I have always depended on the wisdom of women. So it was only natural for me to seek the advice of my women friends when I embarked on Internet dating. It didn't matter whether they had personal experience or not. If they hadn't, they encouraged. If they had, they advised. Some just led by doing. My friends were my coaches and mentors.
They brushed aside all of my reservations. They just wanted me to try. With their help I came up with a game plan that I could fall back on when I faltered. And I did falter. Old insecurities rose from the depths. I relived the embarrassment of being too tall in high school and too shy at college mixers. I redeveloped a blush that I thought I had lost long ago.
If I hadn't witnessed similar unwelcome resurrections in my friends who had struck out on this path before me, I would have shrivelled up in shame and quit. One friend who had reconnected with a high school boyfriend, had gotten uncharacteristically giggly and confused when she talked about her first date. She's a very successful and (usually) poised business woman. Over dinner one night, she quivered, "Should I call him or should I wait until he calls me?" The next moment, her fingers were sending him a text, which in the next moment she wished she could take back.
I got to see beneath the layers of sophistication and self-assurance that she had created over the years. She was sixteen again and worried about boys. Her girlish anxieties and concerns had been preserved perfectly, like fossils brought back to life in Jurassic Park.
I knew that it would be no different for me when my time came. I was going to fall prey to a riot of conflicting emotions,--heightened emotions--after years of dulling down my feelings. I can't say I was ready, only that I had decided to stop worrying about it and take the plunge
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