What advice would you give a woman who's in her 40s and has never dated or had any sort of romantic relationship but would like to?

First, I noticed you made no comment about that going to therapy recommendations. It could really help you. Don't discount it.

I have experience with therapy, a little more than 5 years ago after some bad trouble. Suffice to say that it did not help me. In fact, it made things significantly worse and left much poorer (this is the US, after all, where mental health treatment is expensive, not easily accessible, and often dicey at best). I apologize, but I would prefer to not say anything more about that or the circumstances that led to it if it's all the same, please.

Examples of ways to spin your hobbies

That feels manipulative to me, but I'll see what I can do if or when I try creating a profile. Thank you for the suggestion.

From a lot of your responses you seem much more concerned with other people's welfare than your own.

I suppose I'm a product of my environment, haha. I do try to put others first when I can. Doing otherwise makes me feel selfish and self-centered, and I feel like nobody likes someone like that.

You should be using the meeting to see if You are interested in him, not just if he's interested in you.

I would like to think that had I agreed to that sort of meeting, my interest would be established, and I need to gauge his. Right? There's no guarantee he will be, after all.

If you said something about your past relationships as above and then go on to develop more of a relationship with that person, you can expand on it more as you go along.

That just feels like I'm misleading someone. Isn't the old saying: "A lie of omission is still a lie?"

Thank you for taking the time to give me so much sound advice and the benefit of your wisdom and experience. I very much appreciate it.

/r/AskWomenOver30 Thread Parent