I was reading Shichi’s first blog and she was asking if somebody ever joined any online dating service.
Well, I did.
It happened soon after my divorce got officially finalized. One year and half ago in September i went to my lawyer to sign the papers. In October I started to look for some serious dating service.
I felt like I needed to do something. You know, your ex husband of 18 years has left you and has remarried 3 months after your divorce is still fresh and you are there thinking... and now?
Now was empty, scary, confusing.
It was a period of sudden decisions and fast regrets, flipping through bad memories and shutting music and movies and pictures. Shutting myself down. Completely. I was only working. I was only survinging. I was afraid to remember too much. I was afraid to move. But I needed to move from that place. I thought that only forcing myself i would have been able to leave that cold and lonely place and meeting other men would help me in getting as fast as possible away from that ”Now”.
I didn’t even know what I was really looking for. I thought that looking for friends was not enough (I already have friends), a long lasting relationship seemed appropriate. But was I looking to marry again? I didn’t really think so. But juts in case I checked that box too.
I shopped around and I restricted my choices to 3 sites. I didn’t start with the right foot, I have to say. The first site refused my membership. I spent 30 freaking minutes filling up all their endless requests. I mean, they were asking even if I liked to read in bed! (Which I do).
I though that if they wouldn’t have find me a man after all that extensive load of information I gave about me her where else? They would match you even to the size of your shoes or the breed of your dogs. A little too much for my liking but I was determined to give it a try. It was also the most expensive of the 3 sites. Bet they have to gain back the money they spent in that guy who actually made up all those questions.....
Well, they sent me an email and gently refused my money. I found out only later that it was a Christian based online dating (what the heck, it was e-Harmony). Oops, I though, no way I was going to find a match there.
So I passed to the second one. This one was serious as well, organized, with instant access to thousands of profiles but with dating services is like with books...their covers might be inviting but the reading is not that appealing. So I left there only a profile but no pictures.
I thought there was no way they would respond without even seeing my face. Wrong. Evidently my profile was enough for a lot of men. The emails started to swamp my mailbox. I’ve naturally restricted my research to at maximum of 50 miles around my zip code, But surprisingly some men were writing from Alaska, New York, Hawaii, even Seattle. How did they ever think possible to start a relationship being so far? Mystery. (I have found out that indeed is very possible....).
I decided then to give a try to the last site. I posted my profile without pictures again. I wanted to browse around a little bit. I have to confess: I was kind of nervous to put my face right there. I was feeling too exposed.... Probably my unconscious was telling me I wasn’t ready at all.
But, and I am not exaggerating this, 20 minutes after posting my profile I got an email from a guy. I was so excited, My first online pretender. He was providing profile AND pictures. He sent me a nice short email asking me to check both and write back in case I was interested. He said he simply got stunned by my descriptions in my profile. He had to try if i was interested as well.
DC was really attractive. And his profile was wit, funny, sincere, intriguing, he was a dork driving a sport car.... lol.....He had a Law degree c/o Berkeley and was teaching at one university here in my area. He was 10 years younger than me. He didnt care about my age. He had a son of 8 living with his mom in Colorado. He was fun, smart, loved to do crossword (like me) and play bridge, definitely a geek with an attitude (I like this kind of guys). I decided to give him a chance so I wrote him back and we started to email almost each day. Well, he naturally asked for a picture.. it was more than fair...i’ve already seen his face after all....so I decided to finally post my pictures in my profile.
While emailing him I started to receive tons of emails from other men.
It seemed i became even more popular from night to day. I felt like a popstar....lol... The biggest portion of my men were younger than me....i even got an invitation to dinner from a 21 yrs old guy...no way, thanks you...Most of them were divorced, only 3 had lost their wife due to disease, 90% had kids, nice jobs, and many of them traveled. I mean, I don’t know how many of them wrote they have been at Cancun....suggestion to single gals: maybe this is the right post for us...lol...
But you know after reading all these profiles and go through all those pictures you learn to read between the lines. You start noticing the details. The pictures are the most important tool to dig for clues. When the man was surrounded by lots of friends, or was photographed in some work environment or in recognizable tourist place or hugging kids or animals, I was more willing to click back to their invitation to talk. Dating online opens your eyes to the reality of the basic between man and woman. You go instinctively for the person who is appealing to the eyes. The selection is brutal. Since you have tons of choice you get picky. Or it could be that if you are picky (like I am) going through the selection is pretty easy. I basically knew who I wasn’t going to email back. I knew who was the kind of guy who could have been a possible date for me.
Combining the look and the word they used to describe themselves and their world was the part more interesting of all the process. Spotting the fake was exhilarating.
You won’t believe how many men posted pictures of 20 years earlier talking like they were still exactly like that person...you can actually see from their clothes, the glasses, the hairdos that their pixs are NOT from last year and yet..... Its also amazing how many men think that starting a profile with “I had no idea it was so difficult describing myself” might be appealing for a woman. I can’t count how many profiles started in this way... . If you don’t even know how to put together few lines about you how can you even hope I might find you interesting enough to get out with you?
Some men are simply pathetic: they talk about eternal love after their THIRD emails, They try to woo you with poetic phrases that are simply hysterical. They ask you to talk and when you politely answer saying “no thank you” (and you write it by yourself, not even using those standard phrases the site provides you) they get mad. One guy called me old maid and told me he was getting out with a 18 yrs old girl and so fuck you...I’d simply told him I wasn’t thinking we had very much in common.
Oh well....weirdo and psychos are everywhere
But dating service are not a community like SC: the main goal is meeting in person. And soon. So after one week of exchanging emails is usually time to meet. Here the people is not looking for friends. They are looking for the love of their life. And they want it soon.
DC and I decided to fit in the average time. First we talked at the phone to arrange the place. I told him I was going to meet him in a public place, naturally. He chose an Italian restaurant in a city between mine and his place. I told him I was showing his pix and profile and giving his phone number to one of my friends so she would have known where I was. He said it was perfectly fine with him. I couldn’t believe how smooth the process was evolving.
I kept telling me that DC would have probably been a boring, arrogant guy, somebody completely different by his description or that he wouldn’t have liked me. Even though, i thought, I would have gained experience for the next time. I just wanted to challenge myself.
I had something to proof to my self and to the man who had left me. I deliberately was not having any anticipation for the dinner. I was expecting us to talk, eat and shake our hands saying goodbye forever. I wasn’t nervous at all. Actually, when I stepped out of my car that night I was feeling great, sexy, confident. I was also thinking: if only my ex could see me. In my mind i was walking toward a disaster with a big smile on my face.
How wrong I was...my first date with a man met through a dating service turned out to be simply great..
I arrived on time. And he was already there. I appreciated this detail. I hate to wait. We recognized each other immediately. Great: he didn’t lie. Actually, he was even more handsome than in photo. He confessed me he thought the same of me....He was confidently waiting for me at the door of the restaurant and when he spotted me a huge smile appeared on his face. I felt myself smiling too. Our conversation went on fluent from the beginning. He had a curious mind, an interesting life, and his humor was even similar to mine, on the dry, sarcastic side.
But I was still waiting for a goodbye after dinner. Instead he asked me ‘Where is that Italian ice cream shop you were talking about? Lets go to have a gelato”. He got me there. We would have gone with his car and when finished we would have come back to my car.
I went to the bathroom to have extra minutes to think about it. I thought. “That’s it. Am I going or not? Why dos he want to take his car?”. But I have always lived following my gut. And my instinct was telling me to go, not to be paranoid. So I said yes, let’s go to have a gelato.
It was a hot night, even though it was October....he was driving like an Italian, fast and confident. At the creamery we kept talking no stop. He started to ask what about a second date? Are you free next Friday?
He touched me slightly on my cheek while trying to move some hair from my face. I said yes. I would love to. So we drove back. He helped me out of his car and before I turned to leave he took my face in his hand and kissed me.
Even his short kiss was great.
And so this is the story of my first online date.
I have been disgustingly lucky, isn’it?
We went steady for one month and half until Thanksgiving. Then he told me that he was moving to Austin with his job. He said he didn’t want to because he really liked me but that job would have meant more free time for being with his son. That was it. Our relationship was way too fresh to even think to ask each other any sacrifice on traveling or long distance dating. I wasn’t ready for something like that...... I couldn’t come back to live alone in a relationship...not so soon...
I was sad. I really liked him. He combined a great sexual attraction (that we never completely satisfied anyway) and intellectual challenge. Too bad. Danm Austin. But I didn’t cry.
My friends kept insisting that I needed to go back in the game as soon as possible. I was wiser now and I could cut shit like butter. I couldn’t let my depression to jump on my back again....
So I started answering again to my many emails. I felt like a kid in a candy store.. I had tons of men asking for a date. I had only to choose one.
And so i picked KB. Again younger than me but only of 5 years, 2 teens daughters who were driving him nuts, two very demanding and lucrative jobs. A story of abusive marriage where he had been the abused one. A sad story of raising his daughter all alone because their mother was mentally instable and left them. Again, extremely intelligent but more sophisticated than DC, he was very into movies and arts. Avid runner and avid reader. Stressing out to the highest level but desperate for human contact. He was coming from a 3 years relationship ended the year before.
We got hooked on a wine comments I made. He loved wine. I mentioned in my email a label he didn’t know yet so he asked me” Where are you going to make me try it some of it?”.
We met this time in the foyer of a very hip trendy movie theater specialized in indie and foreign movie. I asked him to meet me close the b&W picture of Marcello Mastroianni. KB loved Fellini. How could I say no?
This time I was even less nervous than the first date with DC. I put my heart in relax mode thinking I was surely not going to have such again the luck I had with DC. Impossible to strike twice so soon. And indeed I was right.
But this is another story.....like the other stories still to come.
