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"I was at dinner the other night with two friends I went to school with, and I dropped the old-bomb about 15 times to the point where one of my dinner companions said, &amp;amp;#8220;You&amp;#x27;re not old. You have a problem.&amp;quot; I nodded my head. &amp;quot;I do, I do have a problem. I need to stop,&amp;quot; and I stared out the windows at the Europeans standing on the sidewalk smoking and thought longingly of the Marlboros in my bag&amp;amp;#8212;the descent into spinsterhood with prune-y skin didn&amp;#x27;t seem that far away. The truth though is that I am old&amp;amp;#8212;I am old in the way that I never thought I could get old. I&amp;#x27;ve reached that threshold where the perception of an age and the reality of it have collided. And all the things you thought and laughed at and assumed would happen have not. And it&amp;#x27;s OK, but it&amp;#x27;s also scary because you realize what you thought about this age and what you&amp;#x27;re actually living are so wide apart. Like right now, sitting at the bar with my former classmate in town from London, who I was still considering hitting on and hooking up with&amp;amp;#8212;even though he&amp;amp;#8217;d just dropped the GF-bomb. A friend in college once told me, &amp;quot;A girlfriend is only an obstacle.&amp;quot; But as I&amp;#x27;ve seen from experience, the longer a guy takes to mention her, the smaller that obstacle is. It had taken him four hours: a three hour dinner with another classmate&amp;amp;#8212;the one who told me to get over myself for complaining about my age and who we ditched after dinner&amp;amp;#8212;and now another hour into drinks. So the bomb was definitely not atomic, but not something that&amp;#x27;s necessarily defused in an evening. We sat across from each other at the bar, and I was smiling, the kind of wide-drunk smile that goes from ear to ear. I sometimes can go for a whole day without smiling, but put me in front of a guy I&amp;#x27;m into, and I&amp;#x27;m the f--king Cheshire cat. My hand was drumming on the table as I was debating: Should I lean over, put my hand on his arm? Do I want to do this? Do I even need to think about it that much? Well, I&amp;#x27;m neurotic, so the answer is yes, I do need to think about it that much&amp;amp;#8212;whether I&amp;#x27;m 23 or 33. Rather than getting more careful as I get older, I feel more reckless, fueled by two parts boldness, one part heartlessness, one part who gives a f--k, and a dash of desperation. Being single and in your 30s in New York is the worst cliche&amp;amp;#8212;shouldn&amp;#x27;t I be doing anything and everything I can to try and break it? A 25-year-old or 28-year-old me would have felt extreme guilt just at the thoughts I was having. The dialogue would have gone, &amp;quot;I want to hook up with him, but I&amp;#x27;m a bad person for it.&amp;quot; In fact, I&amp;#x27;ve sang this song before, after the deed. So have many friends. And let&amp;#x27;s not lie, I&amp;#x27;m certainly not the only woman that&amp;#x27;s been there. We console each other of the guilt by saying, &amp;quot;It&amp;#x27;s not your responsibility, it&amp;#x27;s his.&amp;quot; There&amp;#x27;s some truth in that, but it&amp;#x27;s not the whole truth. The difference now is not about whether I&amp;#x27;m doing something right or wrong, but simply whether this is in my best interest. The girlfriend really is an obstacle, but one I feel no attachment to. I don&amp;#x27;t know who she is. I don&amp;#x27;t know her name. I do know that her boyfriend has just ordered himself another Manhattan and is smiling back at me. So he&amp;#x27;s tempting himself, but wants me to meet him halfway. And that&amp;#x27;s where being a little heartless as I get older comes in. I don&amp;#x27;t swoon every time an eligible or ineligible man likes me&amp;amp;#8212;just like I think of the girlfriend as an obstacle, he turns into an opportunity. So I ask myself a series of questions as I twist the stem of my cherry and bob it into and out of my glass: If I go back to London and see him at an alumni party would it be awkward? Is he close friend with my friends? Do I think anyone would find out about it? It&amp;#x27;s not about doing something right or wrong, but simply whether it&amp;#x27;s in my best interest. &amp;quot;Come on, don&amp;#x27;t you want another drink?&amp;quot; he asks me. I grin and he grins, and I swirl the ice in my glass, clink his, and tip it back and drain it. Woozy! I smile slowly. &amp;quot;I should go.&amp;quot; And I did. As I walked home, I wondered what would have happened if the night had gone the other way. I kept imagining a boulder in the middle of the road and straining to roll it out of the way. So much potential effort for so little gain. I guess that&amp;#x27;s the good part of being older&amp;amp;#8212;I don&amp;#x27;t imagine everything coming up roses the next day. In fact, I know the next morning would be awkward, and that&amp;#x27;s what I want to avoid as much as any potential fire-and-brimstone ramifications for coveting thy neighbor&amp;#x27;s man. Maybe this is what maturity is. Saying no, when I very easily could have said yes. I just never would have thought that these were the situations I would be saying yes or no to, and where I am consciously and unabashedly choosing my own self-interest obstacles or no obstacles. The writer blogs at Lean In Fall Over Get Up Repeat. Have you ever considered hooking up with a guy with a girlfriend? What happened?"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/sex-love-life/blogs/smitten/2013/07/when-a-girlfriend-is-just-an-o>