(such a snob, I know).įurther, anyone who has “sitting by a fireplace,” “walking on the beach” or “staring longingly into each other’s eyes” is passed on.
Anyone who has certain ZIP Codes in their profile I pass on, as I am very down to earth and suspect I would have little in common with some of the more elite digits around L.A. Now, I am not model material but I am not roadkill either, so I was surprised. I sent more than a few emails and received pretty much meager results.
Having spent my life as a professional communicator, I have to think I am at least a decent storyteller.
The professional dating sites like, are more complex. There is something in the anonymity of these sites that makes conversation easy and I have made a number of friends whom I regularly chat with. I found that there are indeed a healthy number of people who use these sites to seek out, dare I say, relationships. I was less concerned with torsos and more with profiles. Starting with the apps, I had always heard they were a place in which companionship could easily be found. There are the bars - the Rages, the Abbeys - you know, the traditional mating ground of the gay male dating sites and of course the alternate “apps” where you can geo-locate the love of your life – or at least find someone to enjoy some time with. I understand myself pretty well, and although I am quite content to sit on a rock in the middle of the desert and be at peace by myself, I tend to do better when I have someone at my side.Īre you a veteran of L.A.'s current dating scene? We want to publish your story All these things helped me to heal my battered psyche. I even took up yoga, which I now commit to regularly. I kept to my six-times-a-week gym schedule at L.A. I wanted to emerge from this as emotionally healthy as possible.
I sought help from my family, friends and a professional counselor as I wanted to be truly free of whatever damage had been done over the course of the messy breakup. Although we had never married, I can tell you that recovering from that relationship was tantamount to dealing with a death or divorce. Turns out, that couldn’t have been further from the truth.įirst, though, I had to untangle my mangled emotions. And I had always been told once a gay man hits his 50s, “paying for it” was the norm. I mean, I had always sensed that aging in youth-oriented Los Angeles, and having the ability to find love in the middle ages, would not be pretty. What would I, as a 55-year-old gay, Latino man living in the Valley, have to offer the dating world?
After the dissolution of my 21-year relationship, I found myself in a unique situation.