I know I just said in another thread that I have bad luck in online dating, but I decided to try it again because I'm not sure I will have many if any other options. The issue is, even if I find a few people I'm interested in, I'm not sure how to approach writing the first message. Even though I'm female, I never got a lot of messages so it's not like I can just wait for people to message me.

For example, there's this woman I find interesting...I pretty much could have written her about me section (so we have similar personalities) and she also likes seafood. I'm not sure how to put that into a message that isn't awkward or weird. I'm also afraid she (or others) would have a problem with me going back to school (so not having a lot of money), having been with a guy and still leaving the door open for guys (and if I message guys, I would be concerned that they wouldn't be comfortable with me being into women and not totally femme), or having a problem that my former partner is still my friend and we officially haven't been just friends for that long. I would think other people would find that weird, but I got over him rather quickly despite how long we were together. We really were meant to be just friends and any lingering sexual interest I would have in him would simply be because there's no one else available and I'd be comfortable with him because we've had sex before. Anyone else could probably replace him as a sexual interest.

So I'm not sure what to do. I have no idea how to get a date either online or in real life. My last partner was completely by chance and he initiated at first.