If I hadn't depended on friends to urge me on when I wanted to quit, if I hadn't promised myself to cover twenty five profiles before I even considered quitting, and if I hadn't vowed to contact five men every week, I wouldn't have met David on the first day of May, nearly three months after I had first posted my profile on two dating sites.
I wouldn't have met him because he didn't contact me. In March, at the beginning of my foray into Internet dating, I had waited for men to write to me until my friend told me that was all wrong. I had to learn to choose and act on my own, which in itself was a payoff since I began to accept my personal power or, at least, not to deny or repress it as I had learned in my 1950s childhood.
And even when I began sending messages to men of interest, I still wouldn't have met him because his profile picture was out of focus and his face hidden within the hood of his ski jacket. I couldn't make him out, and that was enough reason to pass on him. Even though I didn't know what exactly I was looking for, I found it fairly easy to reject men for superficial reasons. I was still holding on to fear and ambivalence.
The five-men-a-week plan took care of that.
I remember distinctly a telephone conversation I had with my best friend, Maggie. It was towards the end of a week in the middle of April. I finally had my process in place, and part of it was reporting to her.
¨Did you contact five men yet?¨
¨No,¨ I admitted, feeling very tired of the whole thing. After weeks of unanswered or aborted messaging, I'd had several telephone talks that led nowhere. Maybe it was too soon, not the right time. I'd try again later. Much later.
¨It's already Thursday. How many more do you need?¨
¨Two more.¨
¨Well, I'm hanging up now. Don't call me back until you're done.¨
With a sigh, I turned toward my screen and reviewed the profiles I'd already passed over. The guy in the ski jacket was hunched over, maybe from the cold. Or worse. I read his profile. Widower. I'd been giving extra points to widowers, thinking we might share common knowledge that no one could know unless they had gone through the death of a spouse themselves. Columbia higher education. Me too. Same religion--didn't hurt. He lived in the same county upstate--convenient for a meeting, if it came to that.
So the same profile I'd passed on earlier made it into the ¨maybe¨ list. But really, why not just pass him? With so many men who hadn't panned out over the last month and a half, I decided not to dwell on this one. I figured we'd never make it to the meet-in-person stage anyway. Move it along, I thought to myself. Two more this week to make my quota. I copied my usual message, tweaked a little to personalize it, and hit send.
I forget the last profile--someone who didn't work out ultimately--but I sent that too. Then, I called back Maggie to report that my work was done (for the week anyway).
Somehow, after many stops and starts, I wound up meeting three men for coffee the first week in May. David, the one in the ski jacket was one of them. Since it was May when we met, he had shed his ski jacket. He had a nice face. After coffee, which led to lunch, he asked me to go out with him on the following Friday. That Friday happened to be my 61st birthday, and I had no plans. He asked me to go dancing with him. I said yes, because it sounded like a lovely thing to do on my birthday even though I didn't know how to dance.
¨I'll show you,¨ he said. ¨Don't worry. I'm a good teacher.¨
He is.
My level-headed neighbor--the one whose mother had told her she was too young to be alone--passed along to me another piece of wisdom. ¨You need to go through all the work of Internet dating, cut through all the resistance, and meet a lot of men you'd rather not know before you find someone special. Then magic happens." Lisa isn't usually the type to talk about magic, but she is scrupulously honest. Her promise gave me hope.
David and I are still together after nearly three years. I don't want to write more about us, because I don't want to jinx us. After all, the pain of spouse bereavement fades somewhat in time, but the fear of bad luck, bad health, some thing that goes wrong beyond one's control doesn't go away. At least, it hasn't for me.
I wanted to write about this episode in my life to pass along what worked for me. I know many mature women who are alone. Some of them prefer it that way, but some do not. Some are situated in fear or pessimism or uncertainty. I want to tell them that they have nothing to lose by trying. I want to pass along what worked for me in honor of all the generous women I know.
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