Right around my 30th birthday, I went a little crazy.
At the time, I could have opened a consignment shop for bridesmaid’s dresses. Baby shower invitations were piling up like bar receipts. And even though I’d been pretty confident throughout my 20′s, something about 30 hit me hard. I melted down in a blur of, “What’s wrong with me? Why doesn’t anybody want to love me or make a baby with me?”
All that whining and self-questioning did nothing to attract a good man. I mean, who wants to be with someone who thinks there’s something wrong her?
You guessed it, guys who have something wrong with them.
As Patti Stanger would say, I have a “bad picker.” I’ve always been outgoing, so meeting men wasn’t the problem. Meeting the right men was. I could make MVP for choosing the wrong guy. I’d done it for so long, by then I felt comfort while being in that recognizable, yet somehow invisible space with a man who’s interested in me just enough to keep me hanging around. It’s like pulling on an old, bally sweater. It’s not pretty, but at least I know it well.
So, there was Sam, who wanted to make every night a Blockbuster Night. He wasn’t unkind. He just didn’t want to leave the house. Ever.
Then there was Rob, the amazing guitarist who loved other women more than he loved me.
Beautiful Dean, who was great, when he was great. But he lapsed into moods so dark they scared me.
Then Charlie, whose messy basement apartment should have convinced me that his internal life was just as messy. He was smart and had potential, but what good is potential without action?
And the decade rolled on like that, dating guys who were, “good enough,” until one night in my late 30′s. My girlfriends and I were out at our favorite pub, where the wine and the whining flowed.
“It’s just so hard to meet a guy,” one friend said.
“Well, you’re not gonna meet a guy here. That’s for sure,” said my waitress friend.
This sounded so familiar. Like an annoying rerun of the week before. I think I actually rolled my eyes at them.
“It’s not that hard to meet guys,” I said.
“Well, it’s not hard for you. You always talk to guys,” Stacie said.
“Right. Just walk up to them and say ‘hi’,” I said.
“I can’t do that,” they all said at once, like I was asking them to streak through the bar or something.
“What if I dared you?” I asked.
“Huh?” They stared at me.
I pointed at a guy in a baseball cap at the far end of the bar.
“What if I dared you to go and talk to that guy?”
All four of them turned and looked. The guy shifted on his barstool and pulled down his cap.
“I don’t know,” they mumbled and gulped more wine.
“Okay, what if we had a contest? Awarded some kind of prize to the winner?”
They stared at me again. At that moment, I really saw my friends, all doggy paddling through our stagnant love lives, miserable and defeated.
We couldn’t go on like that. I flipped over my placemat and began scribbling on it. Points, charts and all sorts of stuff.
“What are you doing?” They asked.
I looked up at them, raised my glass and said, “Ladies, how do you feel about playing a little game?”
I had come up with an idea for a game designed to empower women to dare to date. Like other Fantasy Sports, Fantasy Dating awards points to players. It’s just that when you play this game, you earn points for taking risks and making plays to find love.
We played and it worked. Knowing that our friends could be scoring valuable points at any moment, we checked the mirror before going to the grocery store. We smiled at strangers, stood a little taller and engaged men in conversation. The negativity melted, the points racked up and we went on more dates in the following two months than we had in the last two years.
In fact, all five of us met guys at that pub.
What we learned was that the whining and the self-questioning was killing us. There was nothing wrong with us. But there was everything wrong with us ignoring our power.
Around the time I began to harness my dating power, I lost my corporate job. Since I could no longer pay the mortgage, I eventually lost my home. And with it, my identity. I’d always been a disaster relationship-wise, but when it came to the rest of my life, I was the smart girl. The girl with the nice house and fancy car. The successful girl. The girl people came to for advice.
Suddenly, I didn’t know who I was.
I did know I was desperate for work. Thankfully, the owner of that same pub, and friend of mine, gave me a job and I began to wait tables. (On my first day, I dropped a burger and it didn’t get much better from there.) And when I finally had to vacate my home, the same friend rented me a room in his house.
While all that helped, it wasn’t enough. My industry was beyond recessed. I couldn’t find another corporate job. I realized I had to reinvent myself.
I weighed my skills and decided to try to cook. Growing up, I’d spent many hours in the kitchen with my Granny, learning how to chop, saute and stew. I began to sell packaged foods like macaroni and cheese and meatballs. People hired me to cater dinner parties and small production shoots.
I went from hiring the help to becoming the help. It was humbling, ridiculously hard work and eventually, the greatest gift I’ve ever received.
One weekend, I got a gig catering a 40th birthday party for a girl who rented a mansion in Malibu for a weekend bash. I pulled up to the gate, car loaded with cooking gear, ready to dazzle these women and get as many referrals as possible.
To get the job, I had low-balled on her on the price. I let her pick the menu and, after she insisted she could save money doing so, I even let her do the shopping. After confidently greeting the birthday girl and her girlfriends as they lazed by the pool overlooking the Pacific, I headed to the kitchen.
That’s when I realized I was in trouble. My employer had interpreted “vine ripened Compari tomatoes” as rock hard roma tomatoes. The shallots I had requested were soft and yellowed in shrink wrapped plastic. The garlic was pre-peeled and slightly pickled. The spongy, sticky mushrooms browned my fingertips as I attempted to clean them.
I held back tears over the kitchen sink, said a prayer and did the best I could. I plated 26 chicken and fish plates and was about to serve them when the hostess took a call from a friend who hadn’t been able to make it. The steam dissipated as I waited to serve the now tipsy guests. When she finally sat, the lukewarm meal was bland at best.
After eating, the guests avoided my eyes. The birthday girl’s mother, who had been super friendly before I began to cook, wouldn’t acknowledge me. I cleaned the kitchen and slipped out.
I went home and cried. I cried because I felt humiliated. I cried because I was broke and desperate. I cried because, at 38, still, nobody loved me or wanted to make a baby with me. But, most of all, I cried because in my desperation, I had given my client all of my power.
I let her choose the dishes. I let her select the produce. I let her delay dinner.
Right then and there I vowed to never give up my power again.
Over the next year or so, I continued to cook for people. Little by little, I got some freelance writing work, but I never forgot about the dating game. I realized that if I didn’t do something with it, it would be as shameful as ignoring my power.
This April, I launched fantasydatinggame.com because I want to give other women the opportunity to encourage each other to own their power. It’s so easy to compare ourselves to everyone around us and feel badly about everything we’re not. Fantasydatinggame.com gives women the opportunity to bet on everything we are and can be.
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