You walk into a coffee shop to order your usual medium coffee with cream and sugar. As you wait for your order you turn and see this cutie giving you that cute one sided smile and you think, "is he looking at me?" You subtly look at your phone and hope you get a reflection of yourself in order to make sure you look presentable. You turn back around to find him smiling at you, gets up, and walks toward you. At this point you are getting nervous..."oh goodness, is he walking toward me? Ah, I hope so!"
Cute guy: "Hi, I couldn't help but notice how beautiful you are. I'm 'Armando' pleasure to meet you."
You: *Blushing* "You are so sweet, I'm Lexi, nice to meet you also."
Then a few months or years later you are head over heels in love, walking down the aisle, and popping out babies.
The unfortunate REALITY hits, our lives are not fairytale movies. Bummer, I know. Not everyone has that moment of destiny when you meet "the one." For those of you who are How I Met Your Mother fans like myself must have thought of Ted Mosby. The successful architect from New York whom after 8 seasons will finally catch a break and meet the one.
For me, after my high school/college relationship fell apart after 7 years and at the age of 21, finding the one seemed almost impossible. How on earth will I find someone who understands me the way my ex did? I'm not in school anymore, where will I meet him? I don't want to meet anyone at a bar or a club. These thoughts/questions were constantly running through my mind for 2 years after my break up.
One day at work one of my coworkers begins to tell me about a date she went on with this guy she had just met online. She went on to say how much fun it was to talk to so many different people and be able to pick and choose the guys you actually choose to go on dates with based on their likes/dislikes. At first I thought what everyone else did, meet a guy online...that's lame! It almost seems desperate.
In reality, it's one of the smartest decisions one can make if you're tired of going on numerous dates with people you know you won't click with. According to a survey sourced by Reuters, Herald News, PC World, and Washington Post, 40 million singles out of the 54 million singles in the US have tried online dating. With all of the questions you must answer and qualities about yourself you share, it's easy for a person to decipher whether or not they wish to reach out to you or not. It must be working because according to the same survey last updated in June of this year, people who met online dated an average of 18.5 months before getting married, compared to 42 months for those who met offline.
Now, after the thought of online dating began to come across my mind more often I decided to try it. One day after work I went into my bedroom, closed to the door as if I was doing something illegal, and created an account on Plenty of Fish. As soon as I hit submit on my profile, I began to receive messages from men in my area. I just kept thinking to myself, wow, why don't I get this kind of attention on the street or when I'm out? Clearly these men were messaging me based on my pictures, about me section, and interests.
After enjoying the daily attention from numerous men, some quite corny/cheesy, but a few who actually caught my attention....I met Mando. His username was Chav084 and his first message to me was, "Hi Lexij89 how are you? Reading your profile and I'm really curious what big media company you work for? Do you cover the Bears radio network?"
The first thing I did was click on his picture and read his profile. I remember thinking, wow this guy is so handsome and cute. He had cute beady little eyes, a wonderful smile, facial hair, and a nice body build. After going through his entire profile I went back to his message and responded. We messaged back and forth for about 3 hours and I gave him my number because I was about to run errands and texting was much easier for me. He didn't text me until the next day. We text each other daily for 2 weeks until we were both available to go on a date. Our first day was beautiful and we got to know a lot about each other, he took me downtown and we had drinks. Our second date we went bike riding in Geneva and talked about our relationship preferences over ice cream. On our third date I had gotten us tickets from my job to the White Sox game (my team!). On this date I could tell he was really into me and tried to get closer. He held my hand for the first time and as we sat back down after getting nachos he asked, "Do you want some soda babe?" Babe? Did he just call me babe? When did I become his babe? I went along with it although I was a bit confused. Then as I was into watching the game, he's not much of a baseball fan and prefers the Cubs (sad, I know), he grabbed my chin to turn my head toward him and kissed me. It was such a soft and sensual kiss that I remember thinking, wow....we won that night and after every win they have fireworks. It made it all the more romantic for our first kiss.
It is now 5 months later and we are both madly in love. I mean the passionate, crazy, can't be without you kind of love. Never have I ever known such feeling could exist. It was as if my heart knew this was the man God created for me.
I had to thank my coworker who put the idea in my head and praise God for sending me such an amazing man. We both know that we are each other's soul mates. Had it not been for online dating he and I would never have crossed paths as we live over 1 hour away from each other and I'm more of a city girl, he lives in bufu.
So for all of you who have the same stigma about online dating as I once did, don't. Just try it, there is no harm in it and you won't lose anything....you might even gain, you might just find 'the one!'
