Online Dating Safety For Over 60s In Ireland

Online dating is, on the whole, safer than the way most of us met people forty years ago. You get to keep somebody at arm's length for as long as you like, you can form a view before you commit an evening to it, and walking away costs you nothing. That is a genuine advantage and it is worth using well.

None of what follows is meant to put the heart crossways in you. It is the small set of habits that let you stop thinking about all this and get on with enjoying it.

While you are still online

• Your instinct is information. If something feels off, that is decades of reading people doing its job. You needn't justify it to them or to yourself. Wind it down politely if you can, and if that gets you nowhere, stop replying. You owe a stranger nothing at all.
• Be honest in your own profile. The whole thing runs on trust and it runs both ways. Taking eight years off is easy online and impossible across a table.
• Mind what is in the background of your photos. Not only who else is in them, but the gate, the shopfront, the view that only exists from one road. In a country this size a small detail goes a long way.
• Your contact details stay yours. Your email is hidden from other members, so if you stop replying inside your account, that genuinely is the end of it. Keep it that way until you are ready.
• Nothing about money. Not your bank, not your card, not what you have or what you get. Nobody you meet here needs to know any of it. The only time you enter payment details is upgrading your own account, in account settings, never in a chat window. If you are unsure at all, ring our support team on the number below before doing anything.
• Requests for money are the whole point of the exercise. This holds however long you have been talking and however convincing the emergency. Somebody who has been lovely to you for three months and then needs help with a flight is running the standard script. Say no, tell our support team, and if money has gone, ring your bank and then report it at any Garda station.
• Do not be pushed into sharing more. No is a full sentence and anybody worth meeting takes it well.
• Do not be pushed into meeting either. You set the pace. Persistent pressure tells you a good deal about the person applying it.
• Ask for a recent photo if you are unsure, and bring it with you when you meet. Bear in mind a short video call is no longer proof on its own.
• Read your messages back before sending. Slagging is grand between people who know each other and lands very differently from a stranger in writing.
• Be wary of early declarations of love, particularly from somebody you have never laid eyes on. The speed is a technique, not a compliment.

When you meet in person

You have got on well enough to want to meet. Grand. This is the good part, and a bit of planning is what lets you relax into it instead of keeping one eye on the door.

• Somewhere public with staff and people about. A busy café, a garden centre café, a hotel lobby, a table outside the shops. Daytime is easier than evening for a first one.
• Tell somebody the details. Who, where, what time and when you expect to be home. Send them the profile if you like. If the plan changes on the day, tell them. There is nothing embarrassing in it.
• Agree a check-in phrase if it suits you, so you can report in without it being obvious.
• Sort your own way there and back. Do not depend on a lift from somebody you have just met. If you are 66 or over the free travel covers the bus and the train, so the journey costs you nothing and you are not beholden to anybody for it.
• The five minute call still works. Step away, ring a friend, ask them to ring you back with something that needs you.
• Do not share a taxi at the end. If it cannot be helped, insist on being dropped last so your address stays your own, and if that is argued with, do not share it.
• Go easy on the drink. One to settle yourself is fine. Keep it with you, and if you have the slightest doubt about a drink or a plate, leave it and say it to a staff member.
• Charge the phone before you go. Easy to forget when you are busy deciding what to wear.
• Trust the instinct on the day as well. You can end a date whenever you like and you needn't give a reason. If that goes badly, ask a staff member for help. In an emergency ring 999 or 112, both of which work.
• They are as nervous as you are. Do not push, and do not talk anybody into anything.
• Do not take an early finish to heart. Meeting a stranger is hard at any age and they came out, which counts for something.

That is the whole of it, and most of it is only common sense written down. Do it once or twice and it becomes second nature, at which point you can stop thinking about it altogether and pay attention to the person across the table, which was the idea in the first place.

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