Square One

Well here goes.  Feels as though I have reached first base.  Now for the next steps.  Unchartered territory.  How did I end up here?

Just a couple of months ago I had spent a lovely day with Joe in Falmouth.  I had “popped down” to Falmouth (if 180 miles can ever be considered “popped down”) to make sure Joe had settled into his Uni and that he was okay in himself.  If I am honest I was missing the kids being about the home so it was a bit therapy for me too.  Well I need not have worried.  Everything appeared to be great for him.  Joe was loving the course and his flatmates were all so friendly.  We had lunch on Falmouth harbour and stocked up on food supplies.

It was the return drive home that I started to think about me.  Georgina and Joe were both doing well and were finding their own karma.  Whereas, what and where was I going to do?  I didn’t really have any plan and the loneliness was getting me down.  Here I was sat in Exeter Service Station sipping my cappuccino with another 90 miles to go thinking

“This is crap! It’s 8 o’clock on a Saturday night.   All I’ve got to look forward to is another hour and half drive home to a dark and lonely house.  This isn’t what life is all about”

The previous week had been particularly tough.  I hadn’t seen many people and now Joe was back at University I started to feel my mind was slipping away into depression.

“No one would expect me to be depressed.  No one!  I got to sort this out”

“Sod it!  I am going to sign up on Match.com!”

That was it.  Decision made. 

Now for those who don’t know match.com is an online dating website.  Signing up to an online dating site was certainly going to be a new experience by a long way.  Never in a million year did I ever think I would be signing up to an online dating site.  Whatever happened to “our eyes met across a crowded room” stuff.  This was going to be one of the strangest things I have ever done.  In my mind there had always been a stigma attached to dating services.  And anyway you never know if you’re going to meet a complete “fruit loop”.  However, if you can’t beat them then join them!

I followed the online instructions which asked lots of questions about my personal life, completed the profile and uploaded some photos.  Pushed the submit button.  And waited.  What have I let myself into?

Wow!  All of a sudden all these smiling lovely faces appeared on my laptop screen.  Oh my god.  Well I was like a kid in a sweetshop.  Looking at photos, reading profiles trying to understand how the online site worked.  It was certainly different to what I had imagined.

It is a bit strange and you feel a bit brutal.  All these profiles appear on your screen and basically you add to your favourites the ones you like and delete the ones you don’t.   So you find yourself at your laptop: like, like, delete, delete, delete, like, like delete….  You get the idea.  You then sit back and look at the screen where there are 10 photos of lovely women looking at you from the screen.  You can’t help thinking for a moment

“Hmm!  This is how the world should look” 

How the world should look!

It is almost a form of virtual ethnic cleansing!

Now it’s not ideal. I can’t imagine any Mills and Boon novel was ever about two people whose “eyes met across a laptop”.  Not the most romantic way of meeting someone.  I don’t care.  I’m not looking for romance.  I am just want to dip my toe back into the world and feel human again.  My expectations on future relationships are clear in my mind. As I have said before I’m looking for companionship.  And anyway what was the worse that was going to happen?  I make some new friends.

At 49 where do you go to meet people?  As I said there are a lot of lonely people out there so this can only help them.  And me!  In fact I didn’t realise how many of my friends had used or were using online dating.   So off on a new pathway.  Would I meet my match?