I was at my usual banquette table at Cipriani catching up with my dear friend and fellow gala charity chair, an impossibly blond and glamorous socialite. She looked up, over her grilled salmon and leeks. “Do you have anyone for my friend Leanne? Her divorce just became final.”
I recalled a lithe brunette who looked good in Lilly, making the rounds of the Hamptons charity cocktail circuit along with her pint-sized now-ex-husband.
“Is she realistic yet?” I asked.
“I think so.”
“Good.” I sipped my Bellini.
My friend and I, while an unlikely matchmaking duo, have been informally setting up divorced friends and “children of” on the Upper East Side for years, with solid results. We always say we should charge a commission for our dating service, but that temptingly profitable idea would be too déclassé.
Our biggest challenge, time and again, is matching up middle-aged divorcées in the “pre-realist” stage, who have not realized that they have a choice of sex, money or companionship —but not necessarily all three in the same package.
“How did she make out in the divorce?” I asked my friend.
“All I know,” she revealed, “Is that the husband made her include her Birkins as part of the settlement.” She added: “At the current retail price.” Bien sur!
“She most likely will want the money, then.” I paused, Rolodexing in my head the range of the newly wed and nearly dead. As I gave the hand signal for the check, I thought of a few years’ divorced friend who could use a chatelaine for his manor, and she was an ideal prospect.
“Oh yes, I think I have a good old-fashioned septuagenarian billionaire in Palm Beach for her. Not exactly scintillating, but his real estate portfolio has a personality all its own.”
“Perfect,” she said. “I’ll call her with the good news.”
A few years back, I co-wrote a fairly well-known relationship book for women called Closing The Deal; the premise was that two married men’s advice could help turn single women into deal closers. While we had no formal training as relationship experts, we just implicitly understood that if women understood men better, they’d have a better shot at closing the deal. Knowing your audience is always key, whether personally or professionally, and we offered advice on topics from hygiene to foreplay.
Where most rich divorcées fail is in assuming they can replace their husbands with a newer model pretty much like the old one. Sorry to say, this tends not to be the case. Most of the time, the divorced well-to-do male is not looking for his equal, but rather for a sexretary from the Midwest, preferably without an opinion. As one recently divorced hedge funder told me: “Being married to a smart, opinionated woman is work! Now I just want tits on a stick, a blonde wig and someone to tell me I’m great when I get home.”
Women who take a tough line often wind up lonelier for it. At a political fund-raiser, my wife Dana and I were chatting with a well-regarded financier’s ex-wife, who clearly exhibited pre-realistic dating tendencies. She laid out her requests like the Marshall Plan: “My age or younger. I won’t date a geezer. Rich—the richer the better. Sexy. Okay, let’s just cut to the chase: my ex if he had abs and a personality.”
“Don’t you think you shouldn’t have a list?” Dana asked innocently.
“That’s for other people,” she snapped.
She is still on the prowl.
by Richard Kirshenbaum, NY Observer | Read more:
Image: (Illo: Brian Taylor
I recalled a lithe brunette who looked good in Lilly, making the rounds of the Hamptons charity cocktail circuit along with her pint-sized now-ex-husband.“Is she realistic yet?” I asked.
“I think so.”
“Good.” I sipped my Bellini.
My friend and I, while an unlikely matchmaking duo, have been informally setting up divorced friends and “children of” on the Upper East Side for years, with solid results. We always say we should charge a commission for our dating service, but that temptingly profitable idea would be too déclassé.
Our biggest challenge, time and again, is matching up middle-aged divorcées in the “pre-realist” stage, who have not realized that they have a choice of sex, money or companionship —but not necessarily all three in the same package.
“How did she make out in the divorce?” I asked my friend.
“All I know,” she revealed, “Is that the husband made her include her Birkins as part of the settlement.” She added: “At the current retail price.” Bien sur!
“She most likely will want the money, then.” I paused, Rolodexing in my head the range of the newly wed and nearly dead. As I gave the hand signal for the check, I thought of a few years’ divorced friend who could use a chatelaine for his manor, and she was an ideal prospect.
“Oh yes, I think I have a good old-fashioned septuagenarian billionaire in Palm Beach for her. Not exactly scintillating, but his real estate portfolio has a personality all its own.”
“Perfect,” she said. “I’ll call her with the good news.”
A few years back, I co-wrote a fairly well-known relationship book for women called Closing The Deal; the premise was that two married men’s advice could help turn single women into deal closers. While we had no formal training as relationship experts, we just implicitly understood that if women understood men better, they’d have a better shot at closing the deal. Knowing your audience is always key, whether personally or professionally, and we offered advice on topics from hygiene to foreplay.
Where most rich divorcées fail is in assuming they can replace their husbands with a newer model pretty much like the old one. Sorry to say, this tends not to be the case. Most of the time, the divorced well-to-do male is not looking for his equal, but rather for a sexretary from the Midwest, preferably without an opinion. As one recently divorced hedge funder told me: “Being married to a smart, opinionated woman is work! Now I just want tits on a stick, a blonde wig and someone to tell me I’m great when I get home.”
Women who take a tough line often wind up lonelier for it. At a political fund-raiser, my wife Dana and I were chatting with a well-regarded financier’s ex-wife, who clearly exhibited pre-realistic dating tendencies. She laid out her requests like the Marshall Plan: “My age or younger. I won’t date a geezer. Rich—the richer the better. Sexy. Okay, let’s just cut to the chase: my ex if he had abs and a personality.”
“Don’t you think you shouldn’t have a list?” Dana asked innocently.
“That’s for other people,” she snapped.
She is still on the prowl.
by Richard Kirshenbaum, NY Observer | Read more:
Image: (Illo: Brian Taylor
