Should You Tell a New Partner You Were the Other Woman? What Happened When I Did
If you were part of an affair, at some point you're going to wonder when to tell someone new. First date? Third? Never?
I decided the answer was right away.
The first time I started dating again was about a year after my ex and I broke up. I'd been going out a lot, traveling a little, meeting people organically and on Bumble. And I made a call. I wasn't going to hide the fact that I was the other woman. I was going to lead with it.
My logic was simple. If I don't tell you, it gets awkward. Now I'm carrying something I have to tell you eventually, and I'm trying to figure out when the right time is. So why not tell you from the jump?
What a Summer of Saying Yes Taught Me About Dating in My 40s
The Summer of George is over. Sixteen episodes, every single Friday, for four months.
I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I started it. I knew where I'd be. What I didn't know was that it would turn into three completely different chapters. And now here we are at the end.
So this is the wrap. Why I called it The Summer of George, what my last two weeks in Greece looked like, why my Hinge is on pause, and what I'm doing next.
What Dating in Your 40s Taught Me in One Summer
I'm tired. Not the bad kind. The kind that lands after a summer that unfolded in ways I never saw coming, and finally lets you sit still and look at what actually happened.
This is the second-to-last week of my summer dating series, and I'm not here with another wild recap. I'm in Greece, the place I love more than anywhere, and I decided to spend these last weeks living a little softer. So instead of chasing one more story, I looked back at the four men I dated this summer and asked myself what I'm actually keeping from each one.
Why Men Pull Away After Getting Close (What I Learned in Three Weeks)
Three weeks. That's how long I saw a guy in Scottsdale before I left for Greece, and for three weeks he did everything right. He asked me out after every date. He let me be pursued. His texts weren't "morning, sexy" nonsense, they were plans, because we actually saw each other. His actions backed up his words. Then one morning they stopped, and I got a front-row seat to a question a lot of women in their 40s are asking: why do men pull away after getting close?
Why I Stopped Taking Dating Advice From My Friends
I'm writing this from Greece. Chapter three of The Summer of George, and I picked the dating diary back up right where I left it: seeing someone for about three weeks, and somewhere in those three weeks, the feelings I swore I wasn't looking for showed up anyway.
Which is funny, because when I started dating again I genuinely didn't think I'd meet anyone I actually liked. I figured it would be about going on dates and meeting people and filling my time. Not this. So now I'm 7,000 miles from home, feelings involved, and I've had a lot of slow Greek mornings to think about what I've actually learned about dating in my 40s.
Getting Ghosted After Making Plans: A Real Week Back on the Apps
He made the plans. Not me. He called me, asked me out, picked the day and the time himself. And then he went silent for four days and flaked the afternoon of the date with a text I still haven't heard back from.
Welcome to being back on the apps.
This is week nine of The Summer of George, and I'm out here dating again in a way I haven't in a while. Some of it is fun. Some of it is baffling. And this week gave me a little of both, so let me walk you through it.
Getting Back Into Dating in Midlife: What Two Years Off Taught Me
I've been out of the dating game for a couple of years. Not because anything went wrong. I got comfortable. I built a life I love, I got independent in a way that felt good, and dating just wasn't the thing I was reaching for. So when I got back on the apps this summer, I figured it would feel like riding a bike. It did not.
Dating When Your Past Is Public: What Happened When a Hinge Match Googled Me
When I started The Scarlet Edit, I wasn't thinking about my dating life. I was thinking about the show. It didn't cross my mind that putting my whole story out into the world would follow me onto the apps. But it does. I'm single, I'm on Hinge, and I'm Googleable. My Instagram bio says I was the other woman for five years. Anyone I match with can find that in about thirty seconds.
So what actually happens when a date knows your past before he knows you? This week I found out.
Listener Questions: What I'd Do Differently, How I Date Now, and What I'd Tell the Other Woman
I asked my Instagram followers what they wanted me to talk about that I hadn't covered yet, and the questions that came in were so good I built a whole episode around five of them. This is what happens when you ask a community of women who've been through it what they actually want to know — they don't ask softballs.
So I'm going to walk through the five I picked and what I said in the episode, because some of these answers I had genuinely never said out loud before.