Matthew Williams says that dating after divorce is bloody hell.
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Dating… bloody hell, dating.
When to start dating after a marriage split? This is the first thing to ask yourself. After you’ve got over the initial whack of separation, you begin to entertain the possibility that somewhere out there there may be somebody else that will be interested in you.
A few weeks after my marriage broke up, a female friend said some kind words to me that boosted my confidence and led me to look into online dating. She told me that her friends were jealous of our friendship, because of how cute I was. This certainly put things into perspective since I’d previously looked as those women as out of my league.
It was go time. I was ready to embark into the world of online dating. I did my research. I wanted to be prepared and all that. But how prepared could I be? The world of dating was a whole lot different as a 40 year old in 2014 than it was to a 21 year old in 1995. The truth is I’d never dated anyway really. I’d had a girlfriend for 2 years from 18 and then two weeks after we split I met my future (ex) wife.
The last time I’d started a relationship, communication outside of meeting up was using the phone (landline phone –that is how old I am) in my parents’ bedroom hoping that nobody else would overhear. This was not easy an easy feat in a family of five. In the intervening 19 years, the Internet had opened up a whole new world, and Matty-lad was about to enter it.
It was only a month after separation, which may seem indecently hasty, that I broke into the world of online dating. But I knew my marriage was over and had started to accept it, as hard as that was for me. I wanted to get out there and meet new people and see what the modern world of dating was all about. There was another motivation; one of the most potent poisons of the post-separation mind is the thought of your ex meeting somebody new. At this point starts a battle between the rational, reasonably together self, and the paranoid, insecure and vulnerable self. In my case this opened two potential paths:
1. Find a new relationship.
2. Find a way to get, errrrr, laid.
The thinking behind the latter – rational / irrational? – is that getting this under the belt, pardon the pun, would somehow soften the blow when the inevitable happened and my ex moved on.
(To everyone that has said I’m brave – THIS is the bit where I need to be brave!).
My research, which consisted of the Internet and speaking to my brother, revealed my two options: a paid site where I could meet nice (hopefully) women that were serious about looking for a decent guy, and a ‘hook up’ site with people that may well be nice but would also be a little, well, let’s say looser with their timetable for getting intimate; and with their undies.
I’ll focus for now on my experience of the hook-up site (I expect this will not come as a disappointment to my readers). I will relate two stories and where they lead me.
1. A guy in Yorkshire was looking for somebody to, errrr, let’s say ‘look after’ his wife while he watched. WTF???? People do this??? Ok, let’s find out what the hell this is all about. I expressed a cautious interest in finding out more. They’d never done this before but had talked about it for a while and were looking to give it a go.
At this point I will stress that his role was to purely be an observer while the magic happened.
They weren’t really sure how to go about it but his task was to screen potential suitors. He asked what I would do if I were to be the chosen one.
Bloody. Hell.
I let my imagination take flight and typed away. I won’t recount the grisly details, let’s just say that Christian Grey wasn’t losing any sleep. Despite that, I received a message back saying I’d made the shortlist (NOTE: I did not send any pictures, it wasn’t THAT kind of ‘short’ list, no man wants to be on that list). He would be in touch soon to look at next steps. In the meantime, he kindly sent me some naked pictures of his wife. Cheers.
2. A 21 year old got in touch telling me she was into ‘Extreme’. Once again, I did my research and apparently she wasn’t talking about the soft-rock band from the early 1990s. (Incidentally, their most famous song – not a long list to select from admittedly – ‘More Than Words’, is about trying to get his woman to give him a…. well, I’ll let you fill in the blanks).
My research revealed what it actually meant was that she liked to be dominated and she elaborated by explaining that I could go round to her house and do whatever I wanted. She wasn’t talking about her ironing.
I asked myself, what the hell happens to a 21 year old that makes her willing to do that? I’ve always liked to think of myself as a decent guy and realised that what I wanted was a genuine connection with a woman. When it came right down to it, I’d rather spend a night in a restaurant with a nice woman sharing good food and conversation than a meaningless lay with a stranger, and a possibly damaged one at that.
The account was deleted and path 1 was chosen – let’s try to find a nice woman to get to know and see where the road would take us.
I don’t know if Mr Sex Person found anyone to get to grips with his wife. Apparently they were a bit alarmed by some of the ‘disturbing’ messages that they received.
Who’d have thought it?
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This post is republished on Medium.
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Photo Credit: Shutterstock
Thanks Matt…for the laughs, well because I need them! I’m a middle-aged lady who’s been divorced for eight months & went on my first date with a middle-aged man who was quite frankly terrifying…lol. I’m feeling traumatized by the experience & have had the same thoughts as you. Become a Nun, find a quiet little Monastery in Italy & mediate all day. This guy who I dated was a former detective, turn real estate agent, whom I’m just bought my new home from after my divorce. The guy said he left the force because “they told me I was crazy”,… Read more »
I enjoyed reading your post, it is always interesting to hear from a mans view about dating after a divorce. When you said about a month after you started dating again was that because you wanted to find someone to settle down with again or just wanted to get out there again and meet other women? Quite often people will go from one relationship to the next and can never enjoy the fun of being single and learning about what they want. My advice to anyone looking to date after they have got divorced is to have fun, get some… Read more »