October 2021
Back stories, back stories. Everybody loves a good back story, right?
Well, there is a back story that explains the origins of VeritasDating.love and every word of it is true. Trust me; I lived it. But it isn’t what you’re probably thinking . . .
Several years ago, I became very friendly with a nice man who worked in my neighborhood. He was in his 60s and had been a widower for several years. In fact, he was still in mourning, despite his wife having died three or four years earlier. We had a few minor things in common and one giant one: I had been widowed many years prior to this and fully understood what he was going through. The big difference was that I had gotten over it and he had not. We cemented our friendship almost immediately, based largely upon my being able to listen to every word he said about that part of his life and give him advice on how to get through it.
All the while, he still lived in the house he had shared with his late wife. Whenever I’d ask him what he had done over any given weekend, the answer was always the same. “Nothing. I stayed home (in the darkened house) and watched some ball games.”
“Why don’t you get out of there and do something?” I not-so-gently prodded. He eventually did, but his idea of “something” was half-heartedly looking at women on dating sites. Period. He wasn’t ready to even send them a message.
A year or so later, he needed to move from that house. I offered him the spare bedroom in my home temporarily. Well, that worked out well and our perpetually platonic friendship continued for a couple of years.
He spent an inordinate amount of time looking for a girlfriend – strictly online – and he’d show me the plethora of females that were available, both to get my opinion and to share a laugh.
I soon became appalled by what he was finding. Virtually every woman he viewed LIED about herself, exaggerated her attributes, and minimized her faults. My favorite dumb move came from the ones who would stand in front of their bathroom mirrors, cell phone visibly in hand, and shoot their selfies by focusing on their images in the mirror.
“Don’t they have any friends who could shoot a few pics?” I’d mutter. “An eight-year-old could do a better job than this…!”
I could only assume that men were doing similarly foolish things. Whenever I’d mention that to people in the know, their heads would bob up and down, while they expressed “Oh, yeah. No question about it” with their body language.
It didn’t take me long to realize that, in my not so humble opinion, there was a real need for “truth in advertising” in the world of dating sites. There was also a need for good, solid commonsense advice about how to go about it safely and wisely, while still having fun, and now, here it is: