We used to spend a lot of time on the party lines, this was back in the early 1990s. There were some interesting chat lines we found for couples and singles. The lines were moderated, so if someone really got out of hand they'd be kicked off. We spoke offline with couples and a lot of single guys and a surprising number of single ladies.
The phone was a safe and hot activity for us for a few years. We'd go down on each other and jam the phone right in there LOL It was good stuff.
There was another phone service, you left ads and people left messages in your mailbox. That one you had to pay for but it was worth it, we met several people off of that.
There were 2 singles that we really clicked with - a male and a female. We spoke to them separately for about 2 years and never met them in person. We even had the four of us on the phone a few times and it was a lot of fun, but neither wanted to meet in person and we were ok with that.
After a while, we felt comfortable enough that we began giving our number to people we felt good about. After a while, we felt good about a lot of people :-) We did ask most people not to call on weeknights, but that Friday, Saturday and especially Sunday night were good. There was one guy that my sweetheart talked to only on Sunday nights. He'd call after his girlfriend left, they'd chat in the bedroom. I'd wait until they were going good and join in.
Now that we're older, we thought about going that route again, just because it's something we were already comfortable with. But we have to figure out how to handle the phones. Seems less safe to use your home phone for this nowadays. Maybe we'll get a cheap cell.
Anyway, just reminiscing.