Adventures in Online Dating: Getting back on the horse edition

First of all, with respect to the title of this post, I'm not talking about *that* horse.  I'm talking about the online dating horse altogether.

Because with everything that's been going on in my life, I climbed off it for a while.

I had a couple of dates that didn't pan out, and it was frustrating, plus every time I set up a date, I had anxiety attacks.  Which kind of told me that I wasn't ready.  My emotional state was so fraught because of other stuff that it was bleeding into every area of my psyche, and it made it impossible to just relax and have fun.

I've spent a lot of time over the past two months talking myself off of various ledges.

So I took my profile down.

In the meantime, I went to my India reunion and had a number of conversations with friends who had divorced and were now happily dating people they met online.  And I know so many people who are happily married to people they met online.  They all gave me pep talks, and told me to just have fun, assume that I would go out on many, many bad dates with the occasional good one thrown in, and that I should just be patient and give it time.

As you all know, relaxation and living with uncertainty are not my strong suits.  But one of the things about constantly talking yourself off the ledge is that you tend to get better at it with time.

So I'm getting better at it.

I made my profile public again.  I'm communicating with a couple of guys, and setting up a date here and there.  I'm trying to be relaxed.

Baby steps.