Internet dating miracle story. Finding a mate in a small city. Never married woman meets man online living 5 minutes from her. She is never-married no more.
By Tom P Blake - Finding Love after 50
Linda, early 50s, grew up in the San Fernando Valley, north of Los Angeles. In 1996, she moved to San Clemente (population 30,000) in southern Orange County, which is located half way between Los Angeles and San Diego.
She had never married. It wasn't that she didn't want to meet a nice partner, it just hadn't worked out that way for her. To enhance her chances of meeting someone--after all, San Clemente was a fairly small city—she turned to Internet dating—a site called American Singles. She realized a long-distance relationship might be the result of Internet dating.
What she found surprised her.
Bob had lived in San Clemente since 1976, where he'd been a Bank of America branch manager for several years. He was about as far away from his hometown of Van Buren, Maine, as one can get. Van Buren is close to the Canadian border.
Note from Tom: Don't move to Van Buren to meet men. Of the town's 2,310 population, 53.5% are women, 46.5% are men.
After divorcing in 1993, Bob was lonely and wanted to meet a new partner. He hadn't met anybody in San Clemente of interest so he tried various Internet matching services with mixed results. In 2000, when his American Singles subscription ran out, he didn't bother to renew it.
But as most of the matching companies do, American Singles kept Bob's profile in its pool of available men. When the company contacted him, saying that a woman in San Clemente wanted to communicate with him, he figured it was just a sales pitch to reel him back in.
Bob debated on whether or not to spend $12 to renew his American Singles membership. "Turns out," Bob said, "it was the best twelve bucks I've ever spent." The woman was Linda, who lived all of a mile or so away.
Of their respective friends and acquaintances in San Clemente, they knew only one couple in common, but no connection had been made through that couple.
Bob and Linda started emailing. Then, they spoke on the phone for a couple of weeks. Besides the Internet bringing them together, Bob feels another small miracle got them together for their first date.
Bob was the coach of a club basketball team that was scheduled to play one weekend in San Diego. But the team failed to get its entry fee in on time so it was bounced from the tournament. Instead of playing basketball on that Sunday morning, Bob took Linda to brunch at the Renaissance Café in nearby Dana Point.
Three and a half years later, on September 21, 2003, Bob and Linda were married. They live in San Clemente.
Bob and Linda agree, they most likely wouldn't have met if not for the Internet, although they lived so close to each other.
When singles use the Internet to seek love, they might be surprised to find their compatible match lives across the street, down the block, or within their city limits, and not in some far away city, like Van Buren, Maine.
So, not only do we have a "never married no more" success story here today, we also have evidence of why keeping oneself visible on the Internet is a smart thing to do. Your soul mate might live within five minutes of you.