"Just face it, dad, there is no way any woman, let alone an attractive woman, is going to want to date you."
"You're just too old, dad. You're past it."
"And there's your beer gut."
"And your clothes. I mean, they are so... What's the word?"
"Crap?"
"Yes, that's it. And there's the dog. No woman is going to come near our house, let alone your bedroom, with Albus barking at her."
Enough already!
My boys are generally laughing with me, not sneering at me, when they say these things. But they do have a point. About everything but the beer gut.
It's been about a year since my ex and I went our separate ways. It's been a while if you know what I mean.
I have been on a couple of dates since my divorce, with friends of friends. They haven't been much fun though. On one, the woman I was meeting decided to bring her PA with her as a chaperone. The PA was great fun, which is more than can be said for my date...
On the other date (really, there have been only two!), I turned up at a pub to meet a friend of Dave's. There was a woman standing alone at the bar. I went over and bought her a drink. There were no awkward silences and my tongue wasn't too tied, I was doing OK. And then I felt a tap on my shoulder.
"Er, excuse me, but I think we are supposed to be on a date." I couldn't argue with the new woman on the scene - she looked like she could have competed in WWE. The only thing that got stiff on that date was my upper lip.
If truth be told, it's about time I put myself back in the shop window for real now. No more excuses. No more "it's too soon", or "I've got to put the kids first", or even "I'll write a book about it instead of doing it for real".
So today I sat down and wrote out my dating profile for a UK internet dating site (because that's where I live; not because I just have some strange fetish for British women).
Until this last year, I haven't been single for twenty years. Back then, internet dating was for extroverts and perverts. I was only one of those things so I didn't try it.
But now, what the hell, everyone's doing it, right?
What to include in my online profile? Do I mention my boys? Do I mention the divorce? Do I mention the dog? And what about my fashion sense, or if my children are to be believed, my lack of it.
After staring at my laptop for hours with a bottle of beer in hand, I decided that I am "a not bad-looking guy in my 40s who loves a good meal and a beer, enjoys travelling, sometimes with his dog; sometimes without, and who comes with baggage - but don't we all in our 40s?"
That profile is hardly going to win any awards for originality, but it is just me OK.
I was about to press 'submit' when my boys walked in.
"And what's this reference to 'baggage'," my fourteen year-old asked, "are you referring to us?"
Ben Adams is the author of 'Six months to Get a Life', the not autobiographical at all tale of a dad's attempts to sort his life out after his divorce.