Ah, the bad behavioral patterns that we developed from the time we were a child that followed us into early adulthood, our marriages and our mothering. If you're not careful you will find yourself slipping. And when you're in the moving beyond phase of your divorce, you have to be on the look out for the ghosts of bad behavior from your past.

At 51 I think it's a little late to blame who I am and what I've done, at least in the last decade of two, on my parents. They tried. They did their best. But, it simply wasn't enough. If you're somewhere in my age bracket, then you were raised by the children of the Great Depression. Hell, my mother was born in 1930! Our parents felt that if they clothed, fed and sheltered us, we were good to go. They had no way of knowing how introspective we would all eventually end up becoming.

It's Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs — there are six levels with number one being the most basic, food, clothing and shelter. Six is Self Actualization. Our parents did not have time to consider the meaning of anything outside of paying the mortgage, cooking, working, cleaning. But today, in the throws of the Information Age, we are all searching. Self-help books and DVD sales are at all-time highs.

But, the bottom line is this: We want to love and be loved. However, the exact process to find this Nirvana has eluded us. We're divorcees. Give me a break. Our marriage failed us. We failed our marriage. We walked away for lack of emotional or financial support. We left because of infidelity. We scrambled out barely with our lives in tact.

However, the last thing we need to do is to repeat wrong behavior. If we had become a door mat for our husbands, a "yes" woman, a punching bag — either verbally or physically (me), we need to make sure we're not sliding back into that. Ever.

If you were married to one very particular type of person, say, the deer head on the wall, lifetime NRA member redneck type, then it would stand to reason that you just might want to step outside of your regular pool of male types and go for something exotic.

Perhaps an African-American instead. Yep. That was sort of my mind set when I finally decided to have sex again after being divorced and removed from Stinky for a year and a half. And younger. Yeah, that's the ticket. Let's see I am 49, so what about someone, say, 23 years younger than me. Yep, again. That might just work.

Well, my dear FWW'ers. It didn't. In fact it was quite the disappointing fiasco. Naturally, we'll keep the names out to protect the innocent. Or is it the guilty? Ah, well.

God love him, he was so young and inexperienced, but very drawn to me, and, naturally, I was loving the hell out of that. He pursued me, and let's just say that I didn't resist. I mean, he was a living doll, and he was young and virile, or so I thought.

It was Jan. 1, and I'd heard that whatever you do the first day of the New Year is what you'll do the most of for the rest of the year, and it damn sure was not going to be laundry! So, I took the plunge. Of course, I did have to drink a couple of glasses of wine to get my courage up, then I just showed up and we had sex.

It wasn't horrible, but it needed much improvement. Unfortunately, the second time was twice as bad, and I just decided to throw in the towel, dress and go.

He wanted me to help him, and he said I could be his teacher. Well, women, I have to tell you that being a young man's teacher just doesn't have the same appeal at 50 that it did at 40. No, really. It doesn't.

I'm right back at that place where I want somebody else to "knock my socks off." I've been working for years at pleasing others, and now, now it's my turn.