Finding Love Again in a New Place

Blog # 18

I really didn’t think it would happen again for me. I divorced my husband in early 2020 with no concrete plans or real hope of finding love again. I just wanted to start over on my own, to do my next chapter by myself, to create a new life in a new place. And I did. I moved to South Florida, I made lots of new friends, and I jumped headfirst into new activities, new interests, and new geography. I was content being single here by the ocean.

And then along came Art.

It was March 2022. My father had just moved back to Chicago after spending 4½ months with me, thinking he was going be a year-round Floridian but changing his mind after becoming homesick for his life back in the Midwest. So he left, and I had my little house to myself again. I guess it was just the right time to meet someone.

The first time I spotted Art was at a meeting for a new singles group starting up at Tuscany Bay, my 55-plus community. I was 58 and one of the youngest ones there. Most of the people in the room were older widows; there was just a handful of men. So of course I noticed the slim man seated in a sea of women. But I didn’t think much of it and just chatted with my friends who sat with me.

A few days later, I arrived at one of our Sunset Sundays, a biweekly happy hour on the clubhouse veranda overlooking the pool and the sky beyond it, where the sun would be setting later. I found my friend Janice and pulled up a chair where she squeezed me in at a table between her and a man I didn’t recognize at first. She didn’t know him either, but we both introduced ourselves to him while I set up my appetizer and cocktail. He was friendly and told us his name was Art.

Janice, Art, and I chatted among ourselves and told each other a little of our stories. Art was divorced, like me. He had been a “snowbird,” but he recently sold his home in Philadelphia and now would be a Floridian year-round. He had one former stepson in California who was like a son to him and who he was still very close to. At some point I realized I had seen him at that singles meeting. So the three of us talked about the Tuscany Bay singles group and the activities they were planning to do.

Art asked both Janice and me for our phone numbers, and we started a little text group. We planned to go out for dinner soon, just the three of us, as well as to carpool to some of the singles group dinners and events coming up.

As the three of us attended singles things together in the next several weeks, I joked to another friend that it was Art and his “sister wives” showing up to events. But slowly I began to realize that he seemed more interested in me than in Janice. He asked me to meet him at the tennis courts to give him some brush-up tennis lessons, as I played regularly. But so did Janice, who was a better tennis player than me. He would send texts just to me, including a very sweet greeting on Mother’s Day. I liked him—he was one of the nicest people I had met here—but I wasn’t sure if I was into him. For one thing, he was older than me, though I wasn’t sure how much older.

The three of us became good friends though and I enjoyed Art’s company, whether we were with Janice or not. Art and I discovered that we both liked gin and tonics, which we began to share at the “singles mingles” and community happy hours. I had a lot of fun with him at these events, and he was always so considerate and sweet. I also liked how slim and fit he was, and how he looked in shorts!

In mid-May, Janice was preparing to head back to New Jersey, as she was a snowbird and wouldn’t be returning until the following winter. I think at that point, Art and I were both realizing it would just be the two of us now, and maybe something more could happen between us. I was on the board of the community Women’s Club, and we were organizing an indoor party with DJ and dancing inside our clubhouse for the Saturday night of Memorial Day weekend. A singles table was being formed for this event. I asked the woman organizing the tables to put both me and Art at that table. I texted Art to let him know, and he seemed happy to hear the news. I told him that I’d be working the check-in table for the party, so I’d see him when he came in.

That evening, I was happy to see him walk into the clubhouse lobby, and he hung around talking to me for a little while as I worked the check-in table. Once the event started, I joined Art at our assigned table inside the clubhouse multipurpose room (similar to a nice ballroom), where we talked some more, danced to the music on the crowded dance floor, and went up together to the dessert and coffee area once it opened. We had a great time together, and near the end, as we were walking off the dance floor, he asked me to go to dinner with him the following Saturday and I said yes. I knew that this time, it would be a date.

I can’t remember if it was before that Memorial Day weekend or after, but I was determined to find out one thing that was very important to me: I had to make sure that Art wasn’t a registered Republican (and possibly a Trump supporter). After spending a long marriage tied to someone who was politically the opposite of me, I didn’t want to ever make that mistake again. As a matter of fact, my serious boyfriend before my husband also ended up being a lot more conservative than me. I told myself when I got divorced and moved to Florida that if I ever dated again, it would not be with any more right-wingers. So I just had to check and make sure.

I went online and found a public information database that showed, for many states, including Florida, how people were registered to vote. If they had registered, it showed whether they signed up as a Democrat, Republican, Independent, or nothing. I was able to search on Art’s full name in Palm Beach County, and it came up that he was registered here but hadn’t signed up for any party. Okay, I could live with that. At least he wasn’t a registered Republican. But one thing that I wasn’t looking for gave me quite a surprise—his age, 70. He didn’t look, act, move, or speak like any 70-year-old! I thought it must be a mistake. But this website also listed all the neighbors in Tuscany Bay and how they voted along with their exact birthdates. I knew many of them, and the information was accurate. So it was true, he was 70. I was about to turn 59, so I calculated, and he was 11½ years older than me.

I never thought I would date anyone much older than me, because I’m often mistaken for someone younger than my age. But I really liked Art, I was becoming attracted to him, and I certainly wasn’t going to find anybody my age in this community! I liked that we were friends first, that we had some common interests and friends, we both liked Tuscany Bay and South Florida, and we seemed compatible in a way that I don’t think I had ever been with my husband.

So I went ahead with plans for this first “date” with Art, during the first weekend of June. We talked during the week about where we wanted to go, and I was nervous but excited. I had only gone on two dates since my divorce—really just meeting someone from a dating app in a public place—and they both were flops. This date would be with someone I already was friends with and who I knew I liked. So it really meant something more.

However, the day before we were to go out, he called me with some bombshell news: His ex-wife had been in contact with him, out of the blue, and he had just received a long letter from her detailing how she regretted letting him get away, and she wanted to see him and find out if there was a chance for reconciliation.

What kind of crazy timing was that?!

Art wanted to be honest with me; he was a little stunned by this being dropped in his lap right now, and he wanted time to think about it and figure stuff out. He said he still would like to go out with me that weekend, but it would just be as friends, and would that be okay? I was a little speechless at first; I wasn’t sure how to reply. I considered canceling, but then I thought, what the heck, we were already friends, and we’d probably have a good time anyway. So I agreed to still go to dinner with him.

Our plan to go to an open-air live music place after dining nearby was jettisoned by storms that weekend, so instead we went to a popular restaurant with plenty of space inside—Ocean One in Delray Beach. That day, June 5, was the first time that it was just Art and me alone, and we talked and talked. I felt very comfortable opening up to him. We shared stories about our marriages. His had been over for years; my divorce was just a little over two years earlier. I told him what had caused me to leave my husband, and I talked about my three grown kids. He told me a little bit about his wife, and more about her son. He had not had children of his own, but his stepson was still like a son to him and he spoke very fondly of him; I could tell they were very close.

We ate dinner and had drinks, and the time went by quickly. I loved talking to him and being there with him. I realized that I was more attracted to him the better I got to know him, and I was just sorry that suddenly the ex-wife was in the picture.

As we headed home, I knew that I really enjoyed the evening and liked Art enough to wait for him to figure out things with his ex-wife. I hadn’t met anybody in a long time who I clicked with, and he was worth the wait. That’s what I told family members who asked about our night out together.

Well, I didn’t have to wait long. My 59th birthday was a few days later, and he remembered it, texting me a “Happy birthday” message that morning, which I loved. We decided to go out later that week to celebrate.

Art picked me up on a Friday night and we headed to Hurricane Alley for dinner and then the Fish Depot for live music and dancing—which had been our plan the previous weekend. At dinner he gave me a sweet birthday card with a coupon inside, “Good for one hug. No expiration date.” So adorable! No guy had ever done anything like that for me. I would find out later that this would be followed by other thoughtful cards, letters, and bouquets of flowers in the coming months.

We had another great time that night, eating, drinking, talking, and dancing in front of the band on stage at the outdoor Fish Depot. It was the first of many memorable dates to come.

I wasn’t sure exactly when he decided that his ex-wife was a non-issue, and it would just be me for him, but later he told me he knew very soon after we started going out. And we were really good together. I could talk to him in a way that I never could with my ex-husband, I loved how considerate and thoughtful he was with me, and I felt very drawn to him. We

started going out regularly, and the age difference seemed like nothing. We really had a

special connection—both emotionally and physically. ☺️

After a few months of dating that summer and into the fall, getting to know each others’ friends, and missing each other greatly on our separate vacations that had been preplanned before we had met, we definitely became an item around Tuscany Bay. Once we were known as a serious couple, we started noticing we had a very active social life, as other couples invited us to dinners and other events. When snowbirds returned that fall, some told me that they had heard about Art and me. We got more invites to go out. At our community happy hours, we now had a bustling table full of mutual friends. It was fun.

It was great having a busy social calendar and lots of friends in the same development as well as some outside of there, and my life was different now being part of a couple after two years as a single here. But I also loved just being with Art and always looked forward to our time together. I liked how he was very attentive to me, remembered everything I told him, and supported my political activism as well as my writing. I felt like it was a great relationship.

One evening, we had a date planned in downtown Delray Beach for a nice dinner across from the ocean. We arrived a little early and after we parked, we decided to take a walk on the beach before our reservation time. That’s where, with our shoes in our hands, he stopped to tell me he loved me for the first time, right by the lapping waves (as he had planned). I said the same to him. It was perfect. Then we crossed the street and had a wonderful dinner.

We also had plans to go on a cruise together, on the “Mexican Riviera,” a trip with his family that he had invited me to join after we’d been together for just a few months. We would be away from Florida for a total of about 10 days, and it was a major trip to take together so early in our relationship. But I knew that we would do great together, and we did.

In early November 2022, we flew out to Los Angeles. The next morning, over a lovely outdoor brunch at a restaurant close to the Long Beach seaport, I met Art’s former stepson and some other relatives of his, and he met my stepbrother and his wife, all who lived in the area, along with my first meeting Art’s brother, sister-in-law, and nephew, who would board the Carnival cruise ship with us. We all got along well and took some photos of our new union of people, his and mine, and it felt good.

After the brunch we boarded our ship and had a great week on the cruise, exploring the west coast of Mexico with excursions in different towns and taking part in all the cruise-ship activities. I enjoyed getting to know his family, who were very easy to have fun with. The whole thing was a little surreal for me, doing a cruise with a new man and a different family, after spending 25 years with my ex-husband and his family, including an extended-family Disney cruise many years before. But this was better. I enjoyed his family more, and I was much more in sync with Art than I ever had been with my ex. We had a lot of fun together. It might have felt a little weird to be doing this, so soon after so many years with another man and his family. But it just seemed right.

Back at home, everything came pretty easy with Art. We could talk about all kinds of things (which was a big contention with my ex, who never talked to me about anything that mattered), we were very compatible in what we liked to do, I felt really loved and respected, and we had lots of laughs as well (oh, I love his laugh). We got along with each other’s friends, and when he met my various family members, it was fantastic, and they found him warm and friendly. He was incredible with my son Jacob, who had just turned 26 and lived nearby in our town of Boynton Beach. Art was, and is, so good with him, and Jacob really likes him.

Art and I started to do karaoke duets together (mostly rap!), we liked dancing wherever there was music and a dance floor, and we both joined the community’s pickleball club at the same time, playing the game with family members and friends as well. He takes me for rides in his convertible on A1A, the coastal road that I love. We’ve been out for seafood dinners many times on the Intercoastal Waterway, see plays and concerts together, attend the community’s movie nights and parties, and also just enjoy curling up on the couch to watch Netflix series together.

And the icing on the cake? We both are major dog people, and our dogs (his Sami, my Lex) have grown to be fast friends, romping around together off-leash in the fenced-off recreation area of our community when nobody else is there. We both love our dogs and realize how important they are to each of us. I appreciate the way that Art is with Sami and how he talks to her. It’s one of the many things I love about him.

So we have had a lot in common, and we both fell hard for each other in a short period of time. I realized what a keeper I had when Christmas 2022 came. During all of our dates before then, unbeknownst to me, Art had been collecting memories of our time together: memorabilia such as theater programs (like when we sent to see “Hamilton” in Broward County) and photographs of our date venues and pictures together, including from our cruise, to put into a scrapbook for a lovely Christmas gift to me. He also wrote some nice text to me inside the book. It beautifully detailed our relationship up until that point. As I opened it Christmas morning on the floor of my living room in front of my kids and parents who were all visiting, I couldn’t believe what a sweet gift he had put together for me. I think it really cemented our love for each other (and he also gave me a beautiful emerald ring).

And now, as we’ve reached 10 months together, we are looking forward to a big trip for our one-year anniversary on June 5th: eight days in Portugal after spending a few days in Paris together. Portugal was on both of our bucket lists, we had discovered. We will be staying at different vacation rental apartments there (in Lisbon and Porto), and one in Paris, and celebrating our anniversary as well as my 60th birthday a few days later. A lot to look forward to.

I never would have imagined making these big moves when I first had met Art a year before, or entertained the idea of living with another man, which, yes, we are discussing now. But you never really know what is going to happen. My journey to South Florida, starting a new life as a single, did not seriously include finding another chance at love. I wasn’t really looking for it, especially here in Tuscany Bay where I live. But I found it, and it’s awesome.

So we’ll see where it takes me….