The Redhead and the Reality
There's a woman who lives in my head. Red hair. Twenty-five. The kind of pretty that makes a man walk into a door at the grocery store. Not just a face. A feeling. She's who I think about when I can't sleep, who drifts in while I'm at work, who I end up jerking off to when the loneliness gets too loud in the late evening.
She's perfect. Everything I ever wanted.
And she doesn't exist.
A little about me first, I guess. I'm sixty. Average guy: short, dad-bod, been working since I was old enough to. Paid the bills, raised my kids, stayed out of trouble. Not ugly. No movie star either. I've been married three times, which should tell you plenty on its own.
The first one was a foreigner and never got comfortable over here. The second one slept around. The third lasted eighteen years, and somewhere in the middle of it I stopped having opinions. I was so busy keeping the peace I forgot I had a voice. (Don't tell me I picked wrong. I know I picked wrong.) I gave all three of them everything. Money, time, whatever heart I had left, and what came back was heartbreak, lies, and long silences.
I've dated since. Met plenty of women. Some liked my wallet more than they liked me. Some wanted a traditional marriage I couldn't deliver. Some wanted a partner who'd nod along to how useless men are. Some just wanted a warm night, and then I never heard from them again. None of it stuck.
And then there's her. The redhead. The one in the picture. The one I can look at all day and never once touch.
Somewhere in the last six years I also found out I've got ED. Not every time, but enough that it's a real thing and definitely on my mind when I am meeting someone who could potentially be a sex partner. In bed with an actual woman, my body checks out. Alone, thinking of her, everything works fine. Chew on that one for a minute. I can give her anything she wants in my head, and out here I can't even get it up for a woman standing right in front of me.
So that's what this blog is. I'm not going to sugarcoat anything, and I'm not going to pretend relationships are easy or women are perfect or dating is fair, because none of that is true. The math doesn't work. The hassle, the mind games, the expectations, the cost. We men put a lot in, and what comes back out hasn't been worth it in a long time.
Let me get one thing on the record, because I can already hear how this gets read. I'm not saying a fantasy beats the real thing. Any man who tells you that is lying. A real woman who wanted me there and stayed, who didn't keep a running tab, who didn't treat me like furniture that pays bills, beats a daydream every time it's on the table. I know because I had it. Three times. I remember what the good years felt like.
But wanting a thing and being able to get it are two different animals. I've been looking since the last divorce. Dating sites, friends setting me up, women who liked me fine right up until they wanted something else. Everything runs into the same wall eventually, and I don't have another sixty years to keep throwing myself at it.
So yes, I want more than this. I want to know that there is at least somebody for me if needed. The redhead isn't my substitute for a life. She's the substitute for the life I couldn't get. But the scoreboard is what it is: every relationship I've entered took everything I put in and paid me back in heartbreak and a piec of who I am being chipped away. But the woman in my head has never lied to me, never cost me half of anything I own, never once made me feel like a stranger in my own living room.
I'm not proud of this arrangement. I'm not ashamed of it either. It's arithmetic.
So I think about her, jerk off, feel like myself again for an hour, and get on with the day. This isn't the life I signed up for at twenty-five. It's the one still standing after everything else fell down.
And no, none of this is hate. It's just a man telling the truth about the return of investment women have proven to be, at least in my life.
This is my blog. No rules. Just me.
If any of this sounds familiar, if you too have lived this life, if you've been told you're wrong for feeling the way you feel, if you've seen the woman of your dreams and known you'd never have her, then stick around. You're not the only one out here.
Let's talk.