Are You the One?: A humorous journey through the ups and downs of internet dating

By Debbie Martin

Intrepid dating explorer Dizzideb tells her dating adventures, from the first nervous encounter with an internet dating site to the disasters, dilemmas and delights that followed. Debbie now runs Singles that Mingle a fun, no pressure social events group for singles. See singlesthatmingle.co.uk for more information or to sign up to its newsletter for events in your area.

• Language: English
• Publisher: MX Publishing
• Release date: Dec 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781780921150

Book preview

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Chapter 1: Where it all began...

‘He dares to be a fool, and that is the first step in the direction of wisdom’ - James Huneker

So here I am at 46. Single again.

But of course not without the baggage of both children and prejudices and preconceptions built up over a lifetime of being ‘me’ - whoever ‘me’ is! When you are 16, the whole of your life is rolling out before you, tantalising, undefined, and totally free to be whatever you make of it. And so are your expectations of the people you meet. You don’t judge, you don’t even think about pre-conceptions - you just ‘do’!

46 is a little different. Most of us do pre-judge, do have pre-conceived ideas, and do try to fit people and events into the box we think must fit them. And if you’re like me, you often do it without sufficient experience to get the right box!

So, mid-forties, feeling like life is going to pass me by unless I go out there and hit it hard with a big stick - but where does a middle-aged mum, newly alone, go to start beating that stick? I’d had a number of more conventional ideas - go to an evening class, join the gym, start a new sport, join a social club and having tried all of them out, whilst I started to meet a few pleasant people from outside of my existing social network, they weren’t ‘the one’ material. Nothing was happening romantically! I was feeling pretty much at a standstill after a few months like this when one of the new friends I’d made from my social endeavours opened up a whole new world for me.

Enter Sally, who I met at my very first visit to a local social group for single people. Sally was a few years younger than me, currently single, having been married twice before, unhappily, and having had two children from the two marriages, both of whom were pretty much young adults now. She seemed very confident, outgoing and lively from the word go - and very clued up on how to meet available singles of the opposite sex - ‘haven’t you tried internet dating ..?’ she asked incredulously ...

Well, internet dating? No, I hadn’t tried it yet ...

Now, I’m a normal (yes, I think so) middle-aged mum. I have two youngish daughters, went to university straight from school, found a reasonable career in public life and then at the age of 42 realised that my interests were quite different, did an about face and set up my own business. I was very lucky to have a supportive husband at the time otherwise doing the about face would have been much more difficult - not that I would say it was ever easy. But sadly I think that finding my feet also meant that my marriage stumbled, and the more fulfilment I found in the success of my business, the unhappier the relationship between my husband and I. There was no disloyalty or unfaithfulness on either side, just an uneasy realisation that our contentment and satisfaction in each other had run its’ course. If we weren’t to end up with one of us braining the other with a frying pan out of frustration during an argument, then we had to part.

He tried so hard to reason, to understand, but really there was no changing the two of us. We were who we were, and that wasn’t the ‘happy couple’ any longer. All the while he was being supportive, I also felt his discontent with my enthusiasm for my business. He felt my impatience with his ‘slippers and pipe’ preferences. It didn’t help that there was a large age gap between us - which we’d always thought we’d overcome whatever the situation, but had now to accept that every year just exacerbated the gap and widened the rift. We didn’t want to become ‘toxic ‘with each other as so many failed couples did so I ultimately made the decision to part and steadfastly stuck to it, despite his obvious unhappiness.

How hard I was with him. I wonder now if we would in time have overcome the difficulties and found some kind of easier resolution, or would that just have made things all the harder for all of us in the end. Who knows now? It happened. It was done and we were apart, both looking into the future with uncertainty, trepidation, and not a little dismay.

The break-up of a marriage, or any relationship, is such a sad affair. It’s the reverse of the happy excitement you both felt as you gathered together all of the things that made your home as you negotiate and divide all those things between you instead.

One of the saddest days I remember is the one we moved out of what had been our happy family home for many years - me to my rented house and he to his rented flat. We looked at the stacked boxes and the labelled furniture, ‘mine’ and ‘yours’, and couldn’t believe that this was the sum total of all those happy years and happy memories. What finally reduced me to tears was finding the little note my older daughter left tucked inside her wardrobe for the new incumbents to find:

‘... live in it, laugh in it, cry in it, but whatever you do, be as happy as I have in it ...’

Briefly I stood in that sunny, bright, but empty room and let the tears stream out of the empty ache inside. Then I brushed them away and strode on into my future, blind as a bat.

So my foray into the world of singledom wasn’t with a leap and a yell of triumph, but with a haunting sense of sadness and loss, and the overwhelming feeling of needing to replace what I’d lost as soon as possible otherwise I would be incomplete.

Finding a dating site is very easy; they are all over the web. I felt furtive and embarrassed at first looking on one - much as many people do, I suppose, but it rapidly became addictive. There’s the initial amazement at the sheer numbers of people on a single site - and all potential partners!

‘Well, no problem here then, this should be easy ...’

I think that should probably be my epitaph!

There is a syndrome, which I have since dubbed the ‘sweetshop’ syndrome, which all dating site users seem to suffer from at some stage or the other. Maybe it’s at first sight of the list upon list of ‘profiles’? Or when the replies to your messages start rolling in? Or when the first flush of enthusiasm has worn off and the first set of replies prove to be non-starters and you go back to the drawing board again and having keyed in the demographics which fit your dream requirements - ‘over 5ft 10inches’, ‘athletic build’, ‘income above ‘x’ amount’, ‘living within ‘y’ miles from me’, ‘all their own hair’, ‘all their own teeth’, ‘non-smoker’, ‘social drinker’ - the list can be endless - you hit ‘SEARCH’ again and wait for ‘the one’ to come up on screen. Then the sweetshop syndrome kicks in. This one’s nice but that’s ones better and ‘oh, he’s better than both of them’... For goodness sake, all these people are probably nice in their own way. How can it possibly be right to pick and choose between human beings, like they are goods on offer - like they are catalogue shopping? Some even play on this theme, ‘one careful owner since new’, says one ...

Anyway, it hit me first right at the outset, and, I have to admit to my shame, it has many times since.