I’m a senior citizen—a baby-boomer, young-at-heart 67-year-old woman.  I’ve been romantically alone for most of my life but managed to give marriage the old college try twice.  Added up, the combined time those two unions lasted totaled maybe four years. Not a great track record.

They say that after three strikes you’re out. After my second divorce, I thought I’d never want another man in my life—at least not for romantic reasons. Every bad mistake I ever made in life had something to do with a member of the opposite sex. It recently occurred to me, however, that an interesting life should include others. New faces. New stories. Conversations are better when there is someone to talk to and learn from. My dog listens, but he rarely responds. Perhaps I’ve grown up a little. Maybe some men have, too. Change is good, I think.

I spent nine years taking care of my parents. They both required a lot of my time—time my daughter spent growing up without me. Suddenly, my parents were gone and my daughter had matured and moved on with her own life. Now that my maternal obligations had become limited to financial assistance and some occasional unwanted advice, I thought that perhaps it was time to stick the proverbial toe back into the dating pool and hope to enjoy a pleasant swim.  But how?

“What are the best bars or hot spots to go to if I want to meet someone?” I asked my daughter, Elizabeth.  She is 27 to my 67. She dates all the time. I figured she would know all the great pick-up places where I could practice my best bar-fly routines. She looked at me as if I’d just said something to her in Swahili.

“No one does that anymore Mom,” she replied.  She obviously thought I was really, really dumb.

“You have to get an app on your phone,” she insisted.  She then told me to close my mouth because it was hanging open in confusion and disbelief.  The entire concept was very foreign to me. But I let her take over as if I were a child being led to its first day in kindergarten, and she helped me find a suitable mature site for this new chapter in my life.  It was obvious that the only solution was online dating.

I must be honest. I’m not only a Baby Boomer—I’m a Jewish one.  I’d be more comfortable with Yenta the Matchmaker than an online dating site. However, I don’t live in a shtetl outside of Kiev, nor do I reside in Brooklyn, New York, where there may be one or two left. So, no Yenta.

My timing certainly couldn’t have been worse.  Within a week of my enrolling with Single Seniors, COVID-19 hit the world. I’d heard about it in Wuhan, China. But it never occurred to me that it might come to the United States so quickly,  and as a pandemic. I’d just paid a substantial amount of money to meet available men on this dating site, and suddenly there were rules about social distancing.  That terminology certainly makes for strange bedfellows. But I decided to stay the course.  With everyone under quarantine, what more could I do besides meet men online? Maybe, if things progressed, he and I could Skype! (That’s like getting to second base in the time of Corona). It’s the epitome of safe sex. Perhaps being online will give me time to really know a person. All those attributes that can be discovered within messages.  Can he spell?  How’s his grammar? Can he write a complete sentence?

I’ve been at this for more than a month now.  The site sends me daily emails asking “Have you met so-and-so?” and they include the man’s profile.  Or, I receive smiley faces from various gentlemen too nervous to write anything. Then there are the brave heart, macho guys who send smiley faces and a message at the same time. They are the 65-75-year-old go-getters.

With all this, I have to ask myself….What was I thinking?

The fun part is that there is a psychology to online dating, and the longer you participate, the more you learn about yourself and others. People lie about their age. They aren’t always unmarried—just separated or whatever. And their minds revert back to their teens in their dating strategies, even after 65. The profiles are often amusing, as are some of the messages. Sometimes, there are even a few hopefuls. I’d like to share these with you as we go along the path of finding Love In The Time Of Corona.

© Miriam Greenberg, and the blog Love In The Time Of Corona, beginning April 2022 to the Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Miriam Greenberg and Love In The Time Of Corona with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.