Dating in 2009

So.  Since I only attract guys in their twenties when I'm out and about, I thought I'd see what is happening online.  I have some good friends who have fallen in love with guys they've met electronically.  I understand why--how could you beat the sifters they use to show you only people who've fit most of your desirables? There's no bouncer at the door of your favorite nightclub who would do that for you.

So.  The vulnerability.  The sweet angst, the pleas, the loneliness, the triumph over bad relationships or working too much, the wondering over how you begin again in your thirties or forties or even fifties, how to even get started at that age.  I've only been on two days and I've already received three beautiful love letters.  What do you say to that?  

And the posturing: I don't know what the ladies are doing because I'm not looking at them, but the guys have screen names like "stox" and "nupassion" and are mostly talking about their partnerships at law firms, their chiropractic practice, their body building routines, their love of football and scuba and dogs.  And then there are those, like my little brother, whose photos proudly display their tool belts and names like "Bobby" embroidered on the left shoulder of their shirts.  They are all in earnest, all unable to find who they are looking for because she's not at the bar, she's working, or she's afraid to sit in a bar alone (that's just sad, her mama would say) or walk in the dark alone, or she's tired and is having some dinner while she listens to her children's litanies about injustice on the playground and can I have money for this, please?  And I think the available guys are changing the oil or making Hamburger Helper or sausage wraps, reading the paper.  And, of course, checking their online dating site for interesting females.

I used to have a puritannical view of online dating, but I now think it is a compassionate, sometimes bitter, very often sweet look at how the indomitable human spirit is picking itself up after midlife trauma and seeing what might be possible in the newest phase of life.  And even I am hopeful.

Shalom.