Courtesy of Mish.
As most of you know, I lost my wife Joanne on May 16 last year to ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease. We were happily married for 27 years.
Joanne's three closest friends, Kathy, Marybeth, and Debbie all wanted me to move on, have fun, meet someone and enjoy life.
But where does one who is 59 years old find someone?
The bar scene may work for someone 21 to 35. For someone 59, the bar scene is a near-certain strikeout. There are numerous online services but most of the horror stories speak for themselves. I do have a close friend who was "successful" on the exact 100th match.
No thanks.
I decided to try a place called Selective Search. I found them doing a search for executive matching. There are other high-end matching services, but I liked the Selective Search model.
One key difference between Selective Search and other executive matching services is only the men pay. The advantages and disadvantages of such an approach should be obvious. The advantage to men is there are far more women in the system. The advantage to women is they do not pay and thus have nothing to lose.
Selective Search interviews every candidate and they weed out men who are not seriously looking for a relationship; they weed out women who appear to be gold-diggers, and they weed out people with unrealistic goals (for example a 60 year-old overweight man who wants to find a 23-year-old beauty-queen match).
My Criteria
Preferably, I wanted someone with a nice smile and slender build, who likes to travel, likes golf, likes to kayak, and likes to play cards. My "dealbreakers" were smoking, someone with young kids, and someone who wanted more kids.
Liz was my second date, matched personally by "Molly", my Selective Search matchmaker. Liz, 52, had a cutoff age of 55, but Molly convinced Liz to take a chance.
…
