Sunday, May 27, 2007

Seeking Love Online

Saw Jane tonight at Third Place Book read excerpts from her wonderful new book. Had some dinner and talked about, what else, 50-year-old dating dilemma, which brought us to her latest post on Huffington Post about Seeking Love Online. Remember my little rant about what dating has come to? --- Does a 50-year-old woman have to date someone 30 years older than she is so HE can be dating someone of his age range/preference? Pathetic and shame on 50-year-men who will not date someone their own age.

5 comments:

phlegmfatale said...

You know, there is something vaguely satisfying about the Anna Nicole Smiths of the world who find the old rich ones, ride 'em hard and put 'em up wet. Let the old goat die happy and used.

I think there is something very wrong with how people go about looking for potential partners, because there are so many great single men and women out there who seem to have major difficulty finding each other. I think irrational expectations play a role. Let me tell you one great place to meet men - Diners. There are a couple fantastic diners in Dallas, and you are seated at a table with strangers. Men always engage me in conversation, and I KNOW I could get a phone number from a goodly portion of them, if I wanted. I think women need to change the way they look, and again - perhaps alter their expectations slightly.
The very idea of those match.com type things make me want to kick someone.

phlegmfatale said...

Oh, meaning - I think women need to change HOW they seek out potential partners, not that they need to change the way they look.

Anonymous said...

How sad is that? Thanks for the interesting read.

Wendee said...

Yep.
Online dating - But, when you work til 9 pm, where are you 'sposed to find new people? My thought was that it just helped me sort throught the thousands of guys in the area, and it did. Thousands of faces, and you just have to go.. "Nope! Next!"

I've found that you have to really know who you are, know what you need in your life, and be honest in expectations. And be patient as well as open-minded. If you want to meet a lot of people casually, you can do that. Sadly, there are a lot of slimy people out there online, both men and women. Men looking for younger women; people looking for others with very specific salary minimums; women looking for sugardaddies; beautiful people looking for other beautiful people. This is LA, after all. The best was the paraplegic guy in NC (talk about cross-country relationships) that 'winked' at me whose profile said that he wanted a nice-lookin' woman who would cook, care for him and his 11 y/o son and stay at home on his remote property. That creeped me out. At THAT point, I thought, "OMG. Tell me that that's not the only person I'm appealing to here. Is there no hope?". Yeck! THAT was discouraging.

There are a lot of honest, nice people, too, looking for a deep connection and a soul-mate; takes time to find them. They could be at the diner, on Match, on the trail, at the market, who knows?

I managed to have three first-dates in about 8 months. Clearly I wasn't appealing to too many guys in my ... uh, county ... (discouraged sigh), AND I was also being pretty particular. The first two, it was pretty clear I didn't want anything to do with the guys. At that point, I decided to be really vigilant about just waving off the ones that just had absolutely no potential ... on paper, online, or on the phone. Feh. The third first-date was the last. Turns out he was as strong, sensitive, intelligent and creative as I'd been hoping for. And more. So much more.
I'm getting dreamy-eyed. Sorry.

I know that it isn't for everyone, and I'm not sure I'd recommend it as the only way to meet people. But, I can say this much: without Match, I wouldn't have met my guy. And, for that matter, if it weren't for the internet, I wouldn't have gotten in touch with so many other nice people, bloggers who I've met in person, as well. And I'm particularly and mindful of the bloggers I meet in person as well, mind you.

With respect to older men wanting younger women - I found it to be almost universal. Kind of irritating. But, frankly, at 40, I quickly discovered I wanted to find someone that was secure in himself and just mature enough to handle a really deep relationship. And one easy way to screen for that was to just put in a slightly older age range for my searches. The guys at 40 just weren't even close to that, emotionally. It was kind of irritating and frustrating, but I decided to go with my gut and just not worry, just not spend anymore emotional energy being angry about the ones that would, right off the bat, exclude me from their searches for being too old, short, fat or whatever ... and save my energy for ones that would be interested in, for starters, my brain, wit, compassion. So my guy is 49; it isn't an issue. He is just the RIGHT fit and we're both grateful that we were both in the right frame of mind and place in life to be ready for the each other.

So you never know.

Anonymous said...

I met this couple last week who started dating through AOL Personals:

http://personals.aol.com/baby-boomers-love-dating