Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign.
[00:00:07] Hey. Hey. This is Tracy. Welcome to flirting. After 40, not too much has happened this week. It's been fairly quiet. I think with Valentine's Day. Nobody wants to, like, hook up on Valentine's Day unless you're together or even the weekend after there's this lingering meh of Valentine's Day. So mine was uneventful.
[00:00:32] I had lunch, a working lunch with a friend, which was lovely. And then I came home and I cleaned out my underwear drawer. Very, very exciting things here.
[00:00:49] You know, I. I don't know about you, but as a mom, as just a working woman, I rarely have time to do those kinds of things.
[00:01:02] And so I was like, I'm going to get rid of all the old shitty underwear I have.
[00:01:11] You know, anything that's not flattering or I haven't worn or that's been worn way too many times, I'm trashing. And I'm going to make a point in the next couple months to buy nice.
[00:01:26] I don't know if it's lingerie, but nice underwear, because I want to feel pretty.
[00:01:33] And I was just thinking that, you know, we wear.
[00:01:39] Like, we often dress just for comfort, and. And that's fine. There's a time and place for that, don't get me wrong. But I don't know, it'd be kind of nice to feel sexy, even if no one but me is ever going to see it. When I was married, I kid you not, I shaved my legs every single day, except for maybe when it was that time of month, but I shaved my legs every single day just in case we would have sex.
[00:02:14] And I've told you guys, we have not forgotten years and years we did not have any sex.
[00:02:20] But I always wanted to be prepared. And I had this thing about wanting to be, you know, prepped and ready. That is 100 on me. That was something I undertook. But do you guys do anything like that? Like, is that weird? I think that's weird. Most of my girlfriends are like, well, he can have my hairy legs. Like, he's getting some. He should be lucky. But I just.
[00:02:47] For me, it was one of those things that I didn't feel comfortable in myself without doing it. And I'm kind of wondering if lingerie and things like that are the same. Like, if, I don't know, you build it, they will come.
[00:03:06] Literally.
[00:03:08] Oh, I don't know. I mean.
[00:03:13] So I have a mission. Be ready.
[00:03:18] Be sexy. Be ready. Because you never know. And you. You do. You never know. Like, I don't want to put myself in a Situation where, hey, let's say I go out or I'm at lunch and I meet someone and at some point I want to take my pants off, and I can't because I have hairy legs and old underwear. So I am declaring my intention. I don't know. Okay, Men don't know this, probably, but women do. Like, lingerie or underwear costs a lot of money.
[00:03:50] I mean, not all of it, but I. I got on to Nordstrom's, and I was looking. I was just putting shit in my cart online. Like, ooh, that's cute. That's cute. That's cute. And I go to. I just check my cart, like, okay, what's all in it? How much. How much did I just throw in there? And I mean, guys, I was being really good. I wasn't going crazy. And it. My total was like $820.
[00:04:22] I did not. I did not check out. I did not buy any of it. I was window shopping, I suppose. But holy shit, this is an expensive hobby. I mean, maybe this is why women want sugar daddies. I don't know.
[00:04:36] I mean, I'm not buying that. And I might have to go back to Target or Amazon for some cute underwear, but it would be nice to have a couple really quality pieces. Okay, so that's my tangent and my Valentine's Day. So I'll let you guys know how this goes and how I'm keeping up on it.
[00:04:58] So, as I told you guys, I have a trip planned coming up. And I'm. I'm taking this trip by myself.
[00:05:05] And I talk about this with people. You know, you're just, what. What's going on? And I'm like, I'm taking a trip. And every guy, okay, almost every guy that I have said this to says, oh, my gosh, I could never do that.
[00:05:22] I'm like, why? Why couldn't you go by yourself somewhere that you wanted to go?
[00:05:28] And they say, well, I'd be bored. Like, who are you gonna talk to? I'd be so lonely. I'd be bored. Like a bored, bored, bored. And this is even coming from men who don't have kids and live alone. Like, you live alone. You spend a lot of your time with yourself.
[00:05:47] So I find that really fascinating that people have this opinion of, I'd be bored. I wouldn't have any fun. What do you do?
[00:05:59] And took me back. So my first trip I ever took alone. I had been divorced for a while, maybe a year.
[00:06:10] So I went to Santa Fe, New Mexico.
[00:06:15] I don't know. It's like, A five hour drive, six hour drive. It's, you know, far enough that it's a significant excursion. This was like around spring break time. So March ish. I booked a hotel and I was telling people about it. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this trip by myself and one of my kids, friends, moms recommended 10,000 waves, which is in the Santa Fe.
[00:06:47] So I'm like, okay, I'm gonna go. It's a spa. So I'm like, I'm gonna go.
[00:06:52] I don't know what I'm gonna do. I have no plans except here's where I'm staying and I'm gonna go the spa.
[00:06:58] So I get there and I don't know the city. I don't know anybody in the city.
[00:07:06] I've never been there.
[00:07:09] Drive by myself, which I'm not. That, that wasn't phasing to me because I've done a lot of road trips by myself. But get there, check in and I walk around and you know, there's this, this sense of just being uncomfortable because you have no one to ask, hey, should we go do this? Hey, let's go walk around the streets and see what we find. There's no one there to hold your hand, to make suggestions. And at first that was really, really uncomfortable. Not having that, just that person to lean on mentally, physically, emotionally.
[00:07:58] It was weird.
[00:08:00] And that freedom that you, you have a whole, I don't know, three days and you could do anything you want.
[00:08:10] You have no kids, you have no responsibility, no dog to take care of. Three days. Name it, you can do it. And then I almost had this paralysis of, fuck.
[00:08:25] I don't know what to do. I can't just walk into that store. I can't go just sit and have a drink.
[00:08:34] It was so crazy uncomfortable. And during this trip, like I, you know, went and saw art. I did the things that I wanted to do. I went to the spa and I had this amazing meal after that was probably something that my ex would never have wanted to. It was like some kind of sushi in this beautiful Japanese garden. Anyways, he never would have wanted to do it, but it was so good.
[00:09:02] So I still was really uncomfortable. I was so uncomfortable that I cut my trip short a day. And I asked the hotel, I was like, can I just, can I please check out a day early? Like, I don't, I don't want to be here anymore. Isn't that crazy? And they said, yeah, sure, no problem. They didn't charge me. And I Checked out. And that morning I went to breakfast and I was just walking down, I don't know, Main street or whatever in Santa Fe, and there's on Yelp, this cute little breakfast place. And I walked in and it was packed. And I always hope, like, please let there be a bar that I can sit at and have a drink, have my food, so that I'm not sitting at a table by myself. Because in my head, that felt super, super lonely and vulnerable to, God forbid, sit at a table by myself. But this little place did not have a bar. And I'm like, you know what, Tracy? You have to eat breakfast. This is supposed to be the best place here. Just fucking do it. You're so uncomfortable. Just do it. And they sat me at a communal table. Might be my next biggest fear. Like, oh, God, now I gotta talk to eight people that I don't know. And I. I like, can. I can feel the anxiety even in me right now as I'm talking about it. And I sit there, and I was driving, so I didn't even have a mimosa or anything to, like, take the edge off. And there are two women sitting next to me. They're married or they're. They're so gracious. And they talk to me. And we ended up talking during the entire breakfast. And I talked to a few of the other people too, but the majority was these two women. And they didn't know anything about me. But they were so kind to just include me in their party. They were so kind to make me feel less awkward. And so I left. I ended up. Because I was so grateful for them, so I left and I paid for their breakfast. I just. At the counter, like, take care of them. And I left. I walked around for a little bit longer, and then I had almost this feeling of like, well, fuck, I shouldn't have checked out. Like, if you just do the things that feel uncomfortable, it gets easier.
[00:11:35] And that breakfast helped me see that, and it helped me see it in a different way.
[00:11:42] So I still went home. It was fine.
[00:11:46] But since then, I have continued to travel by myself.
[00:11:53] I have gone to Costa Rica, I've gone to Belize, I've gone to Mexico. I have this trip planned. I have.
[00:12:02] I've done some really amazing trips and. And I've done them by myself. I like these kind of cute boutique Y hotels that are a little swanky, and that's how I like to travel. And I do feel like it's typically couples. I don't go to these places that are like, clubby and things like that. And people staff at these hotels often ask like, oh, it's just you. Or bartenders, it's just you.
[00:12:34] Like, like there's something wrong with me.
[00:12:39] And I'm like, yeah, it's just me. And what I found is that I'm a lot of fun. I. I enjoy myself. And I have to say that's taken a really long time to get to this point. But I encourage anybody, even if you're married, even if you have 10 kids, take a night or two or just go somewhere.
[00:13:07] Go somewhere where you have control, where you get to make the decisions. You get to choose what you want to eat, what you want to do, what you don't want to do. Hell, if you want to fucking stay in bed all day, then do it. But there is a release. There is this power in owning your decisions solely for you. And that's what vacation feels like. Like, I own my decisions all the time, but I'm influenced by other people's opinions. I'm influenced by my kids or the things that I actually have to do around the house. That I never really get to just stop and do that.
[00:13:49] And vacation does that. And I'm not talking about work travel, because work travel is different. And you guys might be saying, like, no, no, no, I'm still on my own. But it's not work travel. You have a purpose, and that purpose guides you to make certain decisions. So that purpose, like you sit at the bar for dinner and the bartender says, you know, what are you here for? And you can say, I'm here for a convention, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the guy next to you is like, oh, I'm here for the same thing. And you guys can talk about that. Um, or you go to breakfast and you have a mission because you have to eat breakfast and then you have to go to do something. Even if you add on a day or two, you still have responsibilities. If you travel for pleasure by yourself, you take away all of those parameters and. And you were left kind of vulnerable and in a really uncomfortable place. And, you know, I believe that nothing good is easy. The really, really good things in life take work.
[00:15:02] And it's self work. It's not. I'm not doing this for anybody else. I'm doing this solely for me.
[00:15:13] And that is pretty freaking powerful. So my second trip I was gonna do on my own. I booked a trip to Costa Rica.
[00:15:23] I was single. And I'm like, I've never been to Costa Rica. I'm. I'm on my computer one morning Just like, fuck it, let's. I'm gonna book it. And I love TripAdvisor. I get great travel ideas from there. And I just looked up like, what is the top 10 hotels in Costa Rica or resorts in Costa Rica? And this place popped up and I'm like, I'm booking it. And it was a kind of like a honeymooners place. It was this standalone little villa that had its own pool built into the mountainside, overlooking the ocean with fucking monkeys running around.
[00:16:07] How fucking amazing. And you might be like, why would you book that by yourself? Because that sounds like a perfect romantic getaway.
[00:16:17] Which it would be. It is. But why do I have to be with someone in order to enjoy that? Why do I have to go to a fucking resort that's party club to like hook up with someone when that's not what I want to do? I want to go fucking read a book and sit my ass in the pool for five days. That's it. So I booked this trip and then I started dating Big Mike and I caved. Caved. And I was like, if you want to come, like, you should come.
[00:16:57] I've learned from my mistakes.
[00:17:00] And it's not that it was bad, but it was not what I needed. And actually, like, I was very happy to have him there because it was my first big international trip. I speak a little Spanish, but I don't. I'm not great. And there was a three hour car ride from the airport to the resort and there was a lot of new things. It was, it was, would have been very. It was uncomfortable with someone and intimidating with someone. It would have been very uncomfortable and very intimidating with someone.
[00:17:37] But what I realized during that trip is that it wasn't the trip that I wanted. Like, I planned it for me and it turned into this trip about us.
[00:17:50] And then I got resentful because I paid for the trip for me.
[00:17:57] And yes, I invited him, I paid for his airfare, and yes, you guys have heard me talk about this like that. I just don't know where the lines are. And financially I help these men.
[00:18:14] And I was like, oh, I'll get your airfare, like. And in my head I'm like, he'll pay me back or we'll square up. So we go. And the trip, it was fine, it was a good trip. But there was points in it where I wanted to do something that he didn't want to do and I did then what he wanted to do.
[00:18:34] And like, in any relationship it's give and take, but if you go on Vacation by yourself. You don't have to give. You don't have to take. You. You could just be you.
[00:18:47] And the end of the trip, we get back, or, God, it might even been on the airplane. He's like, hey, I can send you 500 bucks for the food or for the trip. You know, the food. I was like, okay.
[00:19:03] And I sat in that. And it wasn't about. I mean, right now it feels like about the money. It wasn't about the money, but I was disappointed in myself.
[00:19:14] I was disappointed that I caved and invited him. I was disappointed that I paid for it. I was disappointed then in him for offering to pay for his. Maybe not even his half of the food, because it was really expensive. Probably not even his half of the food. So I paid for the place, the flights, and more of the food than he did, and it wasn't the vacation I wanted.
[00:19:43] So my point is, do the things that make you uncomfortable. Take the trips, because you never know. And you never know what kind of growth you're going to experience in that or the kind of people you're going to meet. And that's what I tell the guys that tell me. Like, oh, my gosh, I would be so bored. I wouldn't have anybody to talk to, et cetera. I'm like, but I will talk to people. I will meet people.
[00:20:07] And who knows? I mean, maybe I'll meet somebody great. I'm not going into this trip with the idea that I'm going to meet someone.
[00:20:16] That's for a whole nother podcast of all my travel shenanigans. But you just never know what's in front of you unless you go do it.
[00:20:28] So take the trip.
[00:20:30] Take the trip alone and have a great time.
[00:20:35] Okay, so my funny. Again, not this funny, because these profiles and these messages are just. They're just kind of horrifying sometimes. I did get feedback from last week. So Sparky and I are friends. We're trying that friendship thing out, and we continue to talk and things like that. And while it's a little. It hurts a little bit to be working to get over, like, the heartache and hear about other things they're doing.
[00:21:14] But I truly believe that we can be friends and that I. I have this feeling inside of me that we're supposed to be in each other's lives for whatever reason that is. And I don't even know why I'm emotional. But anyways, his feedback on my last podcast was, I wish I. I wish I had women talk to me the way you don't want men to talk to you.
[00:21:52] Okay, so let's say that again. I wish I had women talk to me the way you don't want men to talk to you. And I was like, huh, What? Okay, what did I talk about? What does that mean? And it's why I responded with like, oh, you want someone to be, like, very direct and blunt and kind of gritty. And he was like, yes, that would be amazing. And it still, like, took me a couple days to like, okay, what. What was he referencing? What does that mean? And I think he was talking about where I. I was sharing that that man asked me out.
[00:22:29] Like, we hadn't even spoken or chatted or liked each other. And he was like, can I pick you up at your house and take you out to dinner on Saturday night? Like. And I was like, what do you know? You're psycho. Because fascinating that he wants that. I've never thought to do that as a woman.
[00:22:50] I still. Even knowing that he thinks it's cool or likes that, I don't think I would ever be that person. I mean, I'm. I'm super direct. I will have. No, I have no problem asking somebody out. I have no problem with any of that. But to just out of the gate, come swinging.
[00:23:09] No, I don't think I could do it. But I had another one this week. And he actually, like, we. We matched. Okay, Yay. At least we liked each other. And he says, hey, like, I don't know if you're a jump kind of girl, but you want to go out to dinner tonight? And I feel like I'm kind of a jump kind of person. Cautiously jump, maybe with, like, a harness. Not sexy harness, but, like, I'm not opposed to just like, okay, let's just freaking meet and see if we like each other. But I had my kids, so I said no. And we chatted a little bit longer. And he is.
[00:23:41] He had just moved out and had been separated and wasn't finally divorced. And I'm like, I just can't. I can't do that. Like, I. I can't be somebody else's first.
[00:23:55] I need people that ready for. Ready to meet their person. And I just didn't get that impression from him. But anyways, not my funny. But it's funny how this pattern now keeps repeating itself.
[00:24:11] The funny. I saw this on somebody's profile.
[00:24:16] Okay. I saw this on somebody's profile. Ladies, anytime you see a profile picture and it's a man and, like, his, like, stomach and below, and he's not shown his face or his hands or his chest, anything. You know he's cheating.
[00:24:37] His profile actually says, first of all, I'm married and not looking to change that. I'm looking for a stunt spouse. A stunt spouse, like someone that gets all the action. Wow. Fuck you, dude. I mean, wow, your poor wife. And like I said, you guys, not funny. But this is the that is out there. I'm gonna try to find more. I swear I've. I'll find some funnier ones for you guys in the future. But for that, for tonight, that is all I have. So thank you guys for listening. Please follow. Please give a Like Please share this podcast I'm gaining a little bit of traction and it's kind of fun and I think there's a lot of people out there that are in this same boat with me and I want to hear about it. So thank you all and have a lovely day.
