Great article Shari!!! There are so many truths — and good, spot-on observations and conclusions — that I hope others listen to and heed. You are SO correct in banging home the point that we Singletons DON’T have to go the route of online dating because we can always do it the “old fashioned" route of meeting in person (as those of us “older” people did back in the day and with mixed results, but usually not a lot of said “horror stories")

Having also done online dating for several years, like Shari, I highly recommend against it. You can be assured that you will indeed be coming across losers, loners, socially inept/awkward people, and in done cases, total weirdoes (and not word in a good way).

This story makes me really, REALLY glad I got out of “the game" (which I say because I believed way back when that online dating was just a “numbers game" at best) when I did eight years ago. It wasn’t all bouquets then but apparently it’s gotten a lot worse now. Here’s why I quit:

I once had what was a rare second date (with a man of about 60). I went to his home for an afternoon meal, during which time he gave me a tour of his beautiful home, talked about how successful he was (he had two Cadillacs), all that material stuff that doesn’t matter much to me. During the day he drank the whole time, while telling me his life story — including a lot of talk about his second ex-wife who left him a couple years before. Eventually he told me “if we get married, you have to give me sex twice a day and three times on Sunday.”

Well, as if the increasing drunkenness wasn’t bad enough, his saying that was the last straw. I couldn’t WAIT to get out of there; I sped home and deleted my account with that dating site and didn’t look back.

I’ve been recently tempted to go back on and actually did put up a profile and go browsing. However the responses I got and the types of men who replied reminded me why I’d literally fled that whole scene back in '12.

So although it ain’t a perfect system, meeting a prospective mate in “real time" is probably still the best option. The “old fashioned" ways sometimes are the best!!