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Dating in NYC: Love and Real Estate

Date: March 16, 2015
Author: julietjeske
Categories: Dating, Dating - NYC, Dating After 35, Dating After Divorce, Relationships, Single Life, Uncategorized
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I’ve lived in New York City now for fourteen years. I’ve been single for the past six, and I started searching for a co-op about a year ago. I couldn’t help but notice the eerie similarities between hunting for real estate and looking for love. Both are rare and precious commodities. New York City’s vacancy rate hovers around 3% and never goes above 5%.  About 3/4 of all apartments are rentals, leaving only the remaining 1/4 available to buy.  Most of the apartments on the market are co-ops that require financial gymnastics, and approval of an overly scrutinizing board. Even if you find an apartment in your budget you still have to get  80% financing and then impress upon your soon to be potential neighbors that you’re a low risk addition to their building.

Dating here is not much better, especially for single women.  New York City has 150,000 more single women than single men.  It might not seem like a huge number in a city of 8 million but it’s enough to throw off the odds a bit.  To make things worse most New Yorkers work long hours, live scattered over five boroughs and have little disposable income to throw away at dating. I’ve found it’s best to not get too emotionally attached to any one partner or property.

I once was the only person to show up at an open house for a cute prewar newly renovated studio in prime condition. Just as I was about to start the long and arduous process of making an offer, an all cash buyer walked in before I had a signed contract and snapped the property out from under me.  I watched in horror as the same scenario happened again with other properties.  In dating, I’ve had a few amazing dates with men who seemed almost perfect only to have them vanish without explanation.  My text messages went un-answered, my emails ignored and I never knew the reason.

I couldn’t help but see the similarities and the heartache that went with both, so I devised a glossary of sorts of common terms used in NYC real estate listings and how they equate with the dating scene in New York City.

Prime Location = Is the trip between Astoria and Bushwick worth it? Can a man in the Bronx find love with a woman in Staten Island? Is Queens to New Jersey even possible? Finding someone on the same subway line = prime location

Low Maintenance Costs = Cheap date

All Cash Buyer = Partners that offer everything up all at once with very little drama and no strings attached. The downside is they could flip you. Just as quickly as they find you attractive, they’ve moved on. They can just as easily make another offer as quickly as they made the first.

Unit has pre-existing long term tenant = Married.

Board Approval Required = Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn – everything dissected and analyzed for risk assessment. Are you friend’s with an ex? Is your job stable? Do you post NSFW videos, sports clips or cat memes? How many friends do you have? Are your tweets too personal or do you post political rants? Do you change your status update 20 times a day? Do you hardly ever check your profile? Are your photos of landscapes, or of your family

No Board Approval Sponsor Sale = The person either doesn’t know how to use the internet or doesn’t care. No questions asked as long as you fit the criteria. You are dealing with a risk taker or at last someone over 50 who doesn’t understand this thing called “the internet.”

Move in Condition = Easy going personality, no glaring compatibility issues, similar hobbies and interests.

Needs TLC = Major emotional baggage – divorce, nasty breakups, children from a previous marriage. – Anything that might need fixing or at least managed.

Pet Friendly = Deal breakers or selling points depending on your allergies or your furry friends.

Building has Bad Financials = A date has bad financials – no job, huge debt, poor credit

Seller is Seeking All Cash Buyer = Just someone looking to hookup

Lack of Inventory = Are you a woman over 35? Then you know exactly what this means. Most men in your age group are married or at least coupled up. You’re going to have to look a lot harder for what you want, or settle for someone much younger or older.  It’s not as a big of a problem for men.  If you’re wondering why, it’s called babies, biological clocks and a patriarchal culture that values younger women over older.   Although no one is immune, both genders can have unrealistic age standards when it comes to dating.

As impossible as the New York Real estate market is right now, I’ve had far more luck finding a new apartment, then a partner.  Let me rephrase that for emphasis.  I’ve actually had an easier time finding an affordable apartment in a year than I have finding a partner in the nearly six years I’ve been divorced.  I’m not even kidding.  In my search for an apartment I had the help of an attorney and real estate agent.  I also looked EVERYWHERE from the far reaches of Brooklyn, to Queens, upper Manhattan and even parts of the Bronx.  I called and emailed at one point about 25-30 agents and saw as much property as I could possibly fit into my schedule.  There wasn’t much on the market in my price range but I viewed everything within reason.

I’ve basically tried the same approach to dating in that at this point I’ve probably been on at least 25-35 dates.  Most have been awkward and painful and a few men have had full blown meltdowns.  I’ve been out with men who complained about their ex-wives the whole time, bragged about their drug use, openly insulted me, or expected sex on the first date.   The vast majority of emails I’ve gotten on online dating websites have been from men under age 25 or guys looking for no strings attached sex.  Most of them men who do contact me never follow through with a date. So far nothing has worked, and I haven’t gone out with anyone for more than two or three dates in over five years.

For now, I’ll just settle for the apartment of my dreams rather than any prince charming.  Real estate is more stable anyway, it won’t have a midlife crisis and leave me for a younger seller, develop a substance abuse problem, grow mean and bitter and blame me for all it’s shortcomings, develop a gambling or ignore me and go play golf.  It may not cuddle at night but it will increase in value, and in the end I might get lucky and unload it to an all cash buyer.  I certainly couldn’t ask for such certainty with a new boyfriend.

My whole real estate search also made me ask some questions about myself.  I’m definitely a pet friendly unit with good financials and low maintenance, but one that needs some TLC.  I’d also say my board is fairly strict and rather picky of any potential candidate but the opportunity for a long-term investment is solid.  Now, if I could just find the right buyer, I’d be all set.

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Dating after Divorce – The Fairy Tale is Over

Date: July 30, 2011
Author: julietjeske
Categories: Dating, Dating - NYC, Dating After 35, Dating After Divorce, Uncategorized
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I tell my mother almost every time we speak.

“Mom, dating is just a different game when you are divorced and over 35″

I left my husband because after a total of nine years together, seven of which were as a married couple, he came out as a homosexual.  I really had no choice but to end the marriage, and one of the worst things since leaving him has been what feels like a life sentence of being alone.  Again, I know that sounds bleak, but dating in New York is difficult, dating in New York after being divorced and over the prime years of your life is next to impossible.

The real differences that I see are in my friends that are about a decade or so younger than myself.  Many of which are now getting engaged, married or moving in together.  They have that youthful giddiness and excitement that is rare in people past a certain age.  Not to say that being 38 is old, because it is not, but it isn’t the same as being 28.  My friends who are approaching marriage all believe that they will beat the odds.  They look at their partners with that look of pure love and adoration in which all of their problems will be solved through this perfect mate.  Both men and women get like this and it is a sweet thing to see.   But the same quality is rare in those of us who have lived a little bit longer, and had what we thought was the relationship to last forever, crumble before our eyes.

Even though I don’t look my age, I openly admit that I am 38 to anyone who cares to know.  I know as a performer I should try to keep this secret, but since my career consists mainly of performing in bars, I don’t really worry about the public knowing the year of my birth.  It’s not like I am losing jobs because of my age, as I am not getting much of anything offered to me to begin with.  And I look at it this way; I have lived a life, I am not a young kid and I don’t hide it.

My problem with dating, is that at first I had the expectation that it would be just like when I was in my twenties.  Men would be more excited and enthusiastic about wanting to date me, they would have higher expectations about the relationship and once committed it might last at least a few months.  But what I have found is men that are too wrapped up in their own divorce dramas, too busy raising children from a previous marriage, too involved in their jobs, or just too jaded to feel vulnerable enough to commit to another person.   I can only speak of my own experience, but I hear the same thing from men about divorced single mothers, or divorced women.

And then of course there are those that I have written about before on this blog.  The men and women who are just not the committed relationship partner type, and never will be.   They are in their early forties and have never lived with a partner much less been married or engaged.  For multiple reasons such as, personal preference, demanding jobs, lifestyle habits, personality problems, or simply the love of being single they will never marry or commit to one partner for any length of time.  Then there are all of those age appropriate men that are married or in a committed long-term relationship and aren’t going to be single any time soon, if ever again.

So given this, I have had to readjust my expectations of dating.  It is an extremely difficult adjustment for me but now when trying to date I have come to expect the following

  • Expect to see the person less, than I would like.
  • Expect the relationship to fall apart with very little warning – It seems the older people get, the quicker they will abandon a relationship they don’t think is working.  At least that has been my observation from my own experience and my friends.
  • Realize that a potential partner might be overwhelmed with caring for children, so much so that I don’t get the attention I used to getting in a relationship
  • Have to help the partner deal with their own sense of loss from a divorce
  • Help the partner deal with anger or an ongoing war with their former spouse or girlfriend.
  • Learn not to rely on a partner for as much emotional support as I was used to in my marriage
  • Expect more guarded, and wounded people in the dating pool

With all of these obstacles it just comes down to a position of how much can a person deal with, and what is worth it for the bigger picture.  So a new guy may not call me every day, but is that so horrible?  And I may only get to see him once a week or even less, but as I am a busy person myself, do I need to see them more?  I have to take every man on a case by case basis, what is tolerable and what is unacceptable.

And honestly when I look around at my circle of friends I tend to see this pattern over and over again.  The younger couples have the excitement I remember from my early to mid-twenties.  While the older couples seem more practical and subdued, they also seem to date less.

It is as if as a divorced person we don’t believe in fairy tales anymore because our own fairy tale for whatever reason was destroyed.  So a partner may not consume our lives and hearts and minds as they did when we were younger.  I no longer expect a man to fall “head over heels” in love with me anymore.  And I don’t know if I necessarily want that anyway, because at one point in my life it is how I felt about my husband.  And that enthusiasm is exactly what blinded me to reality that he kept so carefully guarded.

I know there are exceptions, and some people really do get amazing romances the second or third or even forth time around.  I haven’t seen a lot of evidence that it is going to happen for me and I am not expecting it anymore.  But I can’t completely give up hope, at least I am not looking at the situation with rose-colored glasses.   And as I say all the time

“Dating in your late thirties after a divorce is just a different game”

I just have to learn how to play it.

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