Lifestyle
L.A. Affairs: As a divorced mom, I was conflicted about dating. Until I met him
I was three years post-divorce, with a 12-year-old son and a newly adopted puppy, living in Park La Brea, where a community of single moms had come together. We were all free from the burden of marriage and entertained the idea of “getting back out there.” None of us had ever really dabbled with dating apps. We took the plunge together and began sending profiles of potential suitors around. We’d hype each other up for dates and then share hilarious post-date stories on group calls.
I was conflicted about dating. After my marriage had failed, I discovered I needed a lot of solo time to regenerate myself with regularity. I also didn’t want to bring anyone new into my son’s life for fear that he’d think another man had become my priority. I thought it would be fun to take a lover, but nothing serious. Ideally I could get dressed up once a week and go to a great restaurant or experience something fun in the city with zero expectations for the future and no strings attached.
My first app date was coffee with a drummer from a Midwest band I regularly saw in college. The conversation consisted of him endlessly name-dropping and asking zero questions about me. That made me ruthless in my swiping, inevitably resulting in corny app messages including “There are no more bees in your Hive.”
My three red flags for profile photos were: no photos on a step-and-repeat; no photos with a celebrity; and no photos cheers-ing with a drink. I had zero interest in dating anyone obsessed with stars or fame. Try steering clear of those in this city.
The idea of dating again had me sobbing to a girlfriend while driving to my next date. She reminded me of my dating plan by saying, “It’s just one date.” Expecting the worst, I was surprised instead to meet a successful entrepreneur and triathlete with sexy curly hair, an empty nester who lived in the suburbs an hour north of L.A. We had matched because he happened to be in the city, and my five-mile radius setting allowed him to appear. However, we came from worlds apart.
Him: Married young, clean-cut professional, impeccable dresser, no TV watching, a generous philanthropist, up at 5 a.m. to work out daily. He was a go-getter, a ball of energy, and he knew virtually nothing about pop culture. He was an adult man with a retirement plan, which made him sexy.
Me: Married later, unconventional creative type, tattoos, a lover of colorful trendy clothes, a free spirit and, after decades of wild partying, sober.
We found each other equally fascinating. We were dating outside our boxes. It was intoxicating.
I had declared that I didn’t need a man or a relationship, but this guy was different. This magnificent man kept showing up with flowers, leaving sweet cards, washing my car and filling my fridge. He did what he said he was going to do and always picked up my calls. A giver, not a taker, he showed me how to be a true partner in a relationship. Bit by bit, I was falling in love, and our chemistry was euphoric.
But even with all that, it soon became a game of Tetris, lining up the windows of time to spend together and where work, friends, parenting and solo-time pieces fit into the puzzle.
One date turned into three years of adventuring, monthly travels, new restaurants, cities, family weddings and concerts. He still drove into L.A. once or twice a week and most weekends, adding 240 miles and six hours of travel to the weekly grind. There were casual conversations about the future and even living together. I was committed to getting my son through high school. And then my life would be my own, so my typical response was: “Life will be wildly different in three years, and we’ll figure it out then.”
We got more intertwined in each other’s lives all while trying to compromise and negotiate the appropriate amount of time together. I have a firm quality-over-quantity mentality, while he craved a full-time partner to kiss goodnight and wake up with every morning. I continued to try to find more time for us to be together, and he reluctantly adjusted to not living together or seeing me every day. We coasted this way for a while, but the lack of focus on future plans became more glaring. It became obvious to him that I did have a plan. But it didn’t include a man.
When my son leaves for college in two years, I plan to put some dents in my bucket list: spontaneously travel, do volunteer work, sail the seas, visit friends and family — to be “free” in the sense that I would have no other significant person influencing my decisions.
My boyfriend was exhausted from remaining hopeful that I would want to settle into domestic daily bliss together, and it became clear that scenario might never materialize with me. We found ourselves at a crossroads and ultimately ended it.
It’s easier to end a relationship when someone’s cheating or betraying you, which has been my experience. But when you’re with someone healthy, loving and emotionally present, more is at stake. Giving up something because the timing is off, coupled with the persistent desire to maintain your original wants and needs, takes courage.
We’re only a couple of months post-breakup, and neither of us regrets the decision. It’s been sad and hard with a zillion reminders of each other. However, there is a spectacular life to live out there and all kinds of ways to do it with or without a partner. I get to decide, not because I need someone but because I want someone. We had to follow our instincts and be true to who we are.
We met up for a final dinner to exchange items and made a future date to circle back and see where our journeys have taken us. Maybe then, the timing will be right.
The author is the co-founder of the Good Things agency (Instagram: @goodthingsteam) and lives in Hollywood.
L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.
Students walk on the Stanford University campus on March 14, 2019, in Stanford, Calif.
Ben Margot/AP
hide caption
toggle caption
Ben Margot/AP
When Theo Baker arrived at Stanford University a few years ago, he joined the student newspaper, following the path of his journalist parents, Peter Baker, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, and Susan Glasser, a writer for The New Yorker.
Through his reporting as a student journalist, he eventually broke a story about manipulated data in Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s neuroscience research that helped lead to the university president’s resignation.
Theo Baker’s book, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University was released May 19. In it, Baker describes Stanford as a place where proximity to Silicon Valley gives rise to a parallel system of influence, recruitment and money, with investors looking to identify promising students almost as soon as they arrive on campus.
He told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep there was “a sort of Stanford inside Stanford,” where elite students are drawn into an “alternate reality” of excess and access to cut corners.
In the interview, he discusses how Stanford is not just a university but also a pipeline where status and power can matter as much as ideas.
We reached out to Stanford University for comment and have not heard back.
Listen to the interview by clicking play on the blue box above.
The scoreboard shows the results of the women’s singles final match between Iga Swiatek of Poland and Amanda Anisimova of the U.S. at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday, July 12, 2025.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
hide caption
toggle caption
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
Fifteen points in tennis? Nice. Thirty, 40 — even better. Advantage — that sounds good. “Love” — that also must be great, right? Well, not quite.
As the French Open rolls on and Serena Williams has announced her return to the sport, maybe you’ve been paying a little more attention to tennis. The sport’s scoring system is notably distinct, and can sometimes be hard to grasp for newcomers. But even tennis aficionados might not know why, or how, “love” became the unmistakable callout for zero points. For this installment of NPR’s Word of the Week, we’re exploring how a word that signifies trailing behind got such a sweet name.
“Love” comes from the heart — or an egg?
It’s hard to pinpoint when the first tennis ball went over the net. Tennis is a derivative of lots of other sports, such as “jeu de paume,” a handball game played in France, said JT Buzanga, the collections manager at the International Tennis Hall of Fame museum.
But tennis became a patented, official sport in 1874, said Steve Flink, a journalist whose tennis coverage got him inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It has retained its unique, mysterious scoring system ever since.
“By and large, the original system has held up almost entirely,” Flink said.
The use of “love” goes back to the late 18th century, said Jesse Sheidlower, a lexicographer. But it was used earlier than that in card games such as whist and bridge. Before the term made its way to tennis, the sport favored plain old “nothing,” or “nil,” he said.
Why love in the first place, though? Historians don’t really know for sure, but there are a few theories.
The French could have something to do with it. Some historians believe “love” derives from “l’oeuf,” which means “the egg” in French. Because eggs are shaped like zeros, terms such as “goose egg” and “duck’s egg” have been used in other contexts to mean zero, Sheidlower said.
It’s also possible English speakers mispronounced l’oeuf as “love.” But Sheidlower isn’t convinced that’s the answer.
“It’s the French equivalent of an English expression. But since that expression doesn’t appear in French, the French word wouldn’t have been used,” he said.
To be sure, France has had a lot of influence on tennis culture, Buzanga said. For example, “deuce” or a game tied at 40 points, comes from the French word for “two”: “deux.” But he prefers another prominent theory: that “love” comes from the idiom “for the love of the game.” Even if a player hasn’t scored, it doesn’t matter, because their heart is in it. It’s the theory Sheidlower said is the most plausible, because the idiom was used by the English before tennis was popularized.
Another variation of the “love of the game” theory is that the word could have come from the Dutch “lof,” or “honor” — or the Latin “amare,” meaning “to love,” Flink said.
But if tennis’ “love” doesn’t come from a French word, the theory at least has a French sensibility.
“I think the ‘for the love of the game’ is kind of romantic,” Buzanga said.
“Love” probably isn’t going anywhere
Tennis used to be a sport of leisure. The style of play has changed a lot over the years; players are more athletic and competitive, for instance, Flink said. But the rules of the sport are more steadfast, he said.
“There’s this incredible, enduring respect for tradition in tennis,” he said. “Changes are not made easily.”
There has been one major change in modern history: the tie-break. Matches can go on and on because players have to score two consecutive points to break a deuce, or by two games to break a tied set. But the onset of television meant matches would have to get shorter if the sport wanted to capture a larger audience, Flink said.
Change even came for “love.” An alternative sprouted up in the 1970s, and is still used today: “bagel,” named for its zero shape, Sheidlower said. Novices may say “zero,” and insiders will understand what they mean, but they “will needle them about it,” Flink said.
But “love” still prevails.
“People kind of like it,” Flink said. “It’s different. Why say zero when you can say love?”
-
Montana3 minutes agoMontana Republican Party called on to end GOP fighting • Daily Montanan
-
Nebraska15 minutes agoNebraska Basketball To Renew Missouri Rivalry in Kansas City for Non-Conference Matchup
-
Nevada18 minutes agoWashoe DA GOP primary is winner-take-all because of 2015 law signed by Gov. Sandoval
-
New Hampshire23 minutes agoMore businesses would be exempt from a key state tax under a proposal heading to Ayotte’s desk
-
New Jersey30 minutes agoNew details on plane collision on New Jersey Turnpike
-
New Mexico33 minutes agoNew Mexico sues Kalshi over allegedly allowing unlawful sports betting
-
North Carolina38 minutes agoMom driving 111 mph crashes car with 3 kids inside, 2 killed, one in critically injured, NCSHP says
-
North Dakota45 minutes agoArmstrong applauds federal funding for upgrading coal infrastructure, including Antelope Valley Station
