My marriage has ended. The reasons are private, but I will say that no one did anything wrong. Having been separated emotionally for over a year, and in separate homes for about six months, it's time for me to live my best life, and be the best me I can be.
I love in a flat with my eldest adult son. We don't intereact that much as he is quite agoraphobic, and quite frankly has a healthy online social life that is far more interesting than socialising with his fifty something father.
I have a great group of friends, and I am trying to see more of them where I can, usually at local gigs.
I am however lonely a lot of the time. I can spend long swathes of time alone, but its getting very boring, and there is a danger of becoming quite hermatic (is that a word? Being a hermit?). I have started going out on my own to gigs, to the cinema, for meals out, and although being around other people is great for my mental health, I have come to realise that it would be lovely to have someone in my life I can be close to, share experiences, just chat about silly things; who I can drop the social mask in front of.
Anyone who have been in a long term relationship that ends could probably tell you how scary, and difficult it is to even make new friends, let alone meet people that might become more emotionally important. If you are my age I think it is even harder.
Traditionally people might meet in social situations, especially if they are young, and are finding their first real person to form a meaningful replationship with. This might be in a pub, or a nightclub, or at a party. This is all well and good when these arenas are still exciting, and appropraite to your situation. My theory though is if you want to share a good proportion of your life with someone, you need to find them in an environment you enjoy or frequent as part of you own enjoyment. If you don't like clubbing, there's no real point trying to find a partner there, as they are likely to want to carry on clubbing. If you don't like going to pubs likewise. Unfortunately if you're a bit of a homebird you are not going to meet a like minded soul as just staring through their windows trying to catch their eye could be considered creepy, and might end up involving a visit from the people with bodycams, and night sticks.
Another way to meet people is by word of mouth. Unfortunately all the single women I know of are friends of my ex-wife. This presents two problems; firstly loyalty to their friend, although I'm sure she would give her blessing, and the other problem is that they know my personality, and consequently are just not attracted to me, even though I'm on the face of it devilishly attractive (Citation needed. Edit this bit out later you fool)
You can of course meet people is at work, but that obviously presents another problem. If you date, and it goes badly, you might have to see them every day.
So that leaves the rather scary prospect of internet dating. Now I have used internet dating, but not for nearly two decades. It used to be quite fun, I met a dated a few great people, I even married one of them. There was a great chat, and form culture that was really useful in providing support from other singletons. Guess what? It is not like that now.
Firstly, they whole internet dating ecosystem has been heavily moneterised. This in itself is not a showstopper. They are providing a service that needs to be funded, and charging for service can in theory put off the chancers, scammers, and players. However they apps, and services I have looked at so far are using outdated ways of payment. I would be very worried about putting my credit card details on some of these sites, and there have been too many stories in the press about sites getting hacked, and financial data being sold on the dark web.
Secondly there is now a culture of making an instant decision about a person based on very little information. You tend to have to swipe left or right to either commit to moving the process forward, or to drop that person into the dating bin of doom.
Thirdly, you need to decide from a prescriptive list the type of relationship you are looking for. Again, this is not a bad thing. Some people know they want a long term relationship, or choose that option to put off any suiter who might not be serious. There is a new, well to me, catagory of a casual relationship; if you look on the internet there are many descriptions of what this might be. In reallity it seems that this have become a term to replace 'friends with benefits'. The other major catagory is of friendship. Now this is curious. Making friends using the internet feels as contrived, and artificial as finding a life partner, but perhap more so. Kids at school make friends, buy asking 'Will you be my friend?' in the playground, and this feels very much the same.
What doesn't seem to have changed is the experience men, and women have on these sites. If you read a few profiles of women on the sites it becomes apparent that there is still a culture of men expecting instanct gratification, being over confident, and pushy, and probably being coersive, and bullying. If you could visualise internet dating into o couple of images I would imaging a womans experience is like a scene from a nature program where there is one female frog in a pond, literally being drowned by the weight of randy male frogs clinging desperately to her. On the converse side a male frog is sitting lonely on a lilypad hoping that the lady frog might spot him, and think 'What a nice respectful amphibian, I think I'll shake these pervert off and go and share a nice fly with him'.
For me it's early days. I have no expectations, and in truth I've found that love will find you when you least expect it
Kind, slightly sagging frog signing off.
