Recently, a man I love unilaterally decided to retreat from a relationship I thought we were building together.

Turns out, he didn’t have the capacity to show up completely like I was, so he needed to pull back—not just from us, but from society in general.

I get that. Things feel bleak. Dystopian, even. There is something seductive about that romantic urge to disappear into the metaphorical forest and re-emerge someday, after the world has finished burning to the ground.

For one terrible moment, I considered burying myself in the ashes, too.

No, he didn’t want me to go back into Reclusive Single Mode, which is where I’d been for six years before we connected. If anything, he wanted the opposite for me. That’s the entire reason we’re currently incompatible.

I see the present dystopia as a challenge to overcome. He experiences it as a catastrophe he fears will destroy him.

I wanted to team up.

He wanted to run.

As a natural-born people-pleaser and fawn-responder, I instinctively started to mirror him after the breakup.

Turn inward, Jaye. You know you wanna.

Cancel things. Enter your “Winter Arc.” Resume the self-optimization grind of becoming so healed that everyone who ever hurt you will Rue The Day™️.

Thankfully, I recognized the pattern and stopped it.

I don’t want a revenge body and a filtered social media feed.

I want a life that is full and is mine.

Full of bullshit or full of grace—at least it will be full.

Maybe somebody worthy of sharing its sweetness—and bitterness—will show up. And maybe, when he does, he will stay.

Or maybe he won’t.

I have to be okay either way.

I am writing this at fifty-four years old and single again. Getting out there at this age is hard.

But I did it.

We did it.

Now that he’s gone, I am heartbroken, angry, disappointed, grateful, loving, and—inconveniently for the narrative—still intensely alive.

Fuck Hermit Mode.

The Empress Card has entered the chat. 🔮👑

Last night, I was pacing my apartment, ranting telepathically about how stupid he was being. And selfish. And how he is a fifty-one-year-old man behaving as though the village elders have carried him to the ice floe, where he must now nobly remove himself from the tribe and contemplate the burden of his advanced age.

Sir.

You are fifty-one.

Your “elder” and ex is challenging you to a duel at dawn.

I was so fucking furious with him.

I missed him.

I still loved him.

And then, somewhere in the middle of the sorrow and rage, I caught myself expanding.

I became inexplicably joyful.

I’m not relieved the relationship is over. The joy wasn’t proof that I had quickly moved on and become healed before bedtime—that I’m some emotional Princess Mononoke capable of riding wolves and saving the forest before morning.

The joy came from recognizing that I had truly shown up. I had been 100 percent present for a relationship without abandoning myself.

And then the thing I feared happened:

He dumped me.

But I was still here.

More than here, actually.

I was Leveling Up. 🍄

That was the joy.

When I first reconnected with this man—someone I’d known for over a decade—I agreed to meet him for dinner simply because he asked.

I wanted to be unafraid and just say yes.

I followed my curiosity.

And the rabbit hole led somewhere magical, with another tender, goofy, sexy, beautiful human being.

Until it all went *poof!* 🐰💫🎩

But for once, the disappearing act—and the abandonment wounds it triggered—did not destroy me.

I remain a whole-ass person.

A sweet-ass person, if you know what I mean. 😈🍑

He is allowed to retreat.

I am allowed to make reservations.

So the next day, I took myself to brunch.

I Took Myself to Brunch | 50+ Solo Dates | TheKeyOfJaye.com

I went to a local farm-to-table diner—the kind of place where I can trust that the food in front of me was cultivated and prepared by people who care whether it actually nourishes someone.

And the meal I ordered tasted like care.

Not #selfcare.

Actual care.

Community. Passion. Love.

Someone grew these scallions in the restaurant garden. Someone collected these eggs from a local chicken I choose to believe was happy and had a name. Someone knew exactly how long the potatoes needed to remain on the griddle to develop those dark, crispy edges.

Then someone brought it all to my table and asked if I would like another cup of coffee.

Yes.

The answer to that question is always yes.

Love can be found in so many places, big and small—and sometimes especially in the small.

At another table, a group of middle-aged women appeared to be gathering for some kind of reunion breakfast. I don’t know their story. I don’t know how long they had known one another or how long it had been since they were all in the same room.

I only saw the way they hugged.

Warm, unrestrained, I am so happy you’re here hugs.

Watching those women welcome one another reminded me of something I forget whenever I’ve spent too much time looking at the news or falling through YouTube’s latest parade of apoplectic, apocalyptic clickbait:

The world is not one enormous antisocial-disorder convention.

Love is everywhere, Fam.

Every-fucking-where.

People are still delighted when someone they care about walks through a door. Women are still finding one another across years, distance, and busy lives.

There is still sisterhood.

There is still community.

There are still warm embraces happening over breakfast while someone at a nearby table quietly witnesses them and remembers that the world contains goodness.

I had brought along one of those little local newspapers filled with community events. As I looked through it, I became aware—maybe for the first time in a long while—of just how much there is to do around here.

When you look.

Music. Markets. Festivals. Classes. Performances. Strange little gatherings organized by people who thought, Wouldn’t it be fun if…?

The world had not emptied because my relationship ended.

It was right there, handing me a calendar.

Life Expanded… | 50+ Solo Dates | TheKeyOfJaye.com

I wanted to pick up my phone and share something with him approximately one hundred times.

I wanted to show him the sign outside the diner that said:

“Fall is my second-favorite F-word.”

Fuck yeah, it is.

I wanted a world in which he was sitting across the table from me, holding my hand. I wanted a full autumn with him, glorying together in the crisp changes and cooler weather.

Maybe that world exists someday.

Maybe it doesn’t.

I don’t know.

But one thing I do know now:

Heartbreak and expansion can occupy the same body at the same time.

That is where 50+ Solo Dates begins.

I’m going to take myself on at least fifty solo dates.

Some will be fancy. Some will be ridiculous. Some will be free. I might go to movies, museums, arcades, restaurants, concerts, classes, festivals, gardens, and peculiar local attractions I’ve somehow never visited.

Some dates may be transcendent.

Some may be terrible.

Some may produce profound revelations about love, solitude, aging, friendship, desire, bodies, belonging, and what it means to be a middle-aged woman taking up space in the world.

Some may teach me that I paid eighteen dollars for a mediocre sandwich.

This is field research. 🤷🏻‍♀️🥪

I’ll document what I experience, witness, and think about along the way.

No, I am not positioning myself as an expert who has “solved relationships,” now buy my course.

I just hope you might learn something from what I’m learning—and enjoy the observations along the way.

This is not a project about proving that I don’t need anyone.

I do need people.

I need friendship, community, intimacy, conversation, laughter, touch, witnesses, accomplices, and women who hug one another like they cannot believe their good fortune.

This is about refusing to treat solo life as the waiting room between relationships.

It is about remaining in relationship with my own life while my heart is broken.

It is called 50+ Solo Dates because I am a woman over fifty—and because fifty is not a limit.

The plus sign means more.

“Fall” is My Second Favorite F-Word | 50+ Solo Dates | TheKeyOfJaye.com

One 50+ woman. Fifty-plus solo dates. No waiting around for someone else to start living. Join me here for the journey.