Awesome people are out there. Usually you have to at least meet them half way: go do stuff. (I drove around the continent when my previous relationship ended, visiting friends. Opportunity!) posted by seanmpuckett at 6:04 PM on [2 favorites]

Had another serious, live-in relationship that lasted a couple of years, but imploded when he decided to start dating someone without telling me – it is tough to cheat in an open relationship, but he managed

My husband and I met on https://getbride.org/tr/sicak-tayvanli-kadinlar/ OKCupid when he was 39 and I was 42. We traded profile views for a bit, then I sent him a message. We chatted for about a week via the OKCupid board, then moved to Facebook, then texting and finally talking on the phone. We met in person for the first time two weeks after we started chatting, and he came to my place for the weekend. Three months later he moved in with me.

We’re five years together, three years married, and sometimes, like right this very moment, I tear up when I look at him and marvel at how much I love him

We have no children, but we have his dog, and we’re probably going to get a puppy and, possibly, a kitten (don’t tell him that because I’ve been insisting I do not want a cat; but he wants one and I love him and what the hell. It’s not like I’m allergic, so I can’t even use that as an excuse.). posted by malthusan at 6:36 PM on [9 favorites]

Best answer: I married at 26, and split up with my ex-husband at 29. My thirties were one bad date after another. I stopped counting after the 100th bad date I’d met online. I’m not thin, and I have Opinions™, and that’s like having the bubonic plague, here in LA. My bad date stories are ones I’ll dine out on for the rest of my life, but it took a few years of emotional distance before I could laugh about them.

I was 38. Spent the next few months weeping, and the next few years actively avoiding online dating and working out like it was a second job. I still am not thin, but I win medals in powerlifting, so there’s that. I hit a point once I turned 40, where I felt like I’d managed to contract some horrible disease, or maybe a secret invisible mark over my forehead that branded me as undesirable. I started to seriously consider how on earth my life was ever going to be fulfilling if I never found a partner, because that’s definitely how it was looking. (Unless I wanted to settle for a guy with a fat fetish, and eww. No.) And then… I found I just didn’t give a fuck anymore. So what if all of the straight men I knew thought I was unfuckable because I wore a size 16? That’s why god, in her infinite wisdom, invented sex toys – so I didn’t have to settle for people who didn’t really want me, just to get laid.

I started having drinks with a coworker I’d known for years, and thought was smoking hot, but he was orous, so I figured he wouldn’t be interested. I was happy just being friends with him. We enjoyed drinks and venting about work. It was about six months, before he felt comfortable enough to tell me that he and his wife had an open relationship. But since that line gets used a lot by shady dudes, and I have been burned by it before, I was like, ‘Yeah, right; and would your wife say the same?’ He told me that I could come over for dinner and ask her myself.