Let’s Talk About Dating

Also, if you have an idea for a topic that you would like me to discuss, please contact me and send that to me as well. I’m always interested in new ideas. I like to consider myself a lifelong learner and I have a curious mind. I like to learn about different things, so if you’ve got an idea, please contact me. Today I want to talk about dating. I did a presentation, I do public speaking events, and they’re basically a one hour presentation, a lot of humor, good strong message about life in general, I guess, motivational, inspirational. And along with that, I did a presentation a couple of years ago for my friend Nancy on dating. And I called it Dating 4 the Ages, and I had an interesting group there. And I’ll tell you a little bit about that, and then I’ll talk to you about, I’ll tell you about my thoughts on dating right now. Cause I am on a few dating sites and, and doing some dating. Um, and, uh, and it’s a, it’s an interesting world out there. So to begin with the dating 4 the ages, uh, the presentation I did, um, was a group of folks who anywhere from let’s say 25 to maybe 70 And yes, believe it or not, dating goes on into your 70s 80s 90s as long as long as your eyes are working and you have an open heart and open mind, I guess. And are interested in a relationship and as a human, I mean we enjoy relationships Everybody’s looking for love, you know as the Beatles said love is all there is and that may be true; that may be the most important thing. So I did this presentation, and one of the things that I wanted to do was get through to some of these men who were there, who were there on their own, how to approach women and how to just be regular, you know? I mean, just be a guy. Just be a person. And I grabbed a young woman out of the audience and I wish I could remember her name. I cannot. But she was very gracious to be my role-playing partner. And the whole idea of it was, you know, we were sitting next to each other waiting for this, you know, gentleman to speak. And it just started the conversation like, so, hi, have you heard this guy before? You know, and then we had a little chit-chat back and forth about the presentation and what maybe we expected to hear or learn and had heard of the presenter before. The question never came up of you know “come here often little girl” or asking her for her phone number or if she was married or any of that crazy stuff. I was just talking to her like I would talk to a guy who was sitting next to me. So that’s the first lesson I guess for anybody that that is out there and whether it’s female or male and females are much more intuitive and frankly I’m sorry guys but a lot of times a lot smarter than we are when it comes to relationships. But if you’re a guy listening and you’re not sure how to approach a woman how about if you just talk to her like a human; you know instead of a sex object or you know any of those other names you might want to put on a person. However, let’s talk about dating. So I was in a relationship, a long-term relationship until a couple of months ago when the person I was in the relationship with said she didn’t think she wanted to be in the relationship any longer. And after almost 14 years, you can imagine that was a bit of a shock. So she came out with it, she hadn’t been happy for the last year and a half, and I thanked her for the update, which came a little late. But anyway, let’s get into the topic. So dating, so I signed up for four different websites. And it’s not important which ones they are, because I think for the most part, they’re all owned by one company. And they have different logarithms that they put in based on whether it’s you know supposedly for 55 plus people or people just looking for a hookup or whatever it might be but they’re basically owned by the same so I put in my age which is 74 as I record this and try to put in a bunch about me you know what I’m like first of all that the pictures are real, that this is what I look like. It’s not something that’s doctored. Whether you like the look or not, this is it. It doesn’t get any better. It’s probably going to get worse as the years go on, but it doesn’t get any better. But the point is, I put in there the things I like to do, that I’m active, that I do some acting in community theater, I do public speaking, I have my website that I’m working on, I have a small flooring company, so I sell flooring for a living. That’s how I pay the bills. I like to travel. I’m into sports. Well, it is shocking, some of the people that respond to me. People that are, to begin with, ladies that are 75, 100 miles away, which, you know, I lived in California for a long time, so driving a distance for a date is not out of the question. However, you know, Charlotte’s a pretty big place, so I don’t need to drive that far. But people who are, the women that are contacting me a lot of times are sedentary. They are not into exercising, if you will, or I’m not sure how to put this without offending women who are listening to this, but not into, I guess, keeping themselves up. And one of the crazy things that I think is, that there are so many women on these dating sites who think the most important thing is to show their cleavage, I guess, is a good way to put it. I’m not sure that that works. It might work in a hookup or something, but not in a relationship. It’s certainly not a way to build a relationship, I don’t think. And that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the female form. I certainly do as well as the next guy. But if you think about it, if that’s the best thing that you have going for you, showing your cleavage, then you don’t have a whole lot. You don’t have a lot to build any kind of relationship, and certainly not the only thing I’m interested in. So, if you are single, I encourage you, to get on a dating site, just for laughs, if nothing else. And the thing that I’ve seen over the years, or that I’ve experienced over the years, is when I go out on a date, and I sit down with a lady over dinner or coffee or whatever and we can share. We have mutual, we have stories from her side and my side about online dating. And I’ll just give you a quick one or maybe I’ll give you a couple of them. There was one that I remember years ago when I was living in Syracuse and there was a woman who didn’t have a picture online so I’ve learned that you don’t go near that but it was a woman who didn’t have a picture online and she said she was pretty and short and petite.

I said, cool.

So I drove like 45 miles to meet her and true story, it was a driving rainstorm and I met her inside the restaurant and she was petite and she was short. That’s where it stopped. So we sat in this booth like to have dinner And I asked her how long she had been on the dating site and you’d think I was talking about nuclear secret She was like What what I don’t want people to know I come here a lot I don’t want people to know them on a dating site And I thought well, you know if you come here a lot and people see you with different guys they they either think you’re a working girl or they think you’re on dating sites. And then, so I thought, let me try some other conversation. I said, well, what do you do for a living? That was a big deal, too. I don’t know what she did for a living, but I didn’t hang around to find out. She got up and went to the restrooms and when she came back, I said, you know what, this just doesn’t make any sense to me, so have a wonderful evening. Put on my jacket and drove back home 45 miles or whatever it was in a driving rainstorm now You can think me rude for doing that. However, I thought this woman was a little strange Not wanting to share any kind of what I thought was everyday information So if you haven’t been on a dating site, but you’re looking to date Please get on one, you know, you can do some of them for free some of them you have to pay for But it’s a trip Number one, you will have some laughs number two. You’ll have some crazy experiences you’ll have some great stories to share with your friends or with a Relationship person that part life partner if you will if you find one and as I’ve told some of my friends You need to get out there. You may not like dating sites, so if you don’t, then you need to be involved in a church group or the meet-up group. You’ve got to be involved and out in society if you’re going to meet somebody for a relationship. They’re not coming knocking on your door. That just isn’t happening, especially today, it’s not happening. If you don’t have a big social circle where you’re gonna meet people and have friends introduce you, I know in my experience over the years, whenever I’ve been interested in finding someone to date, none of my friends know anybody. And then when I’m in a relationship, everybody knows somebody they wanna fix me up with. So, I think that’s just God’s way of laughing at my whole life situation. But the point is if you want to find a relationship, join a dating site. You’ll have some laughs if nothing else, and I would love to hear about your experiences. You can email me, David at DavidAGwilt.com. Share your stories with me. I’ll share them in a future vlog here. And thanks very much for listening.

Have a great day.