DesertEyes

That is exactly what happened to me. To be fair, everybody told me to take at least a year off before I started dating again, for all the reasons mentioned by other members. I waited a few months, met a lovely, delightful woman where we had _instant_ chemistry, and were off like a rocket to the moon.

I got lucky, she is a very kind and gentle person whose husband had just passed away. We were both "rebounding" so hard we could have become NBA super stars. We spent most of our time crying in each others arms and not doing much of anything else. There was nothing "normal" about our relationship because _we_ were not normal. We were deep in the grieving process of losing a decades long marriage to somebody who had been taken over by pain meds after a terrible medical condition.

Today we are really good friends, even BFF, with our separate lives.

Or "bad girls"

A little over a year after my first adventure in dating-land I thought I was ready to try it again. Not than anybody in my support group agreed with me, but I'm a slow learner and this young lady I just met was _different_.

A "bad girl" is just a person who has some "red flags" about them. What makes them "bad" is that _I_ have this character defect where the "red" just looks rather "pinkish" to me. It's not _that_ serious, I told my sponsor, if she keeps going to her therapist she will change. All she needs is a little support in her recovery.

uh-huh

And yes, it does involve leather jackets. She's an ex-marine and member of a biker club. Ok, so it's a clean and sober biker club, which is why it's only a "pink flag" and not a red one. She has a problem with rage.... "anger management issues" after running that thru my red to pink converter. That therapist? Yeah she did make an effort to go, sometimes.

By the way, I am not a biker. I am a really boring guy with a job in the insurance industry. I had never even _met_ a biker before, never mind a club. I have learned that the overwhelming majority of bikers are really nice people just like anybody else, it's just a few criminal groups that give them all a bad name.

We both really tried, she just was trying in a different direction than me... and I was still in need of some more step work in al-anon. Her uncle felt sorry for me, he took me under wing and mentored me in the whole biker lifestyle.

That lovely biker chick and I didn't make it as a couple, but we are now BFF. I'm working on my "pink flag syndrome", as my sponsor calls it. I know that if I go out with somebody, and there's something not quite right about how the evening is going, it's not about _her_. It's because _I_ am not understanding something about _me_ and how I approach relationships.... and that maybe I need to do a little bit more work on my own "codie-itis".

And the leather jackets? OMG but I will never be the same after going out with this woman in full leather.... I had _no idea_ a woman could look so good.

* is thinking self needs to get to a meeting tonite *

Mike