Photo by Susanna Marsiglia on Unsplash

At 73, I’ve taken my first stab at online dating. Here’s how it went.

Spoiler alert: Not well.

I lost my wife four years ago. The following year, I lost my dog, which may have had an even greater effect on my daily life, because of my wife’s inability to do much over the last year of her life, and the dog became my activity partner on daily hikes. After three years of solo hikes and failing to organically meet any women that felt like dating material, I began to consider dipping my toe into online dating. One of my sons met his wife that way, and she is an absolute darling, and couldn’t be more perfect tor him.

So one day recently, as I scrolled through Facebook, I clicked on an ad for online dating for seniors. It featured several photos of attractive women and the words “browse for free.” I checked it out, and noticed several things: all the women looked 35–40 years old, had thirst-trappy photos heavy on the cleavage, and were all from foreign countries such as China, Colombia and Ukraine. Turned off by the faint whiff of human trafficking that the site gave off, and skeptical as to whether the women pictured were even real, I did some research and decided to check out the top-rated legitimate dating sites for seniors. I was looking for someone near my own age…I wanted a prospective partner to have listened to the same ’60s and ’70s music that I did…