Sex and the Sixty: Susan Gets Online |

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Sex and the Sixty: Susan Gets Online

Sex and the Sixty: Susan Gets Online

BLOGGER: RENEE FISHER

Click here to read the first blog in the Sex in the Sixty Series – Sex and the Sixty: Online Dating

For those skeptics who might be thinking that my friend Susan’s poor results are because she hasn’t put enough of an effort into online dating, rest assured that she has been on most internet dating sites since the very first one (CaveMatch.com). She has only excluded the ones that will result in the FBI confiscating her computer. Both eHarmony and chemistry.com have now told her they can do nothing more for her unless she “expands her search area.” For Susan, this would mean either searching for men who are younger than her son, older than a Civil War veteran, or who are currently incarcerated.

After Susan is initially contacted by men on the various sites, she usually emails back and forth with them, using her personal email. Sometimes a phone call or two is part of the scenario.

One man told her he lived on a boat and wrote a long email explaining that he lived with a gorgeous 18 year old Dane. Susan assumed he was talking about a dog. He wasn’t. Another man spent a lot of time writing to her about his fishing trip. About the only fishing trip that ever held my attention for any length of time was the one in “Deliverance,” and this man’s email was longer than the “Deliverance” screenplay.

Susan sends me some of the emails that she gets. These are mostly from men who don’t have spell check on their computers:
“…let,s see,are there really any woman out there that are looking for true love, or are you all stell way to picky…”
“…she be my best friend, loving, caring, faithfull, understanding,be d/d free, clean about her self…”
“…i,m a BIG redskins fan, and have been sents 1969…”

One man, who seemed like a good prospect and who had a fair command of the English language, was very anxious to meet her in person. A coffee date was arranged for the following weekend, and each day, he would tell Susan how he couldn’t wait for their meeting. Then, a couple days before the weekend, he sent an email saying,
“I think it would be best if I canceled this Sunday…On Tuesday this week – it seems like a month ago – I met someone else online. We’ve yet to meet in person…but we spoke on the phone for an hour and a half – till her battery went dead….I’m amazed at how far, and how fast things have progressed. Maybe we’ve each found the person we’re both looking for…the degree of emotional closeness has developed very fast. Besides, I’m not good at trying to date two women at the same time. So, I sincerely wish you the best. I continued talking to you about meeting because there was a certain momentum there. I really was eager to meet you in person.”

I asked Susan what the “momentum” was all about and why she thought his momentum with the other woman trumped hers. All Susan could think of was that the other woman’s momentum was larger than hers.

Susan still has a lot of emails to sift through (something like 29 at last count), and I’ll be curious to see what she comes up with. I’ve suggested some ground rules for her when she meets guys, like only meeting for coffee and limiting the meeting to one hour. I figured that would minimize the damage. As we’ll see in the next posting, I was wrong. Very,very wrong.

renee-fisher

Renee Fisher is a Realtor and writer who lives in the Washington, DC area. She is the co-author of two award-winning books about life after 50www.invisiblenomore.com and is the DC Boomer Humor columnist forexaminer.com DC-Boomer-Humor-Examiner.