Some People Flip Real Estate. I Flip Men.

Give me a fixer-upper and I’ll turn him into someone desirable — for someone else.

I am a man flipper. I meet a man, fix him up and flip him to someone else. Unlike people who flip real estate — buying houses, renovating them and selling them for a tidy profit — I see no gain from this arrangement, only loss. I don’t want to be doing this, but something attracts me to men who are emotionally withdrawn, and I have a talent for drawing them out. For their future wives and girlfriends, apparently. I once saw a meme about the “dating pool” in midlife that featured an empty swimming pool with lawn chairs and debris blown into it. I laughed because it was so true. I never expected to be dating again in my 40s. I thought I had avoided this fate when I married in my 20s.