I've been involved with the internet since 1999 running several online companies. So internet dating for me wasn't the stigma ridden nightmare that many people thought it was, back in the mid-noughties. My first foray in to internet dating was in 2005, quite early on and certainly when there was still a stigma attached to it. Fortunately for everyone that dates now, the internet dating stigma has now long gone and internet dating is considered the norm for most busy people of all ages.
I was married for seven years before it all went t*** up. That's not actually true, of course, it went wrong way before then.
I separated for the first time on New Year's Day 2005. My wife and I, together with our two year old daughter had been to visit the outlaws in Scotland. I'd managed to escape, along with my sister in laws husband, Biffa, to the pub for a few pints. This was a few days before New Year's Eve. Biffa spent the whole evening telling me about how bad his marriage was and how, at the time he had met Joan (rhymes with moan), he was in competition with two other potential suiters. His phrase, not mine, 'I lost and ended up married to it'. I may have said a few things about my relationship, but nothing that I thought was that bad.
In the car, on the way back from Glasgow there was silence for most of the way. Then as we passed through the Lake District, Sarah happened to mention that she knew we had been talking about our respective relationships in the pub, the night before. This was when she told me about her sister's take on the whole situation: 'You're better off out of there'. Now, I'd never been a fan of Joan, but this moved things to whole new level. Biffa had broken the Bloke's Code of Honour by doing this, but I was not going to let 50% of humanity down by getting down and dirty with him, so I took the assault on the nose.
Once settled back in our house, I mentioned about getting a baby sitter and going out together on New Year's Eve, as we had in previous years. Sarah told me she had made plans already and she was going out with her friends. Perfect, so I was going to be left at home, on my own, to see the New Year in. I sat and contemplated things that evening. I loved my daughter to pieces, but that was only part of the equation. We had spent the previous three months in between Toulouse and Carcassonne, in South West France as I had a business which I'd sold to a French company and ended up on their board of directors, so I was working in Toulouse and Sarah and our daughter were able to play in the pool until mid-November, and then just chillaxed for most of the rest of the year. We were all due to return to France.
When Sarah returned from her night out, I had made a decision, I was going back to France on my own, I didn't see a future for us. Oddly the next morning, she came and sat by the bed as if nothing had happened (she wasn't that drunk that she could have forgotten the conversation from the night before). Anyhow, I disappeared back to France and carried on with my life, returning every few weeks to see my daughter, with a few trips from them to see me. My daughter was now three and more fun to be around than ever, I missed her deeply.
I stopped working for a while after this and stayed on in Toulouse for another 6 months. My French wasn't really improving and I really wanted to be closer to my daughter, so I moved to the Isle of Man, which was a short hop from Manchester and the Pennines, where the family home was. This worked well for a while and my daughter, with Sarah, came to visit fairly regularly. At one point I suggested trying again. We did and spent a year together from May 2006 to May 2007. We then separated again, I stayed in the house for the next few months, but moved out in January 2008. At the time of writing, we are finally talking sensibly about divorce.
