Sometimes after twenty, even thirty years of what were supposedly marital bliss, you suddenly find yourself single. What a shock to the system! If your last date was sometime in the late 1990s, the dating world is a whole new ballgame. In the late '90s, cellphones were still giant things you carried around in a bag, and not all homes had internet. And if they did, it was AOL dialup. If you are ready to date post-divorce, read up and get ready. This isn’t the dating world you left behind.

To Google Or Not To Google Your Date?

As was pointed out earlier, the last time you went on a date, there was barely a functioning internet. There most certainly was no Google. Now everything about everybody is on the information superhighway, whether we want it there or not. One short Google search can pull up a person’s full name, address, names of relatives, property records, voting information, and many other forms of personal information. If you have a date, you able to skip the “getting-to-know-you” part and replace it with a Google search.

The savvy digital dater would say you must Google your dates. What if you find out your date is a wanted felony or an ax murderer? On the other hand, if nothing of consequence comes up, have you not just ruined the whole mystique to dating? Isn’t part of the fun asking questions and getting to know each other? What do you say when your date brings up that he or she has three other siblings? Do you nod along like this is brand new information or do you let them know you know that because you searched them? Perhaps a happy medium would be to look up their accounts on social media, but leave the Google search for later dates. 

How the heck do I use a dating app?

Like everything else in our digitally enhanced dating world, these things are a blessing and a curse. How nice is it that you can find other singles in your area looking for dates? That seems extremely time-efficient. In the olden days, you had to wait for a friend to set you up or a stranger to talk to you at a bar. Luckily now, there is no more waiting! Just sign up for an app, fill out your profile, upload a picture, and you are ready to date! You can have a date every night of the week if you like.

While there is nothing wrong with dating apps, doesn’t that take all the fun out of things? What happened to the great love story you get to tell your friends about how you met? Instead of locking eyes and smiling at a charming stranger across the room, you can say you locked eyes with a charming stranger on a computer screen? That seems a bit impersonal.

In the end, you get to decide how far into this new world you want to venture. But nothing says you can’t combine the past and the present. You can still use our modern wares, but still, have a bit of that old school touch. Don’t go full Google stalker on your date and don’t write off an app. But don’t be scared to ask out a stranger and learn information the way we always used to…by asking thoughtful questions on a date.