Dating during divorce

So it’s been 8 months and the divorce process still marches on. I am still waiting for him to move things along, WTF is he waiting for??  Sitting home alone is not fun. I went out a lot with friends when this whole process started but have been staying home a lot more lately, partly due to lack of extra spending money. My legal fees are endless.

I know I need to get out there and socialize more, even date eventually. This seems very scary to me. I have heard lots of dating stories and experiences from my single friends and I am not sure I can do this. I haven’t been on a date in 25 years.

I was given advise from a cousin to let all my friends and family know that I was single, sort of like networking. I would much rather meet someone organically, through friends and family and not have to go on random dates. I even reached out to a guy I dated many years ago. We never lost touch as friends.  It was nice talking with an old friend.

I looked into meetup groups and even joined one. I am not comfortable approaching a group of strangers by myself so I went to a couple of events with a friend. I also checked some dating sites. Wow, they are interesting. 25 years ago, dating was so different. I met my soon-to-be-ex on a phone dating service. You only heard their voice before meeting them. There was no internet to look at peoples pictures, or even look them up at all. You would think that it was would be easier now. The world is different and people are not always honest, sad but true.

So I bit the bullet and went on my first date! I wasn’t as nervous as I thought I would be. I met him on one of the dating sites. We chatted through the site, then through text and met after a couple of days. We met at a public place of course and talked for 3 hours. We seemed to have a lot in common. For the most part, it was a nice first date. We agreed to meet again and we did a week later. The 2nd date was more revealing and I realized that he had too many issues for me to deal with and there was not a connection. I am proud that I stepped out of my box and went on a date.

Every experience should be a learning experience. I learned that a 2nd date is extremely important and informative. I also cant believe I have to do this at this stage of my life. It feels so weird.  I know that I am not alone. There are tons of single people my age out there, looking for companionship. I also have to remind myself that, at our age, a lot of us are not what we were 30 years ago. We don’t look like we did back then, we don’t act the way we did back then. We are older and hopefully wiser. We want different things in life now. I know some people are still superficial and only see the outside of a person but I can only hope that people are more willing to get to know the real person first.

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