Grey Bruce Boomers Fall 2021

Online dating…
at my age?
FINDING A COMPANION ONLINE IS FOR EVERYONE!
BY APRIL TAYLOR
More than ever, Boomers are turning to online dating sites to meet people.
People often find themselves alone later in life because of divorce, the death of a spouse,
or, like me, had never married until recently.
I talk to people every day in the hair salon where I work. I hear them say they are lonely
and would like to meet someone to share their time with, especially with retirement on
the horizon. I met my husband Edward on the website ‘Plenty of Fish’ years ago. Online
dating was new to me, and I was skeptical, but lots of my clients were doing it. At that
time, I was not particularly computer savvy and the whole process was intimidating.
I had heard all the horror stories about the Internet being full of crazy losers, when it
dawned on me… my clients who were using dating sites are nice, respectable people
and if they are online then surely there must be other nice people online!
So I took the plunge. A friend of mine helped me set up a profile and I found it simple
to navigate once I got going. My first attempt was not successful. I was messaged by
people from different cities, there were messages to reply to, phone calls to take, and
coffee dates to be had. Truthfully, I found the whole thing overwhelming and timeconsuming,
so I deleted my profile and sat back for a while until I developed a strategy.
I wrote down a plan as I would do for my business, and then my foray into online dating
became a much better experience.