I met Andrew at The Whiskey Café. I walked in the half empty bar and saw him sitting there watching me as I approached him. He was a lot better looking than his photo. He rose when I arrived and we shook hands and then I sat across from him.

He was already drinking a scotch and when the waiter came I ordered a glass of Italian white wine.

We chatted a bit, about his two boys and how every year for their birthdays he took them on a trip. His oldest son’s birthday was coming up and he was taking him to London, England.

“You always do that?” I asked him.

“Yes. Every birthday I take them to a different place.”

Hmm. I liked that about him.  I asked him about his work.

“I work in environmental waste.”

I also liked that about him.

“I travel a lot,” he said. “Sometimes I’m gone for four or five days. Sometimes a bit longer.”

He took a sip of his scotch. “You’re very lovely,” he said. “Are you an independent woman,” he asked me.

I found his question odd. “In which way?”

“I’m looking for a woman who is available to accompany me on my business trips.”

Sounds too good to be true? Well, of course, it was.

I wasn’t attached at the time. I had a job that I could leave when I wanted to. There was some kind of chemistry going on between us.  Plus, he was really the kind of man I’d been looking for –  minus the married part.

“Does your wife know about you wanting to have a mistress?”I asked him.

He took a sip of scotch and then shook his head.

“Do you think it would hurt her if she found out?”

“Probably,” he said. Then he added, “Would you be available to go away on a last minute’s notice?” He talked about his business trips to Boston. New York. San Francisco. Chicago.  “Of course,” he said, “You’d be on your own during the day. But I’d take you to the best restaurants at night. We’d stay in five-star hotels.”

He ordered another scotch. “Bring the lady another glass of wine,” he told the waiter.

“I still have half left in this one.” I said.

“White wine is to be drunk very cold,” he said.

After that first date, he kept sending me e-mails through the online dating site where we’d met, telling me how much he was attracted to me. To think about his offer.

I can’t say that I wasn’t tempted. But I was afraid to be hurt. What if I fell in love with him? And then all those family holidays I would have to spend alone knowing that he was with his wife. Maybe other women were able to do this but not me.                                                                               click here for source:

Andrew, ended up being another one of my characters, this time in a novel which I’m writing titled The Dating Club.

One often hears: write what you know and so I fictionalized my experience and gave it to Suzy Paradise, a fifty-ish woman in my book who would qualify for a graduate degree in online dating if there were such a thing. Here’s a short excerpt:

“I’m looking for much more than sex,” Suzy responded and wished him good luck although she wasn’t at all certain that she approved of what she was wishing him luck with.

“You don’t have to stop looking for a man for yourself,” Andrew wrote back. “When you find him I will respectfully fade away. Would that be acceptable? I want to be part of your life now.”

She wrote back: “What if I fell madly in love with you? Then I would be in real trouble. I don’t want to take that chance.” She clicked the send button and off it went to Andrew’s in box.

He wrote back almost immediately. “I might not be the man who breaks your heart. A man who is single is just as capable of doing that. I don’t want to let you go. Do you know how hard it is to find a wonderful woman?”

That evening when Suzy went to her yoga class she took a good look at all the women surrounding her.

Thirty women of all ages and shapes and all wonderful in their own unique way depending from which angle you looked at them and how open your heart was. She rushed back from class, switched on her computer and wrote to Andrew, what are you talking about?  Wonderful women are not hard to find. They’re all over the place.

click here for source

She then called Missi and told her about Andrew.

“I hate men who are too much of a coward to take a position,” Missi said. “They’re not happy in their relationship and they’re too weak to get out of it.”

“At least,” Suzy came to his defense, “he was honest about it.”

“Honest in his deceit,” Missi said. Of course, Missi, who’d been cheated on by Max and had had that awful experience with a man who brought her for lunch to his ex-wife’s country home, would think like this. “Keep in mind, Suzy, that he’s a cheater. It’s not as if it has happened accidentally. He purposely went online searching for this. He’s not that great a guy. Keep looking elsewhere.”

I know this doesn’t sound like  a great first date but sometimes you learn things about yourself and how you’re proud of who are and that makes it a damn great date.

It’s not always about the man. It’s also about being true to yourself.