Hi All!

Just a little introduction (larger one is in greetings), I'm a 32 year old female who got divorced out of an abusive marriage about 6 months ago.  I've inadvertently fallen head over heels in love with a coworker who, alas, has a girlfriend and is off limits.  I see him every day and it's depressing me so I've decided to get out and play around dating to attempt to take my mind off it.  I feel like I should play around a bit before getting in a serious relationship again, anyway.

But my problem is that I'm clueless about being taken advantage of by guys.  Before I started dating my ex in high school I was taken advantage of majorly by crappy guys and was labelled a slut.  I'm pretty attractive and have low self esteem which makes me a clear target.  I lost my virginity at 14 and was raped by an ex boyfriend at 15.  So I've got some heavy baggage about getting out and playing the field.

I do have a slight wild streak, so a lot my sleeping around I thought was my choice at the time.  Since my divorce I've had a couple of one night stands that I have sought out on my own.  Although I just found out that one of the guys I had sex with was already in a relationship.  That some guy would be on a dating website who is already in a relationship kind of astounds me.  I feel like I should know these things and how to avoid them.

So anyway I'm on some dating sites and have gotten a lot of responses (so many they're annoying me) but I'm sort of paralyzed of paranoia from having been bitten so many times before and worried about making the same mistakes.  Stuff like, if I want to have sex the first date, should I?  or shouldn't I?  Should I flirt?  How do I tell if I even really like the guy?  

I've created "artificial responses" to pretty much everything - this is how I communicate since I can't really hold conversations easily - I think it's slow auditory processing.  But I find that I'm doing these responses with every guy I meet - generally including a lot of smiling and laughing because that's the easiest way to not be obvious.  I think as a result I might be tricking myself and them into thinking I like them without really thinking about it.

Not to mention that I've been taken advantage of so often that I probably wouldn't even know what being treated properly would be like.

Anyway, just curious if other dating women have similar issues and how you overcome them.  I don't have any friends except an older coworker so I can't really take someone else along on a date, and I don't have anyone to bounce these questions off of.

Thanks much!  (and especially thanks for reading this far down!)