Finding love in the personal ads

So you think you're not the sort of person who answers personal ads?
Well a year ago so did I.

Two years ago my partner of 7 years got up and walked out of our house
and my life. My world fell apart. I was a few months away from 30, my
career was progressing well, I had a nice house, a cat, and suddenly I
was alone. That's not to say I didn't have any friends, I have a great
circle of friends and I'm very close to my family and they all
supported me tremendously but I was a single person and, having spent 7
years living with my partner, when I looked around I came to realise I
was the only one. Nearly every friend I had was married and a large
proportion of them had children and I was single. Not only that but I
was single for practically the first time in my life having had two
consecutive 7 year relationships I'd not been single since I was 16!
After I started to recover from the initial heartbreak, this took me
about 6 months before I noticed I was recovering, I began to try and
build a life for myself as a single person. I decided to do some
travelling. My first solo trip was to drive from my home just west of
London to the West coast of Ireland to spend a week's holiday. Having
managed that without too many hiccups I aimed for bigger and better
things, my next trip was to Egypt to fulfil a lifetime ambition.
Shortly after returning from Egypt I was invited by a friend of my
brothers to spend the New Year in France on a snowboarding holiday with
a group of 30 friends, I'd never been on a winter sports holiday, he
was the only one of the 30 I knew but, with my newfound sense of
adventure I went and saw in the Year 2000 having a fantastic time in
Val D'Isere.

After all these adventures, however, I was still coming home to an
empty house and it was becoming clear that I didn't like living alone.
I was having a great time going out with my friends but they were all
couples, and I was alone. I realised I missed having someone special to
go out with, to sit in watching telly with (not to mention someone to
have sex with!). So how does a 30-something girl in the new millennium
go about finding a man? I began to realise it was next to impossible. I
work full time and fairly long hours, all my friends are in couples and
don't have any single friends and I could hardly take to hanging round
in bars on my own picking up men. So, on Valentines Day 2000, I found
myself reading the Sunday paper and taking an interest in the personal
ads. When I realised what I was doing I immediately put the paper down
in horror, surely I wasn't that desperate? I confessed to a friend at
work what I'd done and to my surprise she revealed that she'd been out
on several blind dates with people from personal ads, she even gave me
a few tips. I began to realise that perhaps it wasn't so sad, after all
we live in a society where people work hard, where communities have
virtually disappeared so we barely know what our neighbours look like,
let alone know their names - so how are we supposed to meet new
people?

So I began answering ads. Being the cautious person that I am, I only
met people in the daytime, in a very large and well-lit pub in my
hometown and I always had my best friend call me 15 minutes after I was
meeting the date. This was a twofold measure, she could check I was ok
but also if they were really terrible I could pretend I was being
called because of a family emergency and make my escape!

A few months after I started answering ads I acquired a computer and
for the first time in my life hooked up to the net. One night whilst
surfing around I discovered an Internet personals site and a whole new
world of possibilities opened up. This was even better! I could talk to
people for weeks before I decided when or if to meet them. It was also
great fun, I could reveal as little about myself as I liked and still
engage in flirting outrageously, for the first time in ages I started
to be quite happy. I hadn't met "that special someone" but I was having
fun, getting to talk to new people, I had an excuse to get dressed up
and go out&;#8230;and then just when I least expected it, I did meet
him. 5 months later he proposed to me and we're getting married this
September.

I'm not saying that you will find the man or girl of your dreams on the
Internet or in the paper but why should there be any more chance of
meeting them in the pub or the gym or on the bus? We live in a changing
world where people are busier and have less free time, everything seems
to happen faster and so why shouldn't we weed out the possible mates by
talking to them online or on the phone before making the investment of
our valuable time to meet up with them,

A friend of mine asked recently how my fianc? and I had met and when I
told her she said "That's brilliant you get all that getting to know
whether you like the same music stuff out of the way without wasting 3
or 4 dates on it"

So if you still think you're not the sort of person who answers
personal ads then that's fine but what if your soul mate is?