[Dawn70]

I met Sparky on POF. I think, for me, the key to OLD was to be very wary of who you were talking to and watch for red flags. My good friend college guy, who I posted about, also popped up on POF after his divorce and I KNOW he's a good guy because I have known him since I was young. Sparky is a good guy or I wouldn't marry him. So, my point is, good guys do exist on this dating sites...even the non-paying ones (neither Sparky nor I ever paid a dime for subscriptions to dating sites). You just have to be choosy. Like kml said above, I was a sucker for a good, well-written profile and I didn't like bathroom selfies or pics wearing sunglasses (what is it with guys wearing sunglasses in EVERY pic?). I'm educated and like to think I'm fairly intelligent so I wanted a profile that at least had some indication that the writer was the same way. Sparky's was excellent. It was witty, a bit sarcastic...right up my alley. He had 3 pictures, as I best recall: 1 kind of close up with a goofy expression, 1 of him in a boat fishing, holding a fish he had caught, and 1 full body pic that his daughter had taken a few months prior to his posting it.

I live in a rural area, so meeting people from my local area was difficult and the few I did meet seemed to be looking for a quick, no strings attached sex partner. It almost turned me off OLD altogether, but I hung in and like Andrew said, hid my profile so I could look without being inundated by bots and scammers. I was honest in my profile about being a big woman and my pictures were current and honest so I didn't get a lot of hits anyway and most I did get were some sort of scammer (those become obvious REAL quick). But I persevered and Sparky came along. One thing I did that I know some of the men on this board have posted about hating is, I didn't give my phone number or agree to meet real quickly. If someone wasn't willing to message with me and get to know me a bit that way first, then I didn't want to talk to them. That just didn't work for me. I'm not saying the men on our board are wrong, I'm just saying what worked for them didn't work for me. And, I'm sure it ran a few guys off but oh well. Obviously those weren't the right guys for me. Sparky and I messaged back and forth for several weeks and after about week 3, we exchanged e-mail addresses and communicated that way for a couple of more weeks. At that point, I felt confident in giving him my number and we texted. It was about a month and a half after we initially connected that we talked about meeting for the first time and then, as I have posted many times, his dad got sick and was hospitalized and ultimately passed away so it actually pushed our in person meeting back another month or so. But, during the time he was dealing with his dad's passing, we continued to stay in touch. He even told me that one of the reasons that he liked me and kept reaching out was that I seemed so genuine when I talked to him as he was dealing with his dad's passing, expressing my condolences, asking after his mother, etc.

It is a scary world but there are good people out there. If you decide to do it, just proceed with caution.