market value

Before opening my internet blog, I have not been big in the man`s world. Hard to imagine, I know ;-)
It is a strange thing.. I always wanted to have a real man, not a boy..and I always liked americans.
And I was never willing to compromise in order to have "a" man at all.

In the past, I sometimes missed having a man in my life, I complained a lot about being single, but to tell you the truth, I was doing pretty good as a single girl.  And I am using the term "girl" here for a reason...
I felt like a girl. I might have been a business woman, and might have already had my own law firm, but in a way, I still saw myself as a girl, acted like a girl and felt like a girl.

But suddenly, this year, without me consciously doing anything differently, my whole life got turned around. The girl is nowhere to be seen and a woman arose.

I have a very good male friend, Paul. He is about 60 years old. I know him since I was 14 years old and since I was the babysitter of his two sons...At the time he was married to a beautiful, blond, tall , smart and slim woman. When his marriage broke down, me and my family tended to be at the wifes side, because he was the one who had been cheating on his wife...

After a couple of years, when the wife still was not able to get emotionally over the divorce, when the two sons were having big troubles with the fact that they had no relationship at all with their dad, when he had long ago moved from my small town to the big city and when the whole situation was a mess, I started praying for them all. For many months, whenever I had a moment of time, I spoke a prayer for them. I did not tell anybody about my prayers. I just felt the need to do it. I could not stand the idea that the family, that had been so close to me and had almost been "family" to me, was actually destroying themselves.

I had lost contact to Paul and had not seen him for some years, when one day, at the train station in the big city, I suddenly met him again. The train doors opened, I wanted to get in, and Paul stood right in front of me. He was about to exit the very same train that I was about to enter... I remember, as soon as I recognized him I screamed: "Paul"!!!

Looking back, he might not even have recognized me right away. I am pretty sure he had not thought of me too much in the years we had not seen each other. But for me, with my background of prayers for him and his ex-family, he had been one of the most important people in my life. We only exchanged telephone numbers and parted right away.

A couple of days later he came to see me in the city where I lived at that time. We went to an ice cream place, I asked him a few questions and he started talking and talkig and talking...It was the first time after many years that he had the chance to explain his side of the story to a "represenative  of the other side". I am pretty sure that`s what he considered me to be...He was so full of hate, full of anger... He told me if he would see his ex-wife passing away in the streets, he would just walk away...he would not help her, maybe even give her a kick...

I did what I am best at. I listened,and talked, and listened and made him think...He started to call me regularly and we became very close friends. I told the ex-wife about it and asked her, if she would be ok with it. She said yes, even though she was not... I looked very good at the time, had lost enormous weight, and soon she thought him and I , we were an item.
Which we were not. ...

Some time later I got the chance of  working in the US. He came to visit me, and we spent many nights together in one room. I just trusted him. I still do. But he NEVER approached me sexually. I think he did not even see me as a woman. I was just "Tina". The friend. The person to talk to.

Since then we spent a lot of time together. We have even been together in the sauna many times -And to all you unknowning americans out there: Europeans don`t wear a bathing suit in the sauna. It has to be done fully nude! :-)

I have been talking with Paul today. I told him about my plans to travel to the US and to my man soon again. And suddenly he said: "Tina, your man, he is quite a bit older than you are. So you could have chosen me in the first place..." In the last 15 years, he had not once indicated to be interested in me. And now, as soon as he hears how happy I am with another man, he starts flirting with me , calls me "my princess" and is sweet as never before... I cut him off right away. I was very clear and he got my message. Not hard to understand: NO!


But the question remains:
I just don`t get it.
Why is it, that as soon as there is a man in my life my market value goes way up?