My stuttering, blubbering dating techniques

In normal life my mouth rarely gets me into trouble – I’m polite, friendly and have a way of getting people to open up to me. But when it comes to dating it’s as though I suffer from Jekyll and Hyde syndrome.

I embarrassingly have something programmed into the dating part of my brain which means when I like someone I just have to say something stupid, irrelevant or just downright dumb. You know, one of those – ‘I’m just going to bang my head against a wall now’ moments.

I either pick up a bout of verbal diarrhoea – with something along the lines of ‘Did I tell you about the time my cat pooed on my bed?’ or reel off a joke which I’ve forgotten the punch line to. In special circumstances, usually when I really like someone my mouth goes dry, my hands start to get clammy, my head starts moving like one of those nodding dogs and I splutter out something which even my14 year-old self would have cringed at. And in both situations my potential love interest usually leaves looking at me oddly and wondering who the freak he just spoke to was.

And being the flappable idiot I become when a guy that I like is anything but a two mile radius from me I wouldn’t be surprised if I actually started spouting off things which were on my mind like – ‘Can I snog you please?’ or ‘I wonder how your surname sounds with my first name?’ – they’d be running scared before I’d even attempted to bag myself a date with them.

So you’d think if I had time to plan what I wanted to say I’d come up with a cute, sassy one liner which would make them think, ‘Wow this girl is cool,’ – but no I’ve managed to kill my street cred when it comes to e –flirting too. Like the time I was sharing flirty email banter with a minor celeb (okay he was just a reality TV star) and he asked if I wanted to watch him DJ one Thursday night. My reply? “I don’t think I can, it’s a school night,” I thought I was being funny – he obviously thought I was some sort of nerd who had a 9pm curfew. Funnily enough I never got a reply back from him.

So it’s always great when friends share the ‘dumb dating talk’ limelight with you. One revealed the moment she became speechless when she saw the object of her desire at the gym, then proceeded to walk head first into a weights machine. And when a hottie walked into another friend’s work place all she could utter was a squeak, before she dropped her newly made hot chocolate over her keyboard. She tried to dab away the choccy mess like it didn’t matter – when the reality was she had totally short circuited it.

And I can’t quite decide if alcohol helps matters. On the one hand it gives you the confidence to think what you’re saying sounds like you’re not an over-excited school girl, but in reality it’s probably doing more harm than good. After one glass you’ve got the confidence to steam roll the flirting, after two you’ll probably say something you wouldn’t dare say if you were sober. And don’t get me started on a whole bottle worth of wine induced confidence – it’s got me into trouble more times than I can remember.

And rest assured if you’re of the male species and the conversation flows like wine into my glass - if us girls are comfortable in your presence and we can have a good old natter with you it usually means we see you as a brother, a mate or even a father figure – sorry!

So it really is a surprise that I’ve been on any dates, at all, in the past year – have men just felt sorry for me after my blabbermouth has tripped into their lives? Or have I just dated guys who I wasn’t really that into? Whatever it is I’m sure the embarrassing encounters will continue long into my dating years and beyond. Life might be so much simpler if I was one of those girls who said all the right things at all the right times - but wouldn’t that be boring? I’d rather be the girl who trips up any day.