Dating & Friendships

When I first stared this WLS journey I made the decision to focus my attention my ME for the first year post-op.  I decided to not date at all during this first year.  No distractions, no hassles, no boy-crazy wierdness allowed.  

I spent a year before my surgery surfing various WLS message boards and forums and very often I'd see single women who went hog-wild about dating just a few months after their surgeries.  These women were going a little crazy with dating sites and dating and sex and drinking at a time in their lives when major changes were happening in their own lives.  How can you really be objective and clear minded about dating when you're dealing with so many other changes in life?  

So after seeing some major crazy stuff on message boards ... I decided I wanted to really get to know myself and work on my own life before I allowed a man to muck it up.  It has been one of the best decisions I've made regarding post-op life.   It's one less thing I've had to worry about.  

And now I'm approaching the 1 year mark in a couple weeks.  Do I start actively looking for dates?  Or do I just make myself more open minded about the possibility of meeting new people?  What do I do?  

I've done the online dating thing and really don't like it.  So for now, that's not an option for me.  My friend, M, tells me to go where the people are -- bars and clubs.  No thanks.  I don't drink and I don't hang out in the bar so why would I want to meet someone who does?  But how does a nearly-40 year old woman (OMG! That's scary to even say out loud!) meet other single people?  But my friend does have a point... "go where the people are."  I've heard that 65% of relationships started because the couple were introduced to each other through friends. That got me thinking...

I realized that I don't really have a lot of friends.  Well, I do have friends .. but not the type of friends that I just hang out with locally.  I want to make new friends.  Friends in general and especially friends that I can hang out with regulary.  I don't have a gang of girlfriends that I can call up at the last minute and invite to a movie or friends to invite over for a dinner party or friends I meet up with for lunch dates or whatever.   Most of my good friends live somewhere else.  Tina's in Virginia.  M is in Tennessee.  Sarah is in Ann Arbor.  You see my point... nobody is close.  The other problem is that the friends I have made locally -- mostly gals from my support group meetings -- we're all so busy that there's never time to get together.  Maybe we just need to work harder at it or make the effort.  I don't know.  But I've come to realize that if I want a group of good girlfriends, then I need to work at it.  

So maybe the original thought process to this whole discussion was about dating.  Surrounding myself with people who might "know someone" that want to introduce their single girlfriend to. But really I think I've come to realize that dating is secondary for me right now.  I just want to work on making new friends and finding a group of girls that I love hanging out with.  And maybe some day down the road I might meet Mr. Right along the way -- but for now, it's not a priority.

~Pam