Spinster here. Should I leave DC for better options?

[Anonymous]

50, never been married. (I don't call myself a spinster except when I want DCUMs to click on my link. )
Attractive, good education, kind, fun - blah blah blah. One child who I adopted after an unfortunate family situation.

Here's the deal. I want to be married. I would like more children. DC deserves that and so do I. My parents have been married 60+ years (I'll take 30+) and I grew up with siblings and a dog. This current situation is not at all what I dreamed.

I have lived in WDC off and on since the mid-90s. Been in some good relationships but none ended in marriage. It's harder now as you can imagine. Time/money/ a child, etc, it's just hard.
I have no family here and no savings other than my home which has about $250,000 in equity. DC is a decent city but it's expensive, gets cold and the school choice is driving me batty! I have great friends and my parents are in their 80s (they live 5 hrs from here) but I am starting to think it's time to go. I dont' want to live paycheck to paycheck. I want to live/save/date!

I can work from anywhere and am waiting to hear about an overseas job I just interviewed for. Here are my options:

1. Do I accept it if offered? Pay is better and I can have an interesting life outside of work but it's FAR and dating there is questionable. They have NGOs and embassies, etc.
2. Do I move to another US city where there might be less competition for dates and save money but have NO friends or family there?
3. Suck it up in DC and see what happens? There are men here but I'm older and I can barely get out.

I want a partner to experience life with but if I never find him I still want to enjoy life. WWYD?

[Anonymous]

I'm 47 and single with one kid. I am not too concerned about being single, but everyone has their preferences.

In terms of the alternatives, I would take the overseas posting if I really wanted an expat experience. I would rule out dating while there, especially if it is a developing country or there are large cultural differences. Many countries have very different expectations of women, and it may be difficult to tell whether a guy is dating you for a green card. You might meet a nice American NGO guy, but those guys tend to be young, and they know they don't need to settle down. Single women tend to leave the foreign service, because they can't date.

As for the second or third options, pick one, and pretend you have decided. Do you feel relieved or nervous? Are you at all concerned about being far from your parents if they start to have age related illnesses? Do you make friends easily? Is your profession portable?

I am not sure what you mean by having more kids. Even if it were possible, if you find DC expensive and find yourself time-strapped with one, adding more kids will make it worse. If you mean blending families, you could try a single parents' group.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I want to be married

And I want to win the lottery.

[Anonymous]

So you're going to uproot your child and pull him/her out their life just because you're having a 3/4 life crisis? Get a god damn grip.

[Anonymous]

The grass is always greener.

[Anonymous]

Move. This area is played out.

[Anonymous]

I am in a similar situation. Right now, my child is young and dating is proving to difficult so I am going to a wait a couple of years until he doesn't need me as much and then start dating again. I think at that point I will really be interested in settling down as opposed to previous years where I always said I would be but in reality I wasn't.

[Anonymous]

You're in for a rude awakening it sounds like. Trust me, the grass is not greener on the other side.

Men are in very short supply anywhere USA in your age range. Most men at 50 are dating much younger women. The next big majority of men are divorced or confirmed bachelors, in any case, not looking for a LTR. Those that are, have a bushel to pick from for relationship material.

I asked a retired 75 yr old lawyer friend of mine why she had never married. She simply replied, No Man came knocking or I would have !

[Anonymous]

You could move to Alaska where there are more men than women, but then you would have the same situation with weather, only colder. And the men there are not really known for their education/intellect.

It's not because of being in DC that you haven't met the right men. You just haven't met the right guy.

[Anonymous]

If you can work anywhere I would move in a heartbeat. Pick a community near your parents with a much lower cost of living, a good school system, lots of parks and rec spaceship and ideally a center for intellectual life like a university.

Expand your horizons to consider men outside your comfort zone. I wasted most of my 30's assuming I had to date someone with a comparable educational background. I married a man with a high school education who read Thomas Merton for fun and worked his way up from a GS-2 to a GS-15. I have three dregeees, I'm Phi Beta Kappa, and he makes double my salary and is just as widely read.

Having more money and more time will give you much more room to expand your dating horizons. You have to make it a priority. I literally spent a month when dating was essentially my full time job when I met the man who is now my DH. It took a lot of work to get there though!!!

[Anonymous]

Yes. This area is awful.

[Anonymous]

How old is your child?

[Anonymous]

I think you should move, more for the $ aspect than the possible dating scene.

The overseas job sounds fun, but I'd worry about being so far from elderly parents.

[Anonymous]

I'd try the overseas job. Your parents aren't local, so from a practical perspective you wouldn't be much help to them. It sounds like a bit of an adventure and as long as your DC is on board, why not? You can always come back, move some place else. Even if you don't end up married, you won't have stood still and done nothing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think you should move, more for the $ aspect than the possible dating scene.

The overseas job sounds fun, but I'd worry about being so far from elderly parents.

+1. At 50, the dating scene will be bad anywhere. Move for the money/lower cost of living, maybe closer to elderly parents.