A few years back, I had three women friends who were all roommates.
None of them had steady boyfriends, and they weren't meeting anyone they'd consider seriously dating.
So it seemed logical to give on-line dating a try.
It didn't cost very much then, and it seemed like such a different thing to do compared to the traditional blind date fix-ups we had all experienced (and without much success).
Susan and Michelle signed up with the same on-line dating service, while Jen tried a different one.
On the weekends, when we'd have coffee and bagels together, we inevitably got around to looking at their dating sites.
Sometimes I'd sit next to Susan as we scrolled through hundreds of eligible guys.
Sometimes I'd want to see who Michelle was looking at and we'd sit down and go through "her" guys.
Not one to play favorites, from time to time I'd look over Jen's shoulder and check out the guys that she thought were hot.
And then I got to wondering if all the guys who joined these on-line dating services actually sat around with their friends as they clicked through the women on dating sites.
It was just a thought.
At that time, there weren't as many people in the dating databases as there are now (or as many of the dating sites profess they have in their databases) so it didn't take days and days to decide on who you might want to "meet.
" This was kind of fun.
I was totally anonymous, invisible if you will, and looking at a bunch of good-looking guys who appeared to have brains.
I was thoroughly enjoying life on this never-ending dating highway with countless "places" to stop and explore, however vicariously.
Filled with a sense of infallibility and excitement, if one "place" didn't meet with our expectations, we would move on to another one within seconds.
And though I was still hesitant to actually try it for myself, I was slowly warming up to the thought that on-line dating might not be such a bad idea.
For a while, I lived vicariously through my friends.
But as months passed, and after hearing about the sometimes hilarious, sometimes stomach-turning, sometimes totally mind numbing adventures of my friends meeting their prospective Mr.
Rights from cyberspace in person, I decided to take a chance and venture forth on my own.
I tried matchmaker.
com right before they underwent a makeover.
I had met some very nice people, and got a long term relationship out of it to boot.
That was money well spent.
But two years later that relationship ended (it was a mutual thing, really).
By that time, matchmaker had been sold to a mega company who really screwed up what the original matchmaker founders had come up with.
I was ready to date again but wondered how I was going to meet people.
Should I call my Aunt Helen and her canasta playing cronies? Talk to my mailman to hear even more his newly-single brother? Notify my co-workers and friends to be on the lookout? No, none of the above were to going to work for me.
It didn't take long for me to decide that it was off to the races, and back to on-line dating.
I did my homework, visiting loads of on-line dating sites till I decided on one that I thought had a member base filled with the type of people I'd like to meet.
With a full tank of gas, a clear view of where I was going, I was ready to roll, pumped with an excitement that I hadn't felt in years! So go ahead, take a chance.
What have you got to lose?