What happens when you swipe right?
When you get to be my age, never married, childless and still dating, your priorities change. You look for someone you can put down as…
When you get to be my age, never married, childless and still dating, your priorities change. You look for someone you can put down as your emergency contact, someone to sit across the table from at a nice restaurant, someone who will be there to help out if you have surgery or need your wheelchair pushed.
Not to say I don’t want to have sex. I really do, and in fact, I often feel like the “guy” in the relationship. Most of the men I meet are not in any rush. What happened to the good old days when the guy would jump my bones? I know I’m no spring chicken anymore — but have kept my hair looking brunette, thank you L’Oreal — just don’t catch me on week four when you see blinding light bouncing off the white growth. I might not be the exact weight I was from my svelte college days when many guys were bedding me down. But sporting ten more pounds and having aged skin, a fallen brow and sagging eyes with the lights out, that shouldn’t matter too much, right?
Where am I turning to find partnership and love? Online dating sites. Swipe right if interested and left if not. My thumb is getting raw. When there’s a match it’s because we both swiped right.
If you want to keep your identity anonymous before meeting, beware of image search software. Once discovering who I was one person cancelled our rendezvous, another showed up with flowers, and the last guy obsessively texted me about his narcissist mother. I had to block him.
My method in this rather random, anonymous and impersonal way of finding a man is to cut to the chase. Make a date for a drink before speaking and many email exchanges. What’s the big deal, right? If we are don’t live too far away from each other what does it take to make this happen? Those brave enough to go with the program win a chance at meeting yours truly.
Enter Andy, the last daring soul to meet me. I was beginning to think my days of swiping were over. Finally I will no longer be alone, will have someone to come home to, shop for, and cook for.
Andy was a year older, a handsome New Yorker, who grew up near me. He was someone I can look up to in more than one way. He was 6’4’’ and a multi award-winning director. Our first date was easy, enjoyable and engaging. Both being Long Island Jews raised around the same time we reminisced about the predecessor to McDonalds, Wetson’s, few people know of. When I asked him if he remembered Freedomland, the short-lived amusement park where Coop City in the Bronx was built, he got excited. “You remember the Chicago fire they staged there.” “Yes, I even have 8 mm footage of it when we were there in the 50s.” I responded.
As we parted ways on our first date, he was a true gentleman, helped me with my coat and put me into an Uber.
His text arrived the next day asking when he could see me again. By the fourth date and one kiss, Andy announced he wanted to focus on our relationship and was going off the dating site. I was surprised and wondered if it was because he watched my biographic documentary, which touched him. He knew a lot more about me than I did about him. I was impressed — not much nooky and he was committed to being exclusive.
In true mensch style, he did not ask me to delete my profile from the dating site saying, “I trust you.” By eleven weeks, five days and six hours and I was proud to announce I was his girl and he was my guy. My toiletries and some clothing found their way to his place. This was a huge step for me.
There were no ex spouses whether from divorce or loss, no children or grandchildren. We could be each other’s number one.
The only baggage we had was the “being set in one’s ways syndrome” from spending so much time by ourselves. But it looked like our mutual attraction; connection and timing could overcome that and make this a strong lasting link.
I was grateful for swiping because I would have never found Andy the old way, as my search filters eliminated men who were never married. I was beginning to think I had found my emergency contact number.
It is now a year later and as much as I would like to say, Andy and I are each other’s emergency number, we are not. Not sure if he’s back swiping. Hope he is. Nice guy. I’m not giving up and back swiping hoping the next person is the last.