When and how to start dating.

[limon]

I'm middle aged. Haven't been single for 25 years.

"D"H and I separated in May, he is still living here.

How the fuckity does dating work these days?

I'm not hanging out anywhere to meet anyone, I don't have a social life outside of kids and I peeked on match and they just aren't my type.

Try Guardian Soulmates. There are far fewer people on there and some are self-absorbed wankers but they tend to write a lot more on their profiles so at least you get more of a sense of where they are on the wanker scale. I'm biased because I met boyfriend on there and he's really nice. I'm a comparison between Match, OK Cupid and there I found it by far the least alarming - lots of polite emails initially and then some polite drinks out without too much weirdness. It might be a nice way into online dating for a first try.

PS to exemplify the wanker scale, I give you on a scale of 1-10, 1 being really nice and 10 being the full wanker, I had:
2 - boyfriend (have to give him something to aim for)
3 - man who paid for dinner while I was in the loo and then was obviously politely really cross about it
5 - man who mansplained wine to me for two hours, spilt dinner down his shirt and then hid in the loo for 25 mins while he washed his shirt and dried it under the hand dryer
6 - man who send me a selection of African poetry including one about Boko Haram which compared it to a 'scorpion stinging the sun in the scrotum' and then tried to test my comprehension and analysis skills
8 - man who was very angry that I couldn't meet for lunch on Wednesday because I was at work and therefore thought I was too good for him because I was an uppity bitch
9 - man who supported Trump and, for fun, had written (in all seriousness) his own constitution for the UK and sent it to me to read

Oh wow. Maybe dating isnt for me after all that gave me a good giggle though!

My friends particularly enjoyed the African poetry man and the shirt-under-the-hand-dryer man. One great thing about dating randomers from the middle of the wanker scale is the joy of telling stories about them to happily married friends, who, I guarantee, will be all agog.

Seriously, it's good fun (mostly). I didn't have any horrible experiences at all and mostly found it was nice to go out and chat to people. It gets expensive though - save up a little kitty for all the drinks etc.

I'm not that outgoing normally and had very low expectations so finding I could hold up my half of the conversation with strangers was really empowering.

Good luck with it all.