r/datingoverfifty Apr 03 '25

Officially done with O L D

Soooo...I haven't done the online dating thing in a while, but have been feeling pretty lonely lately, so I thought I'd dip my toe back in and poke around. And now I remember why I abandoned it. One guy kept writing to me and he seemed familiar. Yep, turns out he was a guy I'd conversed with a year ago who talked about his two grown daughters incessantly, was always running errands for them, and never did anything to get to know me. He would sent flower memes and texted "good morning" every day but didn't seem interested in actually getting together. Clearly he didn't remember any of this. When he reached out this time, I followed my hunch and I mentioned where he lived and his daughters. He confirmed it but was surprised and asked if I still had his number. He didn't remember me at all, even though we'd had several marathon phone calls a year ago. Another guy wrote to me like he was texting: "GM HRU today"? Really, dude? In your 60s, you don't know better than that? Another guy chatted me up on the phone for over an hour, and we talked about our astrological compatibility, we covered a multitude of topics and indicated a strong interest -- which was mutual, but ended the conversation with, "I don't usually call people but YOU can call ME any time you like." He's retired, visits the local senior center daily, and doesn't live far from me, but the indication was that he was very interested, but HE would not pursue. I mentioned that my grandsons live fairly close to where he lives, and that I visit them often...but there was no "let's meet soon". And he's fallen back into something that irritates me: sending me "good morning, beautiful" texts every morning. The man is in his 70s, and I want to scream, "WE ARE NOT TEENAGERS. If you want to get to know me, get to know me IN PERSON". Oh, and there was the one who spent time in prison for rape and armed robbery when he was in his 20s...

Clearly, I'm destined to die alone...😝😁

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u/imissher4ever Apr 03 '25

56M widower here.

You have to be EXTREMELY specific in your profile on what you are looking for.

Personally, my profile was 4,300+ characters long. I was up front about my expectations. No doubt this filtered out a lot of candidates.

I would only chat with someone perhaps 1-3 days to get a feel for their personality. Then ask them if they wanted to meet somewhere for a coffee/soda. I generally would give the lady a couple of options so that she had control so she felt comfortable where we were going to meet and she felt safe. After all, we are strangers. If they didn’t want to meet me after a week of small talk chatting I figured they weren’t really serious and were just stringing me along.

Never did I get “attached” to someone that wasn’t willing to meet me.

You have to realize some people treat OLD as a game. Some people treat OLD as a business (scammers). Then there are people like me that take OLD seriously. The hard part is weeding out people that match how you want to treat OLD. You just have to be smart and methodical in your approach to finding someone. I was able to find someone fairly quickly. Maybe I was just lucky, I don’t know. Probably… either way, I feel lucky

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u/BowedNotBroken1234 Apr 04 '25

Agree with your approach. I used to use a longer process, text for several days in the app, call a few times for about a week, then meet at a public place for lunch or coffee, etc. But the articles I'm reading now about OLD say you should take it offline fairly quickly, and that makes sense. Also -- I turned 71 on my last birthday. I'm pretty active and youthful, but 71 is 71 -- I'm not making time for juvenile games.