Dating is so complicated at this stage. We’ve got emotional scar tissue from umpteen years of living and loving. We’ve got nerves. We’ve got the practical obstacles of baked-in structures and demands, familial and geographic. Too often, we just can’t break through. But then sometimes we do.
Debbie is 60-something-year-old, filmmaker/writer/director living in Long Island, New York.
“When I met John, I had not dated in almost 20 years. I was 47 at the time and was on Match.com and a bunch of other sites and I got many, many responses. I felt like I had to answer everybody so it was like a full time job. But after a while, I would see the same people and they would use the same old photo even though they had become decades older.
I was very selective. I think I got 100 responses and spoke to just six of them, and met four. I made a list of exactly what I wanted. But I wasn’t feeling anything. So I cancelled all the sites. It was just too much work.
A month after I was off, John reached out to me on a site that I had not been on in a while. It was one of those sites that’s free for women but men had to pay. He should not have been able to see my profile but somehow his email came through. I figured he was either really smart or he was a jerk. I didn’t think he was my type but we arranged to meet for coffee at a Starbucks. We both hate Starbucks but it was the closest place to us. As it turned out, John was living a block from my godmother. We told each other we weren’t ready for anything serious; I was almost divorced and he was separated. I had such a horrible marriage that I made myself a deal that I wouldn't get serious with anybody for about three years.
So we had our first date. Then our second date. And I don’t know that we said we’d be exclusive right away but it happened that we saw each other like every night. I might have seen those other four guys in that week and I told them I had met somebody I liked and I stopped seeing everyone else. John and I haven’t been apart since.
We were together for only about two or three months and I didn’t have a cell phone. John said, ‘Let’s just get a plan together.’ That was our first big commitment. A year later he moved in– at my 12-year-old daughter’s request. I didn't think I’d ever get married again. I think the only reason we did it was that we went through a lot of stuff. I had gotten sick and John went into his pension and handed me a check for $5,000. Then he got sick and was in hospital for a week and everyone just assumed I was his wife and we decided we really wanted to take care of each other. Then a friend of mine said, ‘If you two want to be married, you can use my house on the water.’ Another friend from Phantom of the Opera on Broadway said he would sing at my wedding. Another friend owned an Italian restaurant. So we got a tent and that was it. Now we’re together for like 20 years– though it took me 10 years to say ‘yes’ and another three years to stop calling him ‘boyfriend’!
Back when I was the Nassau County Film Commissioner, I would never date in the industry – I just didn’t want to – because it’s very easy to be used. John, at the time, was teaching at a school in Queens. A self-described ‘Yale educated construction worker’ with a Broadway background, John ran a lot of scene shops for Broadway and Off-Broadway. So, when I started making my own movies, he started as production manager. He took gorgeous photos and said he’d really like to be a DP (Director of Photography) so we got him a camera and now people are hiring him all over the place. We work together and apart. He’s like my Swiss army knife filmmaker– wherever I have to put him, he can fit!”
Indeed, filmmakers Deb Markowitz and John Marean are the perfect fit. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a wrap.
The Crush Letter
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