relationships

I’ll Keep Dancing On My Own

Posted on by Charlotte_Sometimes

Right, it’s been a few months since I last wrote one of these. I’ll save filling you in on these interim months for my end of year dating unwrapped because, the way this year has gone, I’ll have nothing left to write otherwise. Instead, I’m going to tell you about how I rewatched When Harry Met Sally last night and I’m currently stuck in my feels.

My holy trinity of festive adjacent romcoms for this time of year are When Harry Met Sally, Bridget Jones Diary and While You Were Sleeping – I watch all three every year. For various reasons, I was going to put off WHMS this year – one of them being that this time last year, I was all a-tingle in my first ever ‘real’ (what felt it at the time anyway) relationship that felt like it was going somewhere. I was stupidly happy and happily stupid, oblivious to the fact I would soon be dumped via text by that man whilst I was on a flight before he then totally disappeared.

Watching WHMS usually gives me a top-up of romantic hope, a reminder of not knowing what’s round the corner and what could await. It didn’t really happen this time because it turns out it’s impossible to top-up a depleted supply.

We joke about ‘cuffing season’ and how this time of year induces the compulsion to lock-in for winter to the nearest warm body. But I can only partially blame that for how I’m feeling at the moment. Because, ultimately, I’m weary and fed up by it all and, as it currently stands, I don’t have any resources left to revitalise my hope levels on my own.

Having spent the last week in Norway on a solo adventure, of which I am beyond proud of myself for, I had a lot of time to tune-in and check-in on myself. Considering I had a therapy appointment a couple of weeks ago where the question, ‘Charlotte, are you happy?’ triggered an existential crisis and a lot of weeping accompanied by the admission of ‘No’, it was a timely yet daunting prospect.

My trip made me realise two things. 1) I’m pretty bloody awesome but 2) That almost makes it harder that I’m still yet to have a reciprocal romantic relationship. Having spent the week on my own, marvelling at all that I achieved and the person I have become, has had the bizarre repercussion of making me sad about it all. I have never been more certain at what a catch I am, how great a partner I could be and the joy I could bring to someone’s life. But why isn’t there anyone around who wants that/me?

On a walk last week I thought about all the gestures I have done for people I have dated – making personalised notebooks, a get well soon hamper, a working-notes document of their favourite things. I then added to the other scale the romantic gestures I have received in return and could only come up with ‘He asked if I wanted to pop in Tesco on the way back to his’.

I cannot convey how infuriating it is to be a self-identifying hopeless romantic who is heavy on the hopeless with none of the romance.

This is the year I have ‘tried’ the most when it comes to dating. Maybe as a consequence of last year’s shit-u-ationship, and finally getting to experience the baby steps of dating that most of my peers experienced over a decade earlier, has fuelled my want to have that again in my life. Because, before it got bad with him, it was also really bloody lovely. Having someone to text about the exciting things, to talk about the bad and sad things with, the in-jokes and recurring gags, sharing life with and to be someone’s first priority for an all-too brief flicker of time. My want for having that again echoes in my bones. In fact, on a journey from home work a few weeks ago (the same week as that therapy appointment) I thought I was going to splinter at the seams from how intimacy deprived I felt. How alone and adrift and invisible I felt.

Feel.

This year I’ve been on more dates, tried new apps and in-person dating events. I’ve alternated between trying and trusting the process. I have been more vulnerable and open than ever, but to no avail in getting closer to finding my person. And it’s so hard not to take any of the knockbacks personally, for every unmatching & disappearing act & lack of questions & sleazy comment & bad date to not feel like a reflection of me. Rejection is redirection, but only if you’re able to maintain belief that the path will finally arrive at a destination.

Instead I’m stuck in a forest full of ghosts and zombies and breadcrumbs.

I don’t need a Prince Charming to come and rescue me, I can do that myself, but I could really do with some reassurance that I’m not cursed or monstrous and that my partner in adventure is out there, looking for me too.

‘Where have all the good men gone…’

Posted on by Charlotte_Sometimes

It’s been a couple of months since I last wrote here. In that time I’ve written half a dozen pieces, in my head. Undoubtedly they were Pulitzer-winning pithy takes on life, some positive and some negative – I just didn’t have the time or energy to write them. I mildly resent the the fact that the first time I have something to say and the time and energy to say it, it’s about boys, but maybe I can vent this up and then move on.

Here’s my latest situation. I matched with a guy on an app a couple of months ago, but we kept missing each other due to respective breathers from apps until our timelines finally overlapped. He moved us onto voice notes (I love me a personal podcast). We consistently send voice notes for several days – they’re very good voice notes, heartfelt with a side of flirt. We’re both clear on what we’re looking for and that we’re interested in each other. We both go away on – separate – week-long holidays, but keep messaging and sending each other pics of our respective adventures. We both return to London and I suggest an evening to meet up. And I never hear from him again.

It’s not a tale-as-old-as-time, but it’s an increasingly familiar one – an experience that anyone who has been single will know, particularly if that singledom has occurred in the last few years where it really feels that ghosting has become alarmingly normalised. People seem unable to use their words and say they’re either no longer interested or have met someone else, instead leaving a tumbleweed to do all the talking on their behalf.

The last few months on the apps have genuinely been the worst I’ve ever known it. Undoubtedly I was returning to them somewhat unwantingly, after having my heart bruised and being ghosted by someone that that I had really come to care for, but I remained open to love and possibilities. It’s a shame that both of those things feel in short supply on the apps these days. Breeze felt like a game-changer, until I had:

  • The third worst date of my life
  • A second date in the diary, who then decided he ‘wasn’t in the right head space to date’ but popped up again on the app the next day.
  • A really good first date which lead to a very weird talking stage with a month between first and second dates. The second date he then cancelled the night before as ‘he’d sprained his neck’ and ‘needed to be wooden the next day. When he got back in touch a week later, and I said I wasn’t going to keep talking to him unless we actually had a second date, wished me luck and told me I’d ‘seemed super fun’.
  • The guy who cancelled our date two days after matching because he was ‘going out of the country’. Our date wasn’t for 3 weeks. He popped up on the app a few days later.
  • The guy who postponed our date 4 times, then decided he had ‘family issues’ and couldn’t date.

When listed like that, it’s hard not to want to bang my head against the wall. Because it’s not just that one app.

On Hinge I didn’t get any matches for three months, until I paid £75 for 3 weeks usage of it’s membership. Whilst there was an improvement in the quality and compatibility of prospective partners I was shown, and some matches did happen, no dates have occurred. Very rarely did any of the men message or reply to messages. And when they did, none of them actually asked questions or made any conversation easy.

On Tinder (which, btw, returning to after 6 years away felt like a season regular returning to a show they were no longer wanted on) I got 35 matches within about two weeks. I only received one message, but he seemed a good one. We got a date in the diary. The day before the date, I logged on and found out I’d been unmatched. For research purposes, I didn’t messages any of the others first for two weeks until, totally exasperated, I sent them all the opener ‘What’s the most embarrassing song you know all the lyrics too?’ Yes, I know, a generic opener is far from ideal, but I was weary and at capacity of witty openers. I didn’t get a single reply. Not only that, none of them unmatched either. The 34 one-sided exchanges sat in my inbox for a further two weeks until I deleted them all out of mortification.

Well, ‘why not to try and meet people in real life?’ I hear you cry. I’ve written about some of those events before here, here and here. And still I continue to try, and I promise you I do go in open-minded and open-hearted. I went to a singles pottery class on Friday. There were 5 men there – 3 sweet men way younger than me, 1 who arrived with his GF (long story) and 1 who was just there to do some pottery. 5 other men had booked and didn’t show up. Whilst I am very aware that it was exceptionally unlikely one of those 5 men would have been the great love of my life, or a Mr Right Now, the ratios of these events are just so damn infuriating.

I know this experiences are not unique to me, I hear so many similar tales from friends, friends of friends and strangers I trauma dump with at singles events. I am not saying this is exclusive to heterosexual dating. I am not saying that these experiences are exclusive to women, I’m sure men who date women are also finding things just as frustrating and exhausting.

What I am saying is that your single friends who are trying to date are not okay right now. We are tired and disillusioned. We are in the trenches, the talking wounded, trying to find love and stumbling into all sorts of minefields. If you have a single friend who needs to vent, please let them vent. Please don’t advise them with adages like ‘it’ll happen when you least suspect it’ or ‘maybe you’re being picky’. Just listen to them for a while, let them be sad about it. Because these experiences, whilst I sometimes can reframe them as funny and ‘for the plot’, they do sometimes make me sad. I have so much love to give, and keep on trying and being open to the universe and just keep being disappointed. I do all the right things but am yet to experience reciprocal romantic love; it requires so much willpower to avoid being disillusioned and cynical.

I want to believe it will happen. Finally. Pretty please.

Adventure 3: Try out a new dating app and go on a date

Posted on by Charlotte_Sometimes

I have been in the trenches of London dating for 11 years. Like any good solider, I do tours of duty – heading onto the battlefield in full protective gear, trying out the apps and events and even trying to project ‘approach me vibes’ for this thing I’ve been told about called ‘approaching someone in person’. Every single tour has ended the same way, with me returning more wounded and jaded. Essentially I have become the dating equivalent of that trope of the world-weary colonel – sat in the corner, patched up and scratched up, endlessly smoking cigarettes as I relay how I’ve seen horrors you wouldn’t believe (yes, that is an Apocalypse Now reference, I’m cultured and classy like that). Sometimes I forget just why I keep trying, so I sit it out for a while, then something happens to give me hope to propel me back for another go. (It’s hope or madness, I’m undecided as of yet…)

It makes sense that at least one of my Project 52 adventures involves dating, and a new dating app at that feels like something of a novelty. Particularly one that does feel a bit different to the now-homogenous unholy trinity of Tinder, Bumble and Hinge. (I’m writing this part of the post pre-date, I’ll be fascinated to see if/how my tone changes in the post-date section)

Breeze proudly declares itself ‘is the dating app without a chat function’, a fact that is both true and compelling. Any frequent users of the aforementioned banes of my existence (‘the apps’ to be more polite) will have become bone-tired with the ‘talking stage’ that occurs. For the uninitiated, on most apps, once you have matched there will be a degree of talking before committing to a date. The ‘talking stage’ isn’t an automatic predecessor to a date, many matches will in fact not make it beyond an exchange of ‘Hey! How was your day?’ Then, if you eventually do decide that you both want to meet, we have the risk of not being able to meet for a while – which can result in a weird limbo as you try to maintain momentum and interest. It’s a danger zone of messaging and wasted time & energy that is rarely anything other than interminable.

With Breeze, you cannot message your date prior to a two hour window around the appointed time if your date – although there is the function to postpone/cancel your date if needed. It means I’m going into this date with no intel beyond the detailed bio. And my gods is that liberating! I’ve got some initial starting points for conversation courtesy of the bio, but the rest is there to be discovered. I’ve got no idea what T sounds like, his messaging style or tone – we are going into this date as literal strangers.

We matched on my first day using the app, when his profile came up at the 7pm drop of profiles that is another of the apps USPs. Every night at 7pm you will be shown a few profiles, usually no more than 10, for you to take your chance on. That’s it. No seemingly endless swiping of the apps, a few minutes consideration when you log on and then you’re done – which feels so much healthier than the hypermarket of seeming endless choice of the other apps. The match preferences aren’t hidden behind a paywall, unlike other apps, and you can also select a matching pool according to what you’re looking for – from the more casual to the more serious.

Another difference is that a ‘like’ here has more currency in that when you ‘like’ you’re also saying ‘yes, let’s go on a date’. If the other person feels the same about you, you pay a drinks token (£9.50 for 1, or £21 for 3) which is essentially a deposit for your date. It means your first drink when you arrive at the date venue is already paid for when you arrive, saving awkward conversations over who is getting first round – plus once you’ve finished that drink you could always use it as an easy ‘well that was nice, but I’m going to go now’ exit pass if needed.

When you’ve both ‘paid’ your drinks token, you’re then shown a calendar of upcoming dates and times. You tick and cross your availability, your date does the same, then the app picks your first point of mutual availability and your date is booked. You don’t message each other at all, aside from if you need to change/postpone/cancel your date when you’re given the option to send a singular message using their proforma. There’s also a chat window open from two hours before the date to five hours after, but this is encouraged to only be used for emergencies only. Otherwise that is it. No swapping emails, no socials, no chat. If you cancel a date, you’re frozen out of the app for a week. The intent behind that, and the drinks token deposit, seems to be that this app is taking dating seriously with no option for the ghosting and standing-up that happens on the other apps. And, should that happen in some way, or the behaviour on the date is bad, there are genuine consequences where you are frozen or even banned from the app.

24 hours before the date you are told where you are meeting your date. For my date with T we were assigned Apples & Bears, a bar on Brick Lane. And, for my first ever Breeze date, it was a really nice introduction to the process. In stark contrast to every other app date I’ve ever been on, we’d literally spend 5 minutes (if that) on admin prior to the date, which makes the date feel far lower stakes and removes so much expectation from proceedings. There was liberation in going into a date knowing what he looked like, some key facts and some entry points for conversation – the rest was for us to discover in person.

We stayed at Apples & Pears for a couple of drinks, then headed for a walk and moved onto Shuffleboard for a couple more rounds before calling it a night – it was a school night for both of us after all! At the end of the date we agreed we’d like to see each other again, deciding to swap numbers via the app as it was both convenient and gave me a chance to properly try out the app. Post-date you’re given the option to rate your date, the venue, the app and if you’d like to swap numbers – which we’ve now done. A nice and Breezey time was had and I’d be open to a second date.

Breeze genuinely does feel like a fresh alternative to the other apps. Whilst the current most popular dating app in the UK, Hinge, claims to be ‘the dating app designed to be deleted’ – for the last couple of years it feels like the only reason you’d actually delete it is because of despair rather than meeting the love of your life. Breeze, with it’s slightly more curated approach, could definitely be a way forward.