The Don

The next guy was named Don. Don and I had been chatting back and forth for a couple of weeks now. After the incident with Jed, I was a little gun-shy but I had definitely learned from it so I was just going to push forward and try not to make the same mistakes twice. Don lived in the same city as I. The important things that I knew about him was that he was employed, he had a dog, he seemed really friendly and he was tall (or so he said). We decided that we would meet out for dinner at a local Thai restaurant. I went into this date with the lowest of expectations because of what I had experienced from the last on-line dating incident.

The first date was GREAT! We met and had dinner and drinks at the restaurant. Unlike my previous experience, he actually did look like his profile picture! We talked the entire time. We seemed to have a lot in common. He honestly seemed like a really fun and nice guy! I was super excited. After dinner I told him goodbye. There was no kiss, just a side hug. I was honestly just trying to take things slow and not rush things with him.

The next morning I had a 5:30AM flight out for work. I was going to be gone for a couple of days. I remember sitting on the tarmac and getting a text message from Don that said "I had a great time last night. Have a great trip and have fun." I remember thinking…"Wow…I don't know the last time I ever got a message like that when leaving for a work trip". During my marriage the night before a work trip and morning of were always surrounded with HUGE arguments because I had an extremely jealous husband. He made sure to make my entire trip a living hell. It was nice to see that there could be a change of pace.

Don texted me nice things while I was gone. It was really sweet. It actually made me look forward to coming back home so that we could do something that weekend. I couldn't believe it! I was looking forward to going on a 2nd date with someone! I was going to get home late on Friday evening so we planned to go to dinner the following Saturday night. This time I actually had expectations that we would have a good time.

On our second date, we went to dinner. Once again, we had the best time together. I was really starting to get optimistic about this Don guy!! After we finished dinner he mentioned that several of his friends were having drinks at a bar across town and they wanted us to join them. SHUT THE FRONT DOOR!!! He wanted to introduce me to his FRIENDS!!! Now, you might think…"what's the big deal with this?" Well, let me just explain. During my marriage I lived in a completely different world from my husband. He kept me totally isolated from his friends in the city that we lived in. The only thing that I knew was their names…or supposed names. Never once in almost 3 years did I meet these friends. It was something that was a HUGE point of contention in our marriage. Hindsight, I now know the reasons that he was keeping his life so secretive but at the time I really could make no sense of it all.

Fast forward to date #2 with Don. He wanted to introduce me to his friends. MAJOR BONUS POINTS!! We went across town to the bar and had a couple of drinks with his friends. They were all great and I was so excited to be meeting all of these new people. At this point Don was a winner in my book!!