I may be pushing threescore but I married late in life--I will celebrate the tenth anniversary of my first and only wedding in March--and I still remember what it's like out there.
At your young age, you think you've got girl-problems? Try it in twenty years or so when they come complete with baggage--a kid or three, an ex-husband or two, at LEAST three failed affairs (one of which was with her boss
)--you get the idea.
The point here is that you have to just take things as they come. I offer an example: my late mother took great delight in setting her single son up with single women she met in her day-to-day. She had health considerations, so the women with whom she set me up were frequently in the medical profession (if only as the receptionist).
Once she set me up with one of these women. Age compatable, we agreed to meet at a Mexican restaurant close to her home. I had a beer while I waited for her then carried it to the table when we were seated. When the server came, I ordered another with my meal. She didn't.
It turned out that:
1) She was a Christian (at the time, I wasn't).
2) She hated guns because her late husband had killed himself with one.
3) She didn't drink because he was drunk when he did it.
Talk about baggage...
All of this came out in the hour or so it took us to eat the meal.
On the other hand, when my wife and I first started dating, the subject came up and I said I had a couple of guns (a .45 pistol and a 12 gauge shotgun) and I hoped to get more, and if that was a deal-breaker then we needed to know now. She told me that, while she didn't particularly LIKE guns, she had nothing against them, as long as they weren't laying all over the house, loaded.
Her conversion from gun-ambivalent to a shooter and gun owner is the subject of another thread.
The moral here is to let the topic come up naturally (don't worry, it will) and above all LISTEN to her.
Gook luck and good hunting...
ed
