News — Men's Life

Tag sale season is right around the corner.  My inventory is low, and I am hungry.  As the ads start to appear on Craigslist, as well as the occasional sign stapled to a telephone pole, I feel stirrings inside, and get ready for the hunt.  But not all sales are created equal, and as the season slowly begins, I have to be careful not to race right out to everything I see, no matter how tempting.  There are the wonderful sales, and the ones that are a complete waste of time.  Here is a general guide to a few types...

Date someone after you've been out of the country for a year and starved for intellectual companionship. Even though he's kind of dumpy, wears the same pair of too-tight black Levis for weeks on end, and sports a hairpiece at the age of 30, convince yourself that he’s attractive enough.  When you first take a shower at his house, ask for a towel.  When he gives you a shredded orange rag from the floor of his closet, pretend that it’s funny. Ditto for the t-shirt covered with dog fur.   Pretend the pyramid of dirty tissues you find is amusing...

I found myself (not so) suddenly single – technically, “without a partner” is more accurate – in the summer of 2014. Those who have gone through something similar know about all of the stress that goes along with a rather ugly end to a marriage that lasted more than a decade. It was a deep shock to my system, without question the worst thing I had ever had to deal with in my life, though I would soon come to see that it was better than continuing to struggle in a relationship that had become severely toxic.   I was...