How I Met my Current Husband

On line dating, or thank you for your time, but we won’t be needing anymore of whatever that was.

I’m not exactly Elizabeth Taylor. For one thing, I am not dead yet. But my father always introduced my partner to random people as my “current” husband. Like the waiter at our favourite chicken restaurant who honestly did not need to know anything about me except my fowl preferences - I prefer dark meat.  It was a loaded statement, but my then and still spouse took it in stride.

My husband and I met on a dating site. A long ago defunct dating site called Slic.  I think it was an acronym for Single Losers in Canada.  Kind of like PoF (Plenty of Fish) but designed specifically for people who say “Eh”.  It was actually called something else but I can’t remember. Men had to pay a monthly subscription fee, but women were free to browse.  The phrase, “you get what you pay for” was coined before on-line dating, and perhaps doesn’t apply here. I think John would agree that he definitely got his money’s worth when he claimed me.

This all started when my divorced friend and colleague had been having a wonderful time going out with a variety of men she had met on dating sites and invited me and another recently single woman over to her house to do our hair and makeup and prepare our tarted up selves for posting our profiles.  Within minutes of posting, my profile was going ping to show someone liked what they saw, and then another ping, and another. In the first few  hours, I had  multiple offers from randos to please, please, please look at me! Date me! Marry me!

Maybe I should treat Substack like a dating site and post provocative photos of me from days of yore.  ‘Cause whatever I’m doing here now isn’t working to get the attention I apparently crave.

At that juncture of my life, I wanted nothing more than a distraction from the grind of my work and the tribulations of single parenting. A good meal or glass of wine with an interesting conversation, nothing more.  I did have two criteria:  Not a “suit” – as in not a guy who works in finance, and not a handsome man – as in not a guy that has coasted through life based on his looks, screwing everything that moved. Been there, done that, never again.

Of course, the gentlemen – for some of them that term is loosey goosey – wanted a lot more.  You’re thinking of course they wanted more. They wanted sex.  And that may very well be true in a certain age group, but what most of the men my age at the time seemed to want was an actual relationship, that may eventually include sex.  And let me tell you, there is nothing like a woman who isn’t looking for love to attract men who are.

I have very fond / vivid / terrifying / stomach churning / vomit inducing memories of the men I met on the site. I dated two Engineers, a Lawyer (he had his own firm and did not wear a suit), a truck driver, a firefighter, a hydro worker, and a caterer.  That sounds like a lot of dating, but I am using the term to describe real dates, the old-fashioned kind, like going to the theatre, or out for dinner or picnicking in a local park, or simply meeting for coffee, not the Trump and his daughter type of dating. Ewww.

Some of these dates were one and done. As in, thank you for your time, we won’t be needing anymore of whatever that was.  

Sitting in a restaurant, without ordering food, listening to HydroBoy, a man two years older than my ex,  prattle on about his job at a local utility for close to two hours. He did not ask me one single question the entire time and any effort I made to insert myself into the conversation was met with more details about the differences between a step up and a step down transformer, including illustrations on the cocktail napkin.  At the end, starving and not wanting to spend another minute hearing about voltage increases, I said “Thank you so much. It was lovely to meet you, but I have to get home to walk the dog.”  And he said, I kid you not: “This is what I like about older women. You are such good listeners.”  Us old broads can also talk, you #$%@, if only you would let us get a word in edgewise. Buh bye.

And who could forget my second date with the mining engineer? The one who partway through brunch presented me with a humongous ring with a fake diamond the size of a boulder? Who at the end of a lovely meal of eggs benedict told me not to listen to whatever I hear about him abusing his children?  Say what now?

The caterer and the other Engineer, and even the lawyer, were quite nice people as was the truck driver. Intelligent, fun, loved dancing and skating and long walks and fine wine, but they wanted far more than I was in a position to give.

I don’t know what prompted me to go on the site one last time, but I did and am glad I did. I saw John’s profile and messaged him.  Having limited success, he had decided not to renew his monthly subscription and it was his last day on the site. Definitely not a calendar boy, but seventeen years later, he is my current, best and last husband.

Can you guess which one I married?