My First Date with Lynette! or, Does eHarmony really work?

I can now make this public.

I just wrapped up my first date with Lynette, who I met over eHarmony. We went thru the "guided communication" steps, sending each other prewritten questions, then those we wrote ourselves, then open communication thru their system.

It quickly went to private email, and then to the phone. The "buildup" to this was phenomenal. It was scary. And I hadn't been this nervous on a first date for years. I mean years! It was like being 16 all over again.

In a situation like this, that is the "buildup", well it seemed that no matter how you sliced it we were compatible. She didn't waste any time into getting this into an honest and open dialog. From the anonymity of the keyboard I opened up. And I kept wondering, is it going to be different this time?

Those were legitimate questions. In October of 2005 I was in some great dialog with this Linda in Scottsdale who I met via Match.com. She practically promised me the moon. We went out on a date, and it was like a scene from some Stephen King novel. I'm thinking, this is weird, I've been led down some long winding road to get to a dead end, and why did I let this happen?

Then in early 2006 there was this Sheri from Dewey, Arizona, also from Match. She got a little brazen in our first phone call and I loved it. I ran down the battery in my cordless phone talking to her. She said all the things I wanted to hear. I could hardly wait to meet.

However, I got suspicious on that one. I ran a check of the online court records and learned that she had several convictions for passing bad checks. She was also the target of several civil actions from those bad checks. And, she was still technically married since her divorce action showed up and the decree didn't look like it was going to be final anytime soon. She quickly got an email from me stating that I had panicked, wasn't ready, and asked that she not contact me further.

That wasn't a lie. I was not ready for someone like her! And there was a sense of panic as that I was on the brink of arranging a meeting for that one.

In early 2007, and again from Match, there was Mary from El Paso, or "Little Miss El Paso" as my friend Cheryl called her. The emails were getting on the steamy side. I was about to commit to a trip to El Paso to meet her. Then she asked me if there was such a thing as "love at first sight" via computer. I related to her that I wasn't sure that there was such a thing, that instead I would have to meet the person. I also offhandedly remarked what my friends would think about my going to El Paso to meet someone.

Well, Little Miss El Paso really lit into me on that one. I got this angry tirade from her about pulling back, and that it didn't matter what my friends thought, we were going to meet and it was going to happen with us.

What Little Miss El Paso doesn't know is just how highly I think of my friends. Nobody, but nobody criticizes my friends! Nobody! I happen to think that my closest friends are all better people than I am, each and every one of them. The way I see it, is that my friends are very important to me, and I just won't stand for anyone criticizing them.

Anyway, with those three examples, I found myself down that road again. That road that you're not sure if the bridge was out the last time has the bridge in it now. Where the advertising looks promising, the scenery is fantastic.......but will the bridge that's up ahead be there when you need to cross it?

This time the bridge was there. I found out that Lynette and I had way more in common than I could possibly have imagined. We found oursevles as instant soulmates! And so, after a first date that will be cherished as a prized memory for the rest of my life, we immediately agreed on a mutually exclusive relationship.

This is better than anything I have ever experienced. I am quite pleased to be making this public!

We agreed on how things would be, how we would resolve conflicts, things we would like to do this year, and places we would go. There are some initial challenges with scheduling as that she is a nurse and I am an engineer. She lives in Queen Creek and I live in Tucson. But we'll work around these things.

It really feels good to be "off the market". It really does.