- Claire Volkman, 39, tried online meetings after her marriage ended.
- She was traveling for work and going to meetings in cities around the world.
- She met her second husband after a year of meeting in numerous applications.
A few months after I left my husband, I downloaded some meeting applications. It seemed to me like a foreign territory, having met my ex-husband at college before meeting apps existed-a time when “slipping right in Tinder” made no sense.
I had lost 40 pounds, which made it difficult to find the right photo to use in my profile and had no idea what to write about myself. Should I be shy? Or blunt? Stupid or serious? After hours of discussion, I created my first Bumble account and started finding matches.
My goals for this year were to travel around the world, go to as many meetings as possible, and try to find my twin soul between delays at the airport and lost links. As a travel writer, I loaded my task schedule that would take me around the world.
I traveled to over 20 places that year. The further I went, the harder it was to meet the Internet. My 20+-hour flights to places like Myanmar and Australia made travel to cities to Colombia and Spain.
But the British stubborn I called Prince Harry in Hong Kong, and the Austrian who fell ascend to the volcanoes in Bali, helped fill the temporary gaps of loneliness.
Didn’t find love abroad
As I traveled from the beaches of Sardinia to the steep mountains of Patagonia, I found myself slipping, sending messages and occasionally questioning my life choices. I created meetings apps for meetings and passed through Tinder, Bumble and Coffee Meets Bagel candidates.
Was I destined to end up with a guy explaining the meaning of life with Tapas in Madrid or a tourist guide in Macedonia, whom I later discovered had a woman and child at home? I began to wonder if my life would play as a bad date after another.
The author traveled to over 20 seats a year after divorced. Claire Volkman
After months of slipping and clashes abroad, online meetings were paid off and joined someone in the US who felt different. We spent hours talking virtually. We were sending messages at 3am for everything from the childhood trauma with whom we compared ourselves from the “Friends” character.
He was located in Chicago, two hours away from my temporary base in Indiana. The distance didn’t bother me. We were falling in love with each other even though we were not met face to face.
I suggested a date on a day when I would be in Chicago enough for a coffee before leaving a flight to China as I got the train from Indiana, we talked where we would meet and agreed on a bakery.
I got there first, blurred after sitting in Michigan Avenue with a suitcase and a backpack, and sat down. I noticed when he went inside, and though we had only a few minutes to speak, it seemed to be known for years.
Online meetings were rewarded
We spent the following weeks writing messages and faceiming whenever we could. He became a constant in my life when nothing else was. As I struggled with a eating disorder, broken body image, heart breaking and the very desperate life of an independent writer, he was there to offer support and love – crazy time differences and everything.
We met again a month later, on a cold night in October, and everything went into place. He looked almost a guy, with a dressed baseball and a hood, and I looked at her and realized that it was.
The adventure I had followed – across the continents, through a series of controversial decisions and unpleasant meetings in Asia, Australia and Iceland – had somehow brought me here, in this small corner of Chicago, to this guy who made me believe that love It needs to be complicated and that online meetings can help.
So, in the end, after going through countless profiles in the Coffee Meets Bagel meeting app, I met the love of my life. First online, then in Chicago – not in a foreign place or in a remote mountain top, but in a corner bakery.