Jack

Like Navarre, I have no obituary for Jack to assure me he is beyond being hurt by words published on the Internet by some woman, so Jack is not his real name. It's what I began calling him in conversations with my sons when I gave up on ever figuring out how to pronounce his real name.

Jack was divorced. He had more money than average and probably more baggage than money.

The divorce was ugly and he's a nice guy. Having money, keeping it and actually being nice is a challenge in this cesspit called planet Earth. 

We had a mutual friend, so I had verification for information about Jack from a third party. I wasn't merely taking his word for things and I was learning things about him organically without trying to check him out.

He was clearly trying to check me out. I didn't realize how serious he was about checking me out until I realized our mutual friend thought Jack was married.

The fact that he was living with a woman out of wedlock -- "shacked up" -- wasn't common knowledge. He had developed careful patter about "his family" and similar vague terminology and didn't correct people who leapt to the assumption that she was his wife.

And yet I knew Jack was not married. Why on earth would he tell a random Internet stranger of the female persuasion that closely guarded secret? 

For some years, I probably knew more about Jack's personal life than most people who knew him in the flesh, and never mind that we rarely spoke. 

I knew he cooked dinner half the time.

I knew he took the kids to school.

I had enough information to feel that if I married him, he wouldn't be a soul sucking repeat of my 1950s style marriage and I could probably have a LIFE and career of my own, what with not being expected to be barefoot, pregnant and chained to the stove.

My kids heard a lot about Jack and for a time it seemed like if we ever met, things would likely go relatively smoothly and we would have a reasonable shot at merging our lives comfortably instead of smooshing them together without much thought and then tripping over the defects in that binding process for the rest of our time together like I felt was the case with my constant-drama-and-arguments-from-the-start marriage.

I've never managed to repeat that formula and all efforts to tell men who know me from a distance to "Keep it real" fall on deaf ears while they fail to show up, IMAGINE me to be whatever they want to imagine and don't confuse them with the facts.

I used to talk to my kids about men I knew who were interested in me. At some point, I stopped doing that because they never show up.

Once in a while, I wonder what would happen if someone actually showed up and I had to explain to my sons I've known this man for some time and he's long expressed interest in marrying me. 

I guess if anyone ever actually shows up, that's a problem for future me because I am so done bothering my kids with conversations about imaginary "men in my life."

But the fact that I no longer do that strikes me as an obstacle to actually making a relationship work. And I don't have a solution, which is one more reason to bet on remaining alone for the rest of my life.