Ten years ago, I started my online dating experience with an intensity that any athlete training for the Olympics would admire.
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In essence, I lived and breathed through my dating sites, and yes, I did say sites. I’m writing this blog because I’ve been following a conversation posted recently on online dating, and as a Vibrant Nation blogger, I decided to throw in my two cents.
In looking back at my experience, it goes without saying that anyone can hide behind a computer. And many people do — both men and women. Writing behind the comfort of that screen, many men can reinvent themselves and demand for you to be the person they envision. Sadly, many of us have encountered these types — both within the online dating community and also outside of it. In fact, years ago, one of my work colleagues set me up with one of the worst “players” period. What was she thinking? But more than that — What was I thinking?
As the years went by, I was in and out of relationships with men I had met online. Some would last a few months and some a few years. And when these relationships started to fade, I was right back on those sites ready to go. But something in me was changing. I didn’t feel that old intensity anymore. I wanted to keep my presence online, but I also became more involved in my non-online life. My attitude at that time could be summed up with these five words: “I will see what happens.”
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During this time, I would engage in online correspondence or phone conversations, but often times I didn’t. Life went on without me sitting for hours in front of my computer. I missed the company of a man, but I was getting to know someone much more important…me. By not making my online presence my primary focus, which I had for so many years, life became more balanced. And I liked it.
Two years ago, I met a man who is now the world to me. Even though we live only 10 miles from each other, in our vast land of suburbia, it might as well be 100 miles. If it wasn’t for the power of the computer, he and I would still be strangers.
He and I (like so many of us now in our fifties and sixties) took the crooked road to finally meet. I was widowed in 2000, and he was divorced in 2009. I re-entered the dating world in 2002 and learned a lot. Even though I met more frogs than princes during that time, somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that my timing was off. He’s out there, I told myself — maybe not now, but at some point. And he was.
As I get older, and, hopefully, wiser, I have become a firm believer in timing. Not fate. Just timing. Life can’t be forced, maybe gently coaxed, but that’s about it.
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Patience is a virtue. I’m learning that and timing, as they say, is everything.
Public television used to have a chair yoga program. Most seniors groups also have chair yoga. Search the net for a dvd, should be there.
Very beautiful. I meditate when I get home from work. I get up at 5:30 and just can't get motivated to get up any earlier. When I wake up in the middle of the night, I immediately go to prayer. It's comforting. Teresa
After of 8 years of virtuous patience, it is wearing thin.
The light at the end of the tunnel? It is a freight train, LOL, LOL
Alicia –
No, no, no! Positive thoughts!
Ha, Ha! I AM positive it is another train! Thank God for my wicked wit and sense of humor, or I would be drooling in a corner by now!
I met my husband online in 2001, we were married in 2004, it’s 2012 and we’re partners for life… Who would have thought 11 years ago?
gpeaches ~
Congratulations to both of you!
Marian