Dating part 2: Getting Match Fit...and Dumped.

*NOT* a how-to guide.

You can read Dating part 1 here

I got dumped a few weeks ago.  It came as quite the surprise, as it hadn’t occurred to me that I was in a relationship.  We had only been on three dates, and although I am by this stage unfamiliar with dating convention,  I thought these things ran an “opt in” policy, and I certainly had neither declared or decided myself to be “in”.  But I got dumped nonetheless. The words he used were similar to when you have been unsuccessful in getting to the next round of a recruitment process: “I’m glad to have met you, but you aren’t what I am looking for at present.  I wish you well with your future endeavours”, is what he delivered to me via phonecall on a dreary Wednesday.  There is a further irony here, in that he was an X factor “star” of yesteryear, so I enquired with a smile if it had been a HR department or Simon Cowell who had inspired his dumping prose, chuckled to myself, and wished him well – genuinely - right back. 

And I guess that typifies how I view dating.  A bit of craic to be had.  A hobby that allows me to meet interesting people, and to poke fun at myself, and them, but – alas, hark! - no love lost, or gained.

But there is a more considered, contemplative side that I would like to share too.

I got divorced aged 37. People sometimes think that there is a single reason for a split, or that it can be explained away in one neat sentence.  As many people who have gone through it may know, it is rarely as simple as that. The nuanced circumstances that lead two people who swore they would be together forever to a place where that is untenable can’t be reduced to a single reason. Regardless of how braced or ready one is for it, I have never met anyone who has been through a divorce and who would describe it as a walk in the park.  My own experience has been that it obliterates your self-esteem and dissolves any trust your ever had in your ability to make good decisions. You wonder in the hurricane of emotion ¹if you’ll ever be truly OK again, and what OK even feels like. It may lead to a life re-awakening, but it takes time.  Some people launch straight back into dating after, and more power to them. I’d argue that one has a responsibility to ensure that they are match fit, with a clean bill of emotional health before embarking on something new, and that is what I strove for. And then again who - in a relationship or out – can really be declared that anyway?

 So I was late 30s before I’d ever really dated as an adult. My first go on a dating app - Bumble - lasted a week. I simply needed to know that someone, somewhere would swipe in the approving direction on (a well lit, agonised over) picture of my face. I wasn't ready to meet anyone, but I needed to know that when the time came that I was ready, that such a world existed.  Like a tortoise, just popping my head out to see what was going on there, took a look around, and retreated, reassured.  I appreciate the apps aren’t designed for that.

My second dalliance with the apps lasted much longer - a good number of months. I was no closer to identifying what I wanted from a relationship, and so I had varied conversations and dates.  A bit like going into a department store and trying on ALLLLL of the frocks after a body transformation, in a bid to work out what suits this new version of you.  ²I’ve written about some of them here and here, so no need to recap. In time it began to feel tedious, and so I sent a message to three guys I had been speaking to say that I was deleting the app, and here is my number if you wish to keep in touch.  Long story short – I learned in time that by coincidence they were all addicts of various practices at various stages of recovery.  The “Holy Trinity of Addicts” is what I ended up calling the trio.  I think I was some sort of heat seeking missile for men needing support.  That’s not who I wanted to be – it is very easy for me to fall into a habit of putting other people’s needs in front of my own, and I was (am!) determined to not do that.  I am not an emotional rehab service, and I could let myself be it, if I’m not careful. And so I had a detente from the apps for a few months. Since then I do some hokey pokey of going back on and off again, but I think I am done with them now, for good. Apart from Raya, because it takes a while to get on, and the above average number of people named “Maximillian” on there entertains me.

Part of the trouble of relying on the apps alone is that they fool you into thinking that you are making a concerted effort to meet someone, when really you might not be.  To go into a bar and be engrossed on an app, but ignore those who are physically around you doesn’t really make sense. I have been very lucky over the years to have met some terrific people organically.  There is something, in this day and artificially intelligent age, very pleasing about that.  I have met some of my dearest and most precious friends – some who even care to subscribe to my Substack –through dating encounters and my life is the richer for having them in it.

Dating has taught me more than a few life lessons. ³Lessons such as:

Strangers shouldn’t be able to hurt you.  If you are at risk of being hurt by someone whom you are just getting to know, you need to ask yourself if you’re in the best mindset to date.

It is never really about you, until it is. At this stage of life, everyone is at various stages of working through something, and it is no one’s first rodeo.  If they don’t want to see you again, or run hot and cold, it most likely has nothing to do with you.  I have met wonderful people who I have declined further dates with for reasons that are nothing to do with them.  I don’t take ghosting, or a one date wonder personally at all.

Only I can waste my time - no one else can. It takes a long time to get to know someone and if I take time to do that, that is on me.  No one has wasted my time – it is my time to spend as I choose and I am accountable.

Once you notice a pattern of your own behaviour that isn’t consistent with how you want to be, it is time to take a step back.  Recalibrate, meditate, go to therapy, journal, sage - do what you gotta do, but take a break.

Making people into a shopping list or excel sheets of desirable characteristics is a bad idea.  Knowing what you are likely to admire and respect is one thing, but a list that includes what car they drive is, y’know, not cool. We are all the sum of our parts, works in progress and winging it through life.

If you have a good time with the person, I say see them again.  If you don’t, don’t.  I think it’s as simple as that.  Don’t make a decision on if you can see your life with them, or overthink how much you fancy them.  Again I might be wrong on this, and I know some people talk about dating with greater intention, but it is an art not a science. It takes time to get to someone and work out if there is something there or not.  

One more:

Not all sportsmen are created equally, and the only thing worse than a professional footballer is someone who declares themselves a semi-professional footballer. 

As for what I have learned about myself, I’ve learned that I am hard to truly get to know, and get close to. That I am mistrustful of someones motivation to date me and easily find a way to discount them. That I have a habit of assuming I have deceived or tricked someone into liking me, despite having zero intention or desire to do that. Clearly I’m a work in progress, too.

I have been out socialising by myself, and with large groups of women and men.  I have been to bars, to clubs, to restaurants, to gyms, to classes.  To Museums and theatres.  I have travelled to far flung countries both solo, and in groups, and dated while I have been there.  I have been out with wealthy men, and men who struggle to makes ends meet.  I have been out with educated men and men who left school at 16.  I have been out with famous men and very ordinary men. I have been out with skinny men and (curvier?) men.  Despite really throwing myself out there, over the past 5 years, I haven’t met anyone who has set my soul alight. I have had plenty of good times, but no one that I have ⁴truly longed for.

It would be fair to say I’m probably doing something – many things - wrong.  But I still do believe in chemistry, and I believe that connection enhances one’s life. I believe that I am a better, nicer person when I’m in love. I don’t want my abiding experience of romantic love to be that it is destructive and that it will only tear us apart, again. Maybe my day will come, and maybe it won’t. I’m forever glad of the people who do bring love in its many different guises into my life.  And so in that regard, I am doing something very, very right.

Back on Wednesday - and apologies that I missed Wednesday past. I wanted to do a what I wore post, but I haven’t got my set up for that nailed just yet, so it will have to wait!

Until then

Big Love

Una

x

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1 - You absolutely will be MORE than OK again.

2 - This sounds like a lie but honestly I’ve only ever had one terrible date, two at a push. Stories for another time, but ‘tis true.

3 - I am aware that these sounds like lessons that I am trying to teach you, the reader. I am, as you will have realised if you have got to this point, in no position to be giving advice to anyone else. This is just my tuppence.

4 - Maybe one that came a wee bit close earlier this year. But other than that I swear I haven’t had a feeling since Christ knows when.

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