LoveHowTo Blog
The Story Behind LoveHowTo
Last year, after 19 years of marriage, my husband and I filed for divorce. He is now living with someone new while I marvel at the whole concept of dating, much less falling in love again.
We separated last October and I told myself I would wait until I made it through the holidays and my December birthday to even think about dating. I run a seasonal website, HellishHolidays, so had plenty of work to supplement the usual holiday craziness. I held off friends who wanted to fix me up with unmarried men they knew.
During this time, my business partner and I were trying to figure out what our next site should be. Among the domain names we had registered was LoveHowTo.com, and working on that one seemed like a good opportunity to combine business with, well, maybe not pleasure but at least learning more about a subject that is more relevant to me now than it has been in years.
I started researching dating sites, registering for dozens and getting a feel for the profile-writing and –reading process. I started writing articles for the site about the process of looking for love, staying together and moving on with grace. My partner identified appropriate software that would allow building a massive dating directory, voting on articles and allowing user submissions. We hired a great design firm to make it look good. LoveHowTo took shape.
On the personal side, I started thinking about what I would look for in a man. I tried not to make the list of desired attributes (which I know inevitably will be compromised) sound too much like the opposite of my soon-to-be-ex. But frankly the only attribute of his I'm still in the market for is "good sense of humor."
By February I was ready to see what it was like to sit across from a stranger and have a conversation with the "where might this lead?" question hanging overhead. I took a friend up on her offer to introduce me to another friend of hers who is going through a divorce. We met for lunch the day before Valentine's Day. I told him he was my first date since 1987, and he told me I was his first since 1982.
I hadn't realized he wasn't already dating yet, and was probably about as ready as I was: that is to say, not quite. While there were no conversational lulls, I did learn a little more about his soon-to-be-ex than I probably should have. After an awkward hug, I drove off feeling like I had a long way to go before I would grasp this whole dating thing.
I've also received quite a few messages through the various dating sites for which I registered. Since I hadn't paid for any I couldn't write back except for those that came through free sites. Trust me, I didn't feel I was missing out. Most of what I received went something like this:
"I will be honest with you your profile got me some attraction so i wanted to know u more about you and i also discover ur kind of person and maybe see how we two can make a relationship, I am not good in english but I hope to receive message from any woman !"
"I'm self wmployed"
(After a long and rambling letter of introduction that made my head spin from all the references to places traveled, books read and varieties of tomatoes raised) "I am attaching the eulogy for my mother that I gave six years ago."
Spending Saturday nights alone starts to look like something to strive for when the other option is meeting one of these, uh, let's just say incompatible types.
I try not to feel like I've started LoveHowTo because those who can't do, teach. After all, I have built up some knowledge over my years of being single, married and now separated and heading for divorce. But there's also something to that whole "wisdom of crowds" idea. I certainly don't have all the answers, but together, as an online community, we just might.
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