(re-run)
One guy friend of mine whom I don’t know very well except that he puts on free estate sales (lawyer) and he speaks his mind . . .
“Nice pioneer outfit you’ve got on, Susan!”
Okay, the dress was a bit ruffly, and ruffles aren’t in style like they were ten years ago . . .
He asked me to sit down to chat at a casual party we were at, and I started taking notes because I thought we were going to discuss the retirement community he lives in (12,000 people). The convo took a turn while he lamented the end of a lovely relationship with another acquaintance whom I don’t know that well.
After several pages of me taking notes while asking questions and him blabbing, Jared got some clarity. He figured out that he has lived a charmed life, everything coming easy to him, work, women, happiness, until the love of his life and main travel partner walked out on him because . . .
. . . he had no empathy.
He says he didn’t need it. Everything was going so well.
This 76 year old guy is tall and tanned, a tennis player who gets hit on regularly in the female-heavy senior living population. They come up to him in the gym, on the court, on the street. They get his number and text him with all sorts of ideas. He politely texts them back but remains noncommittal. It’s hard to get excited about a new woman when you’re still grieving the loss of the last woman, the one who walked out after sixteen years.
Jared has remained friends with all of his exes until Eleanor. Kathy, the mother of his children, comes to all holiday parties and sometimes they even travel together. He was with her when her current love had a heart attack and went in an ambulance to the hospital. She called Jared. He came and waited for the doctor with her. The chaplain came in instead. She wailed a sound he’d never heard from her before or since.
He tells of a retreat the two of them did while separated. They went to Chico to a Transitions workshop with a loopy hippie workshop dude during a lunar eclipse. In the middle of an argument, Jared had an epiphany. This was the mother of his two sons. She always would be. They needed to get along for the sake of the family. They didn’t need to stay married, but they did need to remain friends.
He’s always gone for the younger women. There are plenty of 66-year-olds in Rossmoor (the retirement community) but something is missing. It’s Eleanor, all the memories, all the shared history. Starting over now isn’t easy.
Jared insists that the punishment Eleanor has inflicted upon him is greater than the crime. I point out that maybe it was a straw-that-broke-the-camel’s back situation, where she’d had enough.
Jared has been to therapy. He’s learned a lot about himself. He makes no apologies for his lack of empathy. He didn’t need it. Everything was going great for him.
If he’d only known that it would cost him in the end.
He’s working on his empathy skills. “I get pleasure serving other people. It’s weird because it’s new.”
He says that’s the gift that Eleanor gave him, helping him to see that character flaw. Now he’s woke about others who have not led such charmed lives.
“It’s a good gift, but a painful one,” he says as I close my notebook.
FIRST DATE, WORST DATE EVER! 