Do I date to blog, or blog to date?

Being a dating blogger can have its downsides. Namely when you don’t have any dates. And after a few months of being dateless I was starting to get worried – for me having a date every week became as normal as people getting up and going to work. So had I lost my touch or merely just dated all the single men in London?

And when I wasn’t dating it was like everyone was rubbing it in by going on dates instead. Two of my best friends both casually mentioned how they were going on dates and most of my other single friends were being set up around me, chatting up cute bar men or talking about their latest conquest. Even my Mum was on the net setting up dates.

Maybe I was getting too picky or was I just being lazy? I couldn’t be bothered with internet dating – it was just too much effort to email yet another ‘potential’ and rehash the same old details. I had stopped bugging friends to set me up and men on nights out just weren’t blog worthy enough.

So I sighed a breath of fresh air when I finally got a date last week – I was officially back in the game. And I realised I’d actually missed going on first dates. The classic first date nerves, the awkwardness that comes with it, the free drinks (only kidding…well kind of!) - I had missed the whole shebang of it. So much so that when a friend of mine told me she had a first date planned I almost turned up in her place. Don’t worry I didn’t!

And when potential dates find out you’re a dating blogger it can have its downsides too. Google is great but I merely have to mention my name and men know about my dating history before I’ve even sipped on my first glass of wine with them. The first date to uncover my little secret pretended for all of ten minutes that I wasn’t a dating blogger while I reeled off all the other work I did. Of course I tried to deny it, but when he claimed he knew where my last date had taken place he had either been stalking me in person or on the net – and I was hoping it was the latter.

And another date, who knew about my blog, told me he had read it in detail, written down notes and thought he was fully prepared to see me. I wondered if he was expecting me to give him a pub-style quiz at the end or hand out tasks throughout. He was dating me, not appearing on mastermind.

So if potential dates know about my dating past and trip-ups, will it put them off? I’ve had guys running for the hills when they’ve found out they may appear on the net. Even when I’ve clarified that I only write a dating blog. So after my dating drought I wasn’t surprised when my recent date, after stumbling across my blog, emailed me to let me know I wasn’t quite the right ‘dating material’ for him. Maybe if I hadn’t revealed his toilet habits in a previous blog we’d be married by now. Damn.

But if the tables were turned then I admit I may be a little reluctant go on a date too - especially if I knew he’d be analyzing my every move. If I drunk too many vino’s would I be an alcoholic? If I didn’t make him laugh would I be known as the moody cow he’d been lumbered with for the entire night?? Or worse - would I be classed as a no-go cougar or the girl who he officially went on his worst date with?

I suppose there’s always a downside to everything. But in my bid to get more dates I suppose I’m going to have to stop being so lazy, picky and possibly googleable. And as for blogging about the dates I go on – well that’s not stopping, for at least a while yet. Maybe I’ll just have to change my tack. My dating ad will have to say in big red letters - Please apply within – dates who have a GSOH.

TMI (too much information) syndrome

Sex with your ex girlfriends, how many notches you’ve got on your bed post and definitely your toilet troubles – they are all classic cases of too much information.

When we’re dating, or even in a relationship us girls can be a little inquisitive, okay just plain nosey. But sometimes you boys don’t know when to stop when you start revealing the ins and outs of your past behaviour, or even current behaviour when we’re not around.We may ask about your previous sex life and you may have visited strip clubs, dated underwear models or dipped your toe in the threesome dating pool but we really don’t want to know about it – however much we quiz you.

Like the saying goes - what we don’t know won’t hurt us. Not that I’m giving you a free pass to go all John Terry or Ashley Cole on us but when it comes to your past sex life it’s usually best left in the cupboard marked ‘Do not open’. And if we do delve into it we usually regret what we find out. After lots of drunken questioning once I found out that a boyfriend had had a threesome with another guy –the other guy being his best friend. It was a classic mistake of too much information and one which made me not able to even look in the direction of his best friend again without a weird image in my head.

Sadly it didn’t stop there either – I’ve had guys I’ve dated revealing sex positions their exes have preferred, how good a one night stand was and how many women they’ve managed to seduce into their bed.

And a couple of mentions about an ex girlfriend is fine, but when you start delving into your past relationships like we’re your therapist - along the lines of ‘I just don’t know where it all went wrong…’ we’re going to start worrying if you’re with the right person. And the more you moan and slag off an ex girlfriend the more we’re going to wonder how much of a decent person you are – if you can slag her off and make her sound like the bitch from hell then what will you be saying about us in six months time?

But it’s not just your sex lives where you’re revealing things that make us want to cringe. After a series of emails on a dating website recently I got a bit more than I bargained for in one email. Things were going swimmingly – the emails were funny, we were getting on famously and then he just had to delve into an area which us girls just don’t want to talk about. I’d asked him if he’d felt hung over from his previous nights antics but wasn’t quite prepared for his reply of: “I’m not actually feeling too bad, but my bottom feels like its been blown off after the curry I had last night,” – eek!!! We hadn’t even shared our first date but already I was getting a play by play account of his daily toilet habits – nice.

And of course we trust you but when you mention boys and holidays in the same sentence then fear usually spreads through us like a wild fire in a forest. A few years back a former boyfriend couldn’t wait to go on a rugby tour he’d been planning with the boys. But instead of reassuring me that it was a chance to spend some quality time with his males mates and enjoy the sport he loved so much he stupidly revealed the motto which all the boys were standing by – ‘What goes on tour stays on tour’ – how could any sane girl not jump to ‘stripper, bed hopping and one night stand’ conclusions?

So when I met Mr TMI recently I knew it wasn’t going to work out. After he had revealed the amount of girls he’d slept with, how he was up to his eye balls in debt, how he hated his job and the icing on top of the TMI cake – his big ambition to marry a stripper in Vegas one day, I decided that however honest a potential date could be, a little bit of discretion is always a good quality to seek out.

And if you still don’t quite get it – then let me turn the tables on you. If you found out your dream girl had more notches on her bed post than you’d had hot dinners would you still want to take her home to meet the parents? Nope, thought not.

So the next time we ask you how many girls you’ve slept with, if the stripper you were forced to watch on a stag do was hotter than us or if you’ve ever dreamt about that really hot women next door, either keeping tight lipped or bending the truth a little would be a good option. Because after all, what we really want to know is none of that, in any way, compares to dating us….