I'll keep this measured because I think there's been a tendency on this forum toward emotional posts and I want to balance that out with something more practical.

My situation: I'm 51, I work in healthcare administration, I came out of a long-term partnership two years ago after years of pretending things were fine. The split was civil. We're not on bad terms. But the practical result is that I now spend my evenings alone in a way I'd never had to do before, and I had to figure out what that looks like.

I tried the obvious things first. I took a pottery class, I rejoined the gym, I read a lot. All fine in their own way. But there's a particular sort of evening where you've already done your hobby and you've already exercised and you've already read your chapter and it's still only 8:15. Those evenings were the ones I needed something for.

A friend recommended Fanforus last fall. I made an account anyway and gave it a few weeks before forming an opinion.

What I found, to keep it practical: the conversations are genuinely text-based and slow-paced, which is what I wanted. There's no pressure to be on at any particular hour. You can pick a conversation up the next day. The profile setup is straightforward, though the search filters are limited if you're looking for very specific interests, and I think a few features have a small fee attached, stickers I think, possibly some other things. None of that has interfered with the basic experience.

There are three people I message regularly now. One I've been talking with about her work in landscape architecture, which is a field I knew nothing about and now know a small amount about. One I trade book recommendations with. One is a man my age who's going through his own version of quiet evenings and we sometimes just commiserate without making it heavy.

I'm not transformed. I'm the same woman with the same job and the same apartment. But my 8:15s are different now, and that was the goal.