And it all becomes clear....

SO IT WORKED!!! Marion added me as a friend. The irony. I can't believe how easy that was.

Of course, the first thing I did was check out her birthday. September 1979. 1979!!! I was right. She is 29. Not even 30 yet. A Child.

Can I just say -- WTF!!!???

What's even more hilarious here, and really very deceptive on the part of Berlin, was the fact that on our first meeting, in an offhand remark, I told Berlin that I couldn't even imagine dating someone under 30. He laughed and nodded in agreement.

It went like this: Somehow the discussion came around to children - I don't really remember how, but it may have been that he asked me about my marriage, and I said that one of the reasons I finally decided to leave was that I realized that I couldn't imagine starting a family with him.

"Do you think you will ever want to have children?" I asked.
"One day," he nodded, "eventually."
"Well I guess you'd better get to it, or start thinking about dating someone a lot younger." I laughed.

Remember, at this point I thought he was 38, just four years older than me, not 41. If I had only known.

"The thing is, I can't even imagine dating anyone under 30," I said. "I mean really, what on earth do I have in common with someone in their 20's?

He sort of gave a chuckle. A snort of sorts. He nodded his head and made a noise which I took to mean that he AGREED with me, that he also wanted a partner somewhat closer to his own age. I guess it wasn't an agreement. It was a smirk. It was him laughing to himself and thinking "if she only knew that I am really 41, and dating a 29-year-old."

He NEVER ONCE, in two whole months, mentioned that she was nearly 13 years younger. Because of that first reaction, I always assumed that she was in her 30's. I simply assumed that she had her Ph.D. and was here on some sort of post-doc or sabbatical or research grant. Jesus. When I found out that he was 41, I even wondered if that was too old FOR ME. My husband is 44, and I always thought that the 10 year age difference was perhaps a part of our troubles. That maybe he hit the milestones of his life at points that were out of synch with mine. That perhaps I would be better of with someone whose musical influences were Michael Jackson, The Bangles and Madonna - instead of Pink Floyd, The Who and Queen. Someone who grew up in the 80's, and not the 70's.

But Marion doesn't even remember the 80's. She is a child of the 90's. What am I saying, she is a child.

From what I could tell, it looks like she has her medical degree from Germany, and is doing her residency in Berlin. Interesting. Berlin (the person, not the city) is planning on going to medical school there. He barely speaks German, and yet he knew an awful lot about the German medical school system, and seemed oddly confident that it would not be a challenge to get accepted to this fairly prestigious European medical school.

I mistook this confidence for arrogance. I didn't know he was sleeping with one of that schools doctors. A man sleeping his way into medical school. Hurray for the feminist movement. Europe really is much more progressive than America.