read the Four Man Plan forum and see other people starting out with week one, I feel like I'm way behind, and way slow compared to them.

Some of them seem to be able to put 10 Plan Men onto their graphs within the first week, and I've only managed two!

I think my challenge is that right now I feel like I'm in a "waiting" phase in my life.

I don't have a normal J.O.B. through which to get exposure to socialization (I am a self-employed writer), and a hobby that used to consume a large portion of my life and thought time has been put by the wayside lately, and I haven't quite found that "new thing" yet to dive into.

And as a "mesovert" (one who vascillates between introvert and extrovert) I have kept only a small group of friends because my overall social needs are low. Being a happy person who believes in the Law of Allowing, I can be happy alone or with others, after all. But that doesn't help in terms of finding new potentials for dating and for a long term relationship.

I have to keep telling myself that getting involved in a bunch of new social groups is ultimately the best choice for me right now, and the dates will flow along naturally. I'm an athletic, attractive, single, happy, mid-30s woman without children... the only thing that is missing in my life right now to fill the mantris is the social connections.

So part of my building my mantris for the first while, ultimately, is to discuss what I'm doing to increase my socialization exposure in the world.

So on that note, I've spent some time thinking, with the Law of Attraction and The Secret as a fundamental basic portion of the thought process, about what my life would be like if it were PERFECT.

Not saying we ever GET there, but the aspiration towards the eternally blissful and energetic state is a noble one, in my mind.

I've come to terms with the fact that there are some people who thrive on teaching other people what they've learned, and then there are people who thrive on learning what other people have to teach. I'm sure there are people who fall into other categories, but I'm looking at the contrast of my roommate (who is my also adult brother) and myself in this example, where he's the teacher, and I'm the student.

Not that he's MY teacher, or that I'm HIS student... but when we talk about what inspires us and what excites us, he often talks about being out in front of other people and sharing his knowledge and helping others along their path. For me, however, I am excited by the thought of learning and understanding the various ideas and structures around me, and exploring the human emotional connection to the ideas and philosophies and rules. If someone wants to talk with me about my observations, I'm always up for a conversation, but generally I'm more interested in exploring and learning and understanding and asking questions.

With this realization that I am an eternal student, I've begun to refer to myself as a wide-eyed student of the world, and have begun to look around the world with a student's eyes instead of worrying about student equaling "child" in some way.

Allowing myself to be a student, I am looking around my local area for opportunities to learn. And being child-free but believing that children need outside-the-family positive influences just as much as they need loving parents, my eyes are heading towards sports.

Every organized gathering needs people to fulfill different functions, and sports are a great foundation for those little humans growing up into adulthood.

I have started to make contacts around regarding getting into Officials and Referee clinics for various sports in my city - baseball, sailing, swimming and badminton being the first four. I fully expect that once I get into those social atmospheres and start to gain familiarity and make friends, I'll be able to fill up my empty Mantris spots without much effort.

But until then, I spend time in my workshop thinking about what the perfect, ultimate relationship would be like. What would it be like when I walk into the door of our shared abode? What passions would I take on as mine, that he would appreciate, and what passions would he have that I could appreciate for him, as well? What agreements would we come to that would be mutually beneficial and life and energy-affirming?

It will be very interesting to work out the thoughts that are inspired by this whole process, especially once I start actively going out on dates more.

I hope you'll subscribe and come back to read about it, and share your thoughts and reactions!