How do you decide your ‘anniversary’ date with your beloved? Is it the first time you meet? First kiss? First overnight stay? Wedding? So many significant times to choose from!

We didn’t meet for over 2 months since that first cheeky profile swing by in early October. But somehow I still hold that as a precious beginning (such a romantic fool I admit). So today (Sat 4^th) is 5 months since the hello… But we didn’t meet in the flesh till just before Xmas; would that be a more realistic date to celebrate?

So much unfolded between October and December… And as crazy as it sounds (even to myself, tough cynic of a Crab that I can be sometimes), I was definitely already ‘feeling the love’ by the time we met.

Even typing that makes me laugh out loud! After SO MUCH online dating, how the hell could I actually fall for someone I never met?? We’re all warned aren’t we, about online scammers, and doomed internet romances; we roll our eyes don’t we, thinking ‘how can anyone be so stupid??’…

Yet there I was, looking forward to messages/composing long messages/fantasizing about meeting etc etc. It could have all gone so wrong, so easily. In 2015, The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Targeting Scams Report says that Australians lost over $229million to online scams, which includes over $54million for romance and dating scams! Good thing I was never asked for any money hey? Yes, it could have all gone so wrong…

EXCEPT, I was doing it with Her.

Yup. With a seemingly beautifully kind, creative, gentle, smart, funny soul, who kept showing up online, and kept saying Yes Lets. Who started sending me tiny hand-drawn comics based on things we’d written about; who said she got teary over stories I’d written her; who followed through on things she said she needed to do, so that I trusted in her integrity, like stopping drinking alcohol; who made me laugh out loud time and again with her cute pictures.

Well, apart from Week 3 or 4, when she had a little tantrum about how many other people I was maybe messaging with (I admit there were a couple at the beginning, but so was she!). Have you ever had a fight online? It happens in slow motion, with plenty of time to really sink into those emotional dramas, lash out from them, then reflect and think ‘Holy shit, that was a bit uncalled for, by both of us’.

And there’s no easy fix. I couldn’t pick up the phone and say Sorry, or wait to hear hers, because we’d agreed we were having such fun writing and drawing to each other, and weren’t going to talk before actually meeting Dec 21^st in Melbourne.

YES, we had a real live date lined up! Phew- I can almost hear the collective sigh of relief 🙂

But in the meantime, we apologized, and learnt a little more about each other, and most importantly for me, learnt how to choose different responses than I usually would. For this, I am 100% grateful to 2 books, one smart therapist, 2 50^th birthdays, one comet called Chiron, 3 months of a dating website subscription, and 1641kms of space between our homes.

But more of that next week in Episode 4. [If you want to stay ahead of the game, you could pre-order your copy of ‘Attached’, by Dr Amir Levine, for which I am receiving zero commission, but have definitely personally sold at least 10 copies of by word of mouth alone.]

In the meantime, I want to say Thank you today to an incredible human who has spent the last 5 months engaged so deeply and pleasurably with me, shining light into some of our dark corners (with plenty more to come I’m sure *gulps nervously), and who brings a calm joy to my heart x

Morning waves & dolphins jumping, Wategos Beach, Byron Bay