Dating sites are such a crapshoot. If you’ve never been on one, consider yourself lucky. The free sites are so full of scammers, it’s almost unbelievable. I have run into pineapple farmers in Ghana, people who tell me they were born and raised 20 miles from me, who can’t put together a sentence with proper syntax in English.

I’ve also met some real people. S, for one. K, the artist from long ago. Also a number of men who think they are in love with you after messaging for 2 days.

You think you’re gonna go on there, and start up a conversation with someone, and just see if you feel any sparks. Seems simple. I mean, why else is someone on a dating site?

But I find that there are more men (and I have to make this about men, because that’s all I see, so it’s my only experience, but I’m sure it’s the same from the other side) that will view your profile every day, I mean EVERY day….and never message you. Men who will send you a “flirt”, so you respond if you think you might be interested, and never hear from them again, (though often they still view your profile regularly). Or you find someone who seems perfect, with the same interests and a compatible personality type, and so you message them….and never hear back. You gotta wonder, why would they not at least check it out? And then there are men who seem perfect, but after you message them for a day or two, all they turn the conversation to sexual intimacy…..UGH. I always feel like this was a guy trying to suck someone in just to satisfy himself while you talked.

Shy? On a dating site you are anonymous until you choose not to be with someone, so that should help with shyness. Shouldn’t it?

So many are just duplicates of each other. They like “walks on the beach, dinner out, dinner in, cuddling in front of the fire.” They never give up any of who they are, in their profile. One man this morning said in his profile, “Who you are is what you do, right?” NOOOOooooo. It’s not.

Boring. Shallow. At least, to me.

Metaphorically speaking, it gets tedious, kissing frogs who remain frogs.

Still, I look. Still, I don’t know how else to meet men my age. I don’t think anymore that I won’t find someone without baggage. I don’t think you find yourself single at this age, and not have any baggage. It’s really a matter of finding someone whose baggage you can deal with, whose baggage is similar to yours, so you can work on it together. If you are divorced, or widowed, at this point in life, it has affected you, and to deny it is to deny your life experiences. Silly, unhealthy…..

I have a new friend I met online…which is nice. He lives close to me, we enjoy each other’s company. But he’s moving in the summer, a long way away. So….I can’t get too attached to him. I don’t want to open my heart too wide, because I don’t want to be in pain when he goes. I’ll have to be vigilant, to make sure that doesn’t happen. One heartbreak a year is enough. And really, I’m still pretty raw from the last one to get involved with someone yet.

But still I look. There’s a song by Crosby, Stills, and Nash called Southern Cross. The end of the song has this line: “Somebody fine will come along, make me forget about loving you, at the Southern Cross.” Hopeful. Still hopeful.