On-line dating adventures after Divorce

On-line dating has been around for quite a while now. My ‘single’ status has not, though. So here I am forced to seek out a stranger to welcome into my life. I have to say that this goes against everything that my parents warned me about. “Don’t talk to strangers and never get into a strangers car. This also applies to Uber and Lyft services. 

I have to say, I always thought it would be more fun browsing who else is looking for that elusive soul-mate, that unicorn… but no. It was not like that at all, I joined eHarmony (a 3 month subscription). I did the 100 question quiz thing that they use to find your matches. I finally got to the. part where you get to like or eliminate people who closely match you and your answers.

This part is the part that I don’t like. I start to feel really shallow. I feel badly for giving people the “X” if i don’t  them. If I’m not attracted, ok, can’t help that (but still feel bad). Click “X”. But when I really feel badly is when someone sends me a message and I am not interested. Now I’m forced to either ignore the message, or respond and reject someone. Geez… I’m not cut out for this. 

All that to say that by the first night, I had not found anyone that caught my attention. Two days later, i cancelled my subscription. Unfortunately, they would only allow me to ‘not renew’ the subscription after 3 months. So I guess I’m stuck with it. I’ll check on it once a week to see if anything interesting pops up.

My co-worker mentioned that she uses the dating feature on FB. I decided to try it. I created a profile the other day. i was worried that my FB friends and family would find out that I was using the dating feature. But when I starting filling in the profile, there was a pop up that said that FB would not match you with anyone in your friends list. So I felt a little relief and continued on.

Fast-forward – profile filled out completely, added recent pics, started browsing. I put the age range of 47-55. I am 51.  I started browsing. There were more attractive looking men on this platform, however, I noticed that on some of the profiles, it would notify me if we had mutual FB friends.  So, basically, if someone were to see that we have mutual friends, they could possibly contact the mutual friend and mention that they saw me on the dating feature.

I guess its not THAT big of a deal, but I like to keep my love-life pretty private until I am in a serious relationship. So fast forward again. Yesterday, someone sent me a  and he was pretty cute, so i sent him one back (we ‘matched’). This morning, I see that he sent me a message. It said “Hey, weren’t you in [catholic youth group] with Brother Benny?” I opened his profile to see that we had 4 friends in common.  I figured ‘Ok, fine. Its whatever, I’m not gonna trip over it. Let’s see what happens.’ I go back to his profile and read it a little more carefully this time and come to find out that he went to the same high school as my ex-husband’s brother who is only 2 years older than us. It was a small catholic school for boys so the chances that they know each other are in the high 90% range. I will feel it out for the next few days, I guess. I just would rather not have the subject of my ex eventually come up in conversation.

I think I’ll continue to post my adventures nightly. I have a feeling this is going to be a bumpy ride. I’ve had the desire to start journaling again and this is just what my writer’s block needs! LOL