COMING MARCH 2006
Sometimes a girl just can't kiss any more frogs.
By Susan Rose
Sam Emerson was never very interested in getting married. Who has time when there are cute young boys to kiss? At the age of thirty-seven, with her twentieth high school reunion months away, Sam is feeling some pressure to find a husband ‹ fast. Okay, maybe just a hunky boyfriend. Whatever. She just needs to show up with something yummy on her arm to make all the cheerleaders jealous.
Sam's challenge? Well, there are many. First, she lives in the suburbs where it is actually illegal for interesting, available men to spend their time. Second, she never goes out, so unless Mr. Right is going to come knocking on her door, it is unlikely she'll meet him. Last, but not least, Sam really sucks at relationships. That makes having them very hard.
But she's determined. The past few years were hard on her:
Her mother died and she moved back home to be near her father, who then moved
to Florida. She started working for a certifiably crazy person. She gained
thirty pounds. And, worst of all, she's officially in her late thirties. How
the hell did that happen?
Sam deserves to have some good stuff happen. And good
stuff does start happening for her. She finds a new job, loses that weight, and
has great friends who do nice things for her. But she still doesn't have a man.
She met one, the perfect one, on
her thirty-seventh birthday. Sean McLane. Tall, dark, handsome, and emotionally
unattainable. Sam's dream man. For the first time in her life she could see
herself married. Too bad he'd rather run off to New York and leave her sad and
alone.
Sean's departure couldn't have been more ill-timed. Sam
learns of her friend Alanna's engagement and, worse, her own impending
twentieth high school reunion. Yikes. She can't possibly show up at the reunion
single. That would be like admitting she hadn't accomplished anything in the
last twenty years.
She allows herself a brief bout of depression about losing
Sean, which her good friends Iona, Kate, Liz, and Gwen help her defeat by throwing
her a bachelorette party ‹ the perfect excuse for Sam to let strange men in
bars lick her neck. She even gets to wear a tiara. Fortified by a night of
wanton debauchery, Sam settles down to the business at hand: finding a man.
By now Sam is panicked. It's January. She has wasted
precious time mooning over Sean. Okay, she started a new job and spent some
energy being a grown up professional, but she now has only ten months to find a
date/relationship/husband. Sam is on a mission. She is determined to find a
man. Then she'll never have to deal with this dating crap again.
Her girlfriends, aided by sister Josie, help her identify
man-meeting opportunities, everything from Internet dating to fix-ups from
friends. Over the course of the next eight months, she dates like crazy. And
she meets a few charming, great guys. But the relationships don't work. And Sam
doesn't understand why. Her friends are able to meet great guys and actually
date them. She knows she's cute and nice and fun, all the ingredients that men say they want. So what is the
problem?
It takes a failed relationship with another Sean to open
Sam's eyes. She knows she's doing something wrong, and she's going to keep
doing something wrong if she doesn't figure out why. She once heard the definition
of insanity is making the same choices over and over, expecting a different
outcome. Could she be doing that with men?
Confused, sad, and junked up on caffeine and sugar, Sam
makes a matrix of all the characteristics of every guy she's had some sort of
relationship with to find out what they all have in common. The results
surprise her. Because when it's all laid out in a well-organized spreadsheet
that she can sort by data field, it is crystal clear what she's been doing wrong
all these years. And now she has to do something about it.
Well, nobody ever said self-actualization was easy. But
they agree it's well worth the effort.