An Insider's View on Internet Dating for the Single Mom

Last year, after a thirteen year relationship, I became a thirty-six year old single mother. The idea of dating was just—well scary. Where in the world would I meet people that matched my interests, people that I could have a real conversation with, people who weren’t just coming up with the latest pick-up lines while sloshing beer on the bar? I would have never thought I would turn to the Internet to meet people, nobody that knows me would have imagined it and many of them either laughed or became extremely worried that I had lost my mind. “You don’t know who these people are, they could be murderers.” Well, my theory was that I could just as easily meet and be charmed by a murderer in a bookstore as I could online but at least online I had a better chance of weeding out the freaks before I actually met them. So off I went into cyberspace looking for that new friend or even better my perfect match. I searched through various dating sites to see which ones looked like the most promising. (Many sites allow you to browse to some extent for free but you have to pay to contact anyone) After spending countless hours staring at nice looking men and reading what they liked I realized that this was not going to be as easy as it looked. Most people had the same basic things written in their profiles and my job was now to try and find the ones that stood out a bit…ones that caught my attention right away. I finally settled on a dating site and sat down to write my own profile…it turned out to be very short and right to the point. I already knew what I wanted out of this; merely to meet people, see what was out there. My profile was accepted, my picture posted and within hours my dating site mailbox was slammed. There was no way I could answer everyone, and soon found out that it wasn’t expected, I only answered the ones who sounded interesting. That whittled the pile down significantly. The back and forth e-mails on the site began as I slowly learned the tricks to keep my day job and still be able to enjoy the “dating scene”. I finally found a few people that were worth the time to call and made my first phone date. The first one went wonderfully and we talked for about an hour and made another phone date time for the following night. There were some that were very quickly weeded out of the interesting pile once they started talking, but I was still left with a few and those ones really were great to talk to. I was having fun and looking forward to my phone calls but now it was time to go the next step—meeting face to face. The first one I started talking to was the first one I was going to meet. I wasn’t really nervous about meeting him which surprised me. We had agreed on the phone that there were no expectations, just two people meeting for dinner, if things went well that was wonderful, if not it was fine we would just move on as either friends or nothing at all (basically the agreement I made with everyone I met from the dating site). I think that took the nervousness away…knowing it really didn’t matter in the end if we liked each other or not. The dinner actually went very well, we got along and it seemed as if we had always known each other….but as if we were siblings….there was zero spark. It was very clear that this was going to be a friendship possibly but nothing more. We did keep in touch actually for quite some time until he found someone that he clicked with immediately and got married. I went on a few more dates, some good, some merely ok and one flat out freak…so much for weeding them all out on the phone…then I switched to another dating site and met a few more people. Same story, then again on another one…same story. Somewhere in there, among the people I kept in touch with from the first site, there emerged one that just kept me laughing. I had contacted him online about the first week or so that I had signed on and we had just kept talking. Eventually I found myself smiling when I saw a message from him and grinning like an idiot when I thought of him (which was quite a bit). What was going on? I hadn’t even met this guy yet and already I was finding I couldn’t keep him out of my mind. It took us about a full month to finally meet face to face between schedule conflicts and the fact that we lived over an hour apart. By that time we had spent every single day instant messaging and talking on the phone. We decided to meet for dinner near my house. The moment I saw him I knew, just knew that I was done for. Eight months later we are still together, still driving back and forth every weekend to see one another and he is still making me smile and grin like an idiot. I made a few amazing friends from this experience, and had more fun than I thought I would and the best part is that I met the man of my dreams…in cyberspace no less.