- Claire Volkman, 39, tried online dating after her marriage ended.
- She was traveling for work and going on dates in cities around the world.
- She met her second husband after a year of dating on multiple apps.
A few months after I left my husband, I downloaded several dating apps. It felt like foreign territory, having met my ex-husband in college before dating apps existed – a time when “swiping right on Tinder” didn’t make sense.
I had lost 40 pounds, which made it difficult to find the right photo to use on my profile, and I had no idea what to write about myself. Should I be shy? Or blunt? Silly or serious? After hours of discussion, I created my first Bumble account and started finding matches.
My goals for this year were to travel the world, go on as many dates as possible, and try to find my soul mate between airport delays and missed connections. As a travel writer, I packed my schedule with assignments that would take me around the world.
I traveled to over 20 countries that year. The further I got, the more difficult online dating became. My 20+ hour flights to places like Myanmar and Australia made trips to cities in Colombia and Spain seem short.
But the red-headed Brit I called Prince Harry in Hong Kong, and the Austrian I fell for while climbing volcanoes in Bali, helped fill the temporary voids of loneliness.
I did not find love abroad
As I traveled from the beaches of Sardinia to the rugged mountains of Patagonia, I found myself swiping, texting, and occasionally questioning my life choices. I created dating app profiles and went through candidates on Tinder, Bumble, and Coffee Meets Bagel.
Was I destined to end up with a guy explaining the meaning of life over tapas in Madrid or a tour guide in Macedonia who I later discovered had a wife and kids at home? I began to wonder if my life would play out as one bad date after another.
The author traveled to over 20 countries a year after his divorce. Claire Volkman
After months of drifting and crashing abroad, online dating paid off and I got together with someone in the US who felt differently. We spent hours talking virtually. We were texting at 3am about everything from the childhood trauma we compared ourselves to from the Friends character.
He was based in Chicago, two hours from my temporary base in Indiana. The distance didn’t bother me. We were falling in love with each other even though we hadn’t met face to face.
I suggested a date one day when I would be in Chicago long enough for a coffee before taking a flight to China. As I took the train from Indiana, we talked about where to meet and agreed on a bakery.
I got there first, groggy after sitting down on Michigan Avenue with a suitcase and a backpack, and sat down. I noticed him when he walked in, and even though we only had a few minutes to talk, it felt like we’d known each other for years.
Online dating rewarded
We spent the next few weeks texting and facetiming whenever we could. He became a constant in my life when nothing else was. As I struggled with an eating disorder, broken body image, heartbreak, and the pretty desperate life of a freelance writer, he was there to offer support and love—crazy time differences and all.
We met again a month later, on a cold night in October, and everything fell into place. He looked almost boyish, with a baseball cap on and a hood, and I looked at him and knew this was it.
The adventure I had followed—across continents, through a series of questionable decisions and uncomfortable encounters in Asia, Australia, and Iceland—had somehow brought me here, in this little corner of Chicago, to this boy who made me believe that love didn’t exist. it needs to be complicated and that online dating can help.
So, in the end, after going through countless profiles on the Coffee Meets Bagel dating app, I met the love of my life. First on the Internet, then in Chicago—not in a foreign country or on a distant mountaintop, but in a corner bakery.