Six Years Until a Date with a Glass of Merlot

Six years ago, I divorced what I thought was my best friend, what I thought was my true love, he was none of those. Together we did create a beautiful daughter who is still my pride and joy of my life. After the divorce was final, I tried dating. The first one was a friend I had known for 20 years, I always thought he was kind and always took care of others. He was also recently divorced, and I thought we have always gotten a long why not. Well, the first date started off with him showing me how to use a epi pen in case he needed it, it quickly went downhill from there. That was over.

A year later I decided to try going on a date again, this time from someone I met online. Things went well, so we decided to meet in person at a local restaurant. He was a perfect gentleman the entire time. Afterwards we were talking outside, it was cold, so we sat in my car, that is when things changed. He grabbed my hair and started hitting me and beating me. I was bruised and beat. I was in shocked how someone who was a perfect gentleman and tipped the waitress $20 on a $20 bill could change so fast. I reported him, only to find out he went out with someone a few months later and did the same thing to her.

I just couldn’t do this dating thing again. It was time to just focus on being content on who I was in my house and my family and with what I am capable of doing. That is what I was doing and was happier than I could ever remember.

One day I remembered I still had dating profiles, not active but probably still out there. So I decided to delete them once and for all as I was done with the whole dating scene and just quite happy with my life.

Well instead of deleting one of the profiles while in the process of figuring it out I got distracted and actually reactivated it instead. Immediately had 80 responses that I ignored. They kept coming in. A month later I got curious and looked through the messages and had people interested in licking my toes, discreet love affairs, poor poor men who’s wives had just given birth and they have needs too and can’t wait until their wives are healed to have sex, so basically the men I want to avoid in my life. There was one who was interesting, to a degree. Looked fairly normal, and his message seemed fine. So I responded. Even though it had been a month or so since he initially wrote he responded back. We wrote back and forth and one day he sent me his number and said, “I feel like talking”. My brain went “panic!! Why would he ruin a good thing, why would he want to actually talk!!!”. So I responded “ I don’t think I am ready for that yet”. Surprisingly he was okay with it and responded, “It’s okay, when you’re ready”. So we continued messaging through the app. Then one day we were messaging back and forth and he mentioned he would rather talk than keep messaging, so I figured I had no excuse so I called. We talked for about an hour set up a time and place to meet.

We ended up going for dinner at a local restaurant and we each ordered a glass of Merlot to go with our meal for two. A meal for two! On a first date!! A glass of Merlot!!! I never drink on a first date. He looked so handsome and awkward just as awkward and I felt about going on a date, we were able to talk and had a good time, until the restaurant closed and it was time to go home. Before we left he asked if we could make plans for a second date. So we did. And we have been on many more dates since and have been having a wonderful time ever since.