Back in the Dating Pool: Salvina Castiglione
60-year-old Salvina Castiglione went on her first date since 1986 after taking our chaptertwodating.com workshop on How to Meet a Man Online.
Hamilton social worker Salvina Castiglione has known her share of heartbreak. She was married for 24 years, had two great kids, a beautiful home, and a rewarding career. She loved her husband and adored her kids. Things looked picture perfect from the outside in. But during the last few years of her marriage, things began to unravel.
She made the difficult choice to end her marriage. “I lived with too many lies, too many secrets, too many betrayals for too long,” she writes in Finding My Abandoned Self, a memoir she wrote about leaving her marriage and finding herself.
Several years ago, Salvina, now 60, ventured into the world of online dating. It didn’t go well. A couple of weeks after striking up an online conversation with a man, he asked her for money. She stopped all communication with him and decided to ditch online dating altogether.
Then, this past spring, a friend encouraged her to take our two-hour workshop, How to Meet a Man Online.
“Seeing you and Amit together as a couple who met online was encouraging.
It made me realize it is possible for a good woman to meet a good man. I thought I’d give it a try again,” she says. After the workshop, Salvina hired us to work with her to write her dating profile and organize a photo shoot with the photographer we have on contract for our workshop participants. She changed into three different outfits, had some great photos taken, and put up her dating profile on OkCupid and Facebook Dating.
Within a couple of weeks, she had 50 responses from men.
This time around, she approached things differently. “I kept in mind the advice offered during your workshop — to not let online dating take over my life and to think about meeting potential friends rather than expecting Mr. Right. The whole idea that I can be friends with someone takes off some of the pressure. I feel more calm and confident about the whole process. In some cases, I even made the first move and reached out to men.”
She’s keeping an open mind about potential candidates. “Despite my prior bad experience with online dating, I realized these guys are people too, they are starting over, just like me, and some of them have been burned as well.”
Last month she met a man for coffee at a Starbucks patio. It was her first official date since 1986. They never ran out of things to talk about and the date lasted three hours with a dinner invitation that followed.
“All my fears about meeting someone just evaporated, and we had a wonderful few hours. He flirted in a nice way, and it made me realize I still had the ability to charm a man."
Salvina has also made plans to meet up with another man for coffee. She’s allowing herself to meet a whole bunch of people until she finds the connection that may lead to something longer lasting.
“When I was younger, I never dated much before getting married. So now is my chance. I’m staying upbeat and I’m surprised how positive the whole experience has been.”
One thing she learned is the importance of having great photos and a well-written and engaging bio.
“Your dating profile is like your personal marketing campaign. People are scrolling and only taking a second to look at your photo. You need to present yourself in the best light.”
“My pictures are honest. You can see I’m carrying some extra weight. But that hasn’t stood in the way.”
“What I’d like to say to other women is: You may have had some bad experiences, but you can get back out there and the extra support and coaching from your workshop and coaching really helped,” says Salvina. “I shut down for years after I had a negative online experience, but now I realize that the part of me that would like to be with a man is still alive and well."
Fall is a time of new beginnings. So what are you waiting for? What do you have to lose by learning more about how to boost your chances of meeting someone online?
