I was born in 1943 into a working class family in Maitland NSW. Right from the start they resented that they’d had another useless girl. I was treated badly and felt totally unloved and very insecure during my formative years.
I subsequently spent most of my adult life looking for love and security. I married four times hoping to find it with men. Finally, I found financial security in the Advertising Industry - it was very demanding. I was also still paying a mortgage and had my two teenagers to manage. This didn’t leave much time or energy for my personal relationships - they didn’t last.
I had cancer in 1998 and after my recovery I decided in 2007 to move from North Sydney to a small village in the Blue Mountains mainly for financial gain. By then I was semi retired, it meant I could travel more and spend more time on my writing. I was quite lonely as I had no family or friends close by. I didn’t want to sit at home watching TV and knitting so I decided to try online dating.
I hoped to find someone independent and suitable to spend time with. I was only online for four days when Matthew came into my life. He was amazing and within a couple of weeks I was besotted. We saw each other almost every day for about six months. Naturally, I thought we were having an exclusive relationship. Then he stopped seeing me at weekends, he said, “I need to do family stuff at weekends.”
A friend advised me that he had contacted her on another dating site and I eventually discovered he was active on four other sites. I decided to confront him. He fervently denied it. I would never have discussed this without proof so I had print outs of his activities in a folder which I then handed to him. His response was, “so what I lied.”
It was over. I was very upset at the time as I thought I’d finally found the love of my life. I was so emotionally involved I wasn’t able to see the relationship for what it really was.
Eventually I decided to give online dating another go as I had no chance of meeting a man any other way in my small village. I’d been sexually active with Matthew for almost a year and I was also missing the intimacy I’d had with him.
Over the six months I was on the dating sites I was contacted by around 2,000 men although about 60 per cent were scammers. I made contact with 38 and had dates with 9 and sex with 1 suitable prospect.
I was definitely only looking for someone in my own socio economic group and found the quality of most men on the internet unsuitable. Overall most were tragics. Many had also lost their independence in divorce.
Then Matthew came back into my life and I fell straight into his arms. I knew that his past behavior was a prediction of what his future behavior was going to be, but I threw caution to the wind. At first he was amazing, but after about four months he started becoming unreliable and went missing, at times for weeks. Ultimately I realised he was an unreliable alcoholic that hadn’t been a ‘university professor’ as I was told, rather he was tom catting around humping as many women as he could.
Phase two with Matthew lasted six months. It ended with him saying on a call, “you’re trying to get too close to me”. I just hung up and took to my bed to recover.
I took down my profile from the dating site and set about putting myself back together. I’d been looking for love and security all my life, I’d finally realised that I couldn’t rely any more on men to fill the void.
I decided to see a therapist and she advised that at my age women often suffer from ‘Last Chance Love’. This was certainly the case with me.
With encouragement from the therapist I decided to write a book about my experiences on the dating sites, as I had kept extensive records. My book was launched in 2013, Online Dating after Sixty, one woman’s journey of love, lust and losers.
Nowadays I have all the love and security I’d always searched for from the seven people I was responsible for putting on this planet. My son, my daughter and their five children who all love and adore me. I’m still financially independent, I travel extensively, I’m learning French and to my surprise I’m now passionate about baking, specifically bread which has led to me writing my third book, A Love Affair with Bread.
