Click, wink or email?

I have been trying to figure out if online dating is really for me. It has given me some fun diversions, a few good leads, but more often than not it leaves me feeling judged.

The way it works on the particular website I subscribe to is that you can see who viewed you, winked at you and hopefully who emails you. Recently, I saw a really attractive man who viewed me and I wrote him an email. He responded. We exchanged a few emails until ultimately the last one I received he was leaving for a trip. This insane website lets you know when someone has been online... and this said man has been online several occasions and never wrote back.

So what is left... I sit here and I question was the email I responded with too forward, too desperate, am I not pretty enough, what could I have done differently? How is it that I found a way to take personally the most impersonal way of dating. Sadly we never even met so how can I take it personally? Leave it to me to find a way.

I am trying to find my place in this dating world and struggling. Putting my pictures out there and a few short lines and having someone judge me on those doesn't work for me. I am happy for those that find love but for me I can't do it anymore.

I never would have planned to be in my 30s with a daughter and trying to find love... but here I am. I listen to the words of Joseph Campbell and try to live them.

"We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that's been waiting for us."