A Real Story

I got divorced at 44 and had no idea how to date again, so I did what any recovering engineer does: I built a spreadsheet. Columns for name, occupation, red flags, follow-up questions, and a 1-10 rating I updated after every date. By March I had fourteen rows filled in from Match.com alone, including a woman who spent forty minutes explaining her essential oil pyramid scheme and a very nice dental hygienist I just felt nothing for. Row eleven was Carol, 47, who listed her occupation as ‘existing’ and whose profile photo was just her dog wearing sunglasses.

Our first date was coffee, scheduled for thirty minutes because that’s what my system dictated for first meetings. She showed up with her own creamer because she’d read somewhere that diner half-and-half is mostly chemicals, set it on the table like it was completely normal, and started asking me pointed questions about why I was divorced instead of doing small talk. I gave her honest answers instead of my rehearsed ones. Ninety minutes later I still hadn’t opened the spreadsheet app on my phone once, which had never happened before.

I kept updating the sheet out of habit for a few more weeks, rating our second and third dates, until Carol found it open on my laptop screen during a lazy Sunday at my place. She read her own row out loud, including my note that said ‘unclear if interested, worth a fourth date regardless,’ and laughed so hard she had to sit down on the floor. She still brings it up at dinner parties as evidence that I fell for her against my own better data. We got married two years later, and the only column that mattered in the end was the one I never thought to add: whether I wanted to keep talking to someone after the check came.