Sometimes, Distance In Dating Is For The Best

By Cheryl Rogers

Today, I share my best dating tip for someone who is newly divorced. Consider the advantages of a long-distance relationship.

I believe people who say they came through a divorce unscathed are fooling themselves. Divorce is difficult, and it ought to be. You’re giving up on something you vowed would last until death. If you take marriage seriously, then ending one should give you pause.

Sometimes divorce is the best decision. While nothing revives beaten self-esteem like meeting someone new who thinks you’re wonderful, it’s good to go slow. A friend of mine, a family therapist, advised, “Take your time until you’re sure you’re ready. Then wait a little longer. Then proceed with caution.”

Hence, my endorsement of a long-distance relationship. Getting to know people via e-mail, instant messaging, phone or text takes time. While you’re getting to know them, they’re not under foot. You have the much-needed time and space to settle into your new life, to find your own way.

The distance prevents you from repeating past mistakes before you have a chance to learn from them.

After my divorce, I had no intention of messing up my life with a guy again. Then I impulsively went to a high school class reunion — and met someone. Years before, we’d graduated in the same class with 450 other students. We weren’t even on each other’s radar back then. At the reunion, we swapped e-mail addresses. Then I returned to Michigan, and he returned to Kyrgyzstan.

Kyrgyzstan is a country in central Asia, bordering Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Contrary to what you learned of the area from Borat, it does have Internet access. We got to know each other through e-mail, navigating a 10-hour time difference. A slow process, certainly. Yet a sensible pace for me at that time.

That was more than two years ago. Since then, Mike’s moved to Afghanistan, where he works for a defense contractor on a NATO base in Kabul. We can now instant-message, but base technology doesn’t lend itself well to Skype or webcam use.

Dating isn’t typical. No normal Saturday dinner and a movie for us. In two years, we’ve had only five dates. Still, they were really good dates. I needed my passport for three of them.

There was a time my single friends and I would negatively describe a potential date as GUD — Geographically Undesirable. Sure, a long-distance relationship won’t work forever. If someone is willing to change his life — for example, move out of a war zone — it has potential.

However, after a toxic one, relationship speed bumps aren’t necessarily bad.

Thank you to Janet Carr, director of religious education for Community Unitarian Universalist Church in Brighton. Carr told me that this today, at the 10:30 a.m. service, congregation members will donate mittens to a mitten tree, then they’ll be given to us at the Livingston County Daily Press & Argus.

We will pass them on to needy Livingston County children whose families are assisted through the Empty Stocking Fund.

We are still accepting donations to this worthy cause. The Empty Stocking Fund uses your contributions to purchase gift cards for needy local families, who will use the gift cards as they wish.

Don’t worry that your donation may be small. Every dollar adds up to make a difference. There are no administrative expenses associated with the fund; this newspaper covers them.

Send your contribution to the Empty Stocking Fund at the Daily Press & Argus, 323 E. Grand River Ave., Howell, MI 48843.

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Thank you for your consideration.

Investigate Before You Date

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Kimberly Bain has no problems with the single life. When she isn’t hosting a dating dinner party, she’s pursuing one of many hobbies that makes it easy to meet someone new.

“Particularly in this town,” said Bain of West Palm Beach, “everybody knows somebody. So you can meet someone and ask around or, ’Do you know this person and what’s their story?’ And that helps.”

Still she has had her share of bad dates.

“He put down his knife and fork and looked at me and was like, You’re messed up,” said Bain. “And he just went off on this diatribe about how I’m the first woman that didn’t burn for him and want him. So that was that,” she laughed.

Then there was her pungent partner. “It wasn’t like he didn’t shower. I just think he didn’t choose to wear deodorant. So as we spent the day together and as the date progressed he got stinkier and stinkier,” said Bain.

So how does one find out more before the first date?

West Palm Beach private investigator Brad Robinson knows. His Millennium Group is often hired to check out spouses. But sometimes they do some digging before the “I dos.”

A Robinson favorite is Spokeo.com. Here he found a fiance on his way to a not so nuptial-friendly night out.

“Here’s an example of something he probably wouldn’t want his girlfriend to see,” said Robinson of a video he found on the Web site.

For a small monthly fee, Spokeo.com searches dozens of social websites for blogs, pictures and video.

“The primary interest tends to be whether there’s another significant other in the picture,” said Robinson, who said investigating a date isn’t too tricky. “People have access to information on the internet that they wouldn’t have had just a few years ago and people are making use of that.”

Investigating, whether it be of dates, elderly caregivers or nannies, Is something Palm Beach County Clerk and Comptroller Sharon Bock actually recommends.

“One can get a pretty good gauge of whether or not they’re being told the truth by the person they’re dating,” Bock said. She points out that a free and easy way to get information is by searching the public records.

At MyPalmBeachClerk.com, the court’s official, civil, traffic and criminal records can be searched. There you can find out if someone is married, pays child support, is in foreclosure, has traffic tickets, misdemeanors and even felonies.

“I ended up finding out that this girl was wanted,” said Michael Curran of a girlfriend who got him fired.

Bock said MyFloridaClerks.com can help someone check all 67 Florida counties.

“By doing this extra step, I think, that for both sexes,” said Bock, “I think that you’re really just not only protecting yourself but maybe even building a more trusting relationship. If they tell you that they own a house in Palm Beach County and you see that they own the house that they’re living in, keep dating them.”

This intense digging is not for everybody. Kimberly Bain has given up those internet matchmaking sites. And while she’s not a cyber sleuth, she will do a little checking.

“I hate to admit it. Boy, this is embarrassing,” Bain said. “But you’ll check up and make sure you’re not seeing a wife’s name associated with his name.”

Yet, she still finds some intrigue in letting Cupid’s fickle arrow fall where it may.

“Here we are inundated with all this technology and all this opportunity but quite frankly, nothing beats that face to face, immediate chemistry and just reaction with the person,” said Bain.