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….

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.

Speed dating....take 2!

"Never, ever, again!" I vowed after a particularly bad speed dating experience last year. I’d expected tall, dark and handsome, I got short, bald and boring.

For some reason speed dating had seemed appealing. There had been a sheer lack of men in my life since I landed in dumpsville a couple of months earlier, so dating 15 men in one night sounded like the sort of challenge which would brighten up my love life, hell - maybe even resuscitate my sex life too.

But of course I hadn’t been in the right state of mind. Under no circumstances should you go speed dating if you’ve just been dumped, your pining for another man or wondering where oh where Mr Right is. Unfortunately I had been suffering from all of the above.

Speed dating is always misunderstood anyway. It should come with a caution which clearly states *we take no responsibility for quality of dates, of the rubbish conversations you may encounter and the severe lack of love life which may precede your speed dating experience.

It’s safe to say my first experience of speed dating didn’t result in me recommending a friend for the torture. Instead of leaving the pub that night with numerous phone numbers and plans to date half of the hotties I was left emotionally drained and exhausted after not even stumbling across Mr Right-now.

So whenever friends’ so much as whispered speed and dating in the same sentence forget about running in the opposite direction I’d be packing my bags ready to leave the country. Never again would I join the conveyor belt of dating or have to sit and make small talk with men I'd rather chew off my ear for than date.

Okay, well that was until a friend decided to arrange a speed dating night for a charity. I attempted to leave the country, but my conscience got the better of me and before I knew it I had parted with my cash (*and obviously felt better for it!) downed a few courage cocktails and decided that maybe speed dating and I had got off on the wrong foot. So armed with a truck load of ice breakers and expectations lower than if I was turning up to an insurance seminar my second instalment of speed dating commenced......

Unfortunately the night didn’t start off on a particularly good note when I got the contents of a girl’s martini glass thrown all over me. And that’s before we’d even started dating. It didn’t dawn on me until afterwards that she may have actually been trying to cut out the competition. Good job I had a change of clothes – ha!

And because I’d ventured into the scary world of speed dating before I was somehow seen as a ‘pro’ - friends who were speed dating virgins were hoping some of my dating skills would rub off on them, when really I was probably about as clueless as them. Did they expect me to wow the men with my witty one-liners? Get a clean sweep of ticks from the men we dated? And go home with my diary cram packed with dates for the next two months?

My nerves racked up a notch as our mini dates commenced.

And it’s safe to say that most of the dates fell into two categories – ones where you completely forgot about the four minute time limit and the others where you were hoping and praying to be saved by the bell....anytime....now......please!!!

The most memorable date, for all the wrong reasons, has to be the guy who bounded up to my table like some sort of excited teenager. His opening line was, "Oh my god, you're the most beautiful girl in here," before he proceeded to get up and check what he had said was actually right, and after a few seconds of scanning the room said, “yep you definitely are.” Oh and dear was all I could muster.

And don’t you just hate that feeling of déjà vu? Well that’s what happens when you become embroiled in back to back dating......!The first date’s fine, but come the 8th you wonder if it was him or Mr no.7 or even 6 you told about your extensive Barbie collection? And did he say he was an actor or a policeman? Was he 27 or 32? In fact hadn’t you just spoken to this one....?

And then there’s the really decent men, who if I hadn’t been on a 4 minute date with I may have become quite good friends with. But it’s always awkward to pull out the friends’ card when you share a dating history with them, be it 4 minutes or 4 years.

By the end I felt guilty for not ticking anyone’s box. Was I being too picky? Would Mr not-quite-so-right have been ‘the one’ had I given him just one more minute? Thankfully my conscience was cleared when friends revealed that no one had quite floated their boat either. Phew!

So I’m thinking speed dating and success shouldn’t really be used in the same sentence – especially when I’m involved. Unless of course you count going home with a girl’s phone number as successful? Nope thought not. Back to normal dating it is then......

The Delights of Valentines….

Every year, whether I’m attached or not, I’ve looked forward to Valentine’s Day with anticipation – will a red rose magically appear at my door? Will the milk tray man swing in and leave me some chocolate goodies or will I be faced with a night of steamy sex with my latest eligible bachelor?

Last year that illusion came to an almightily halt, without so much as a tacky teddy bear to comfort me. I woke up and was faced with my then boyfriend’s facebook status claiming that ‘Mr (not-so) Perfect is…… chocolates – check, flowers – check, restaurant reservation – check, overdrawn – check!’

The say romance is dead – it was as though he was hammering in the final nail. I was gutted. Had I pressured him into celebrating Valentine’s Day? Did I expect too much from him? Or was it my right, like millions of other women, to expect to be spoiled on Valentine’s Day, whether it breaks our men’s banks or not?

Some say I’m high maintenance (only a little bit!) but don’t most girls, especially when they’re attached, at least expect a card on Valentines? Never do we expect to be guilt tripped into how they’ve ventured into the depths of their overdraft again. I tend to now steer clear of guys who talk about being ripped off by card companies come Valentine’s Day – in my eyes they’re either bitter or just a tight arse.

And it’s safe to say I haven’t really had an amazing track record when it comes to Valentine’s Day anyway. One boyfriend took me to Venice, well attempted to – he stupidly got the dates mixed up and there we were in one of the most romantic cities a week before all the other love birds got there. One year I got bought a CD ROM. A CD ROM for god sake – let’s just say practical was his middle name. I duly dumped him, but not before he cooked me a Valentine’s Day meal, in the company of his parents, and with the rugby blaring away in the background.

Then there was the time I was in Paris, the city of love on that very day. The Eiffel Tower beckoned and it even began to snow. It would have been the perfect romantic gesture – had I not been single and on a school trip. And I really can’t forget about the picnic incident (it was in the middle of February, i.e. not really picnic weather) or the year my knight in shining armour came bearing…….a womble bag! Okay we were 16 and he turned out to be gay – but even so – ever heard of flowers or chocolates mate?!

But then there are the times when they surprise us. A friend last year had almost given up hope of any sort of romantic gesture from her man – if she’d got a smile from him on Valentine’s Day she probably would have been happy. So imagine her shock when he presented her with not just any old necklace, but a Tiffany’s necklace. He may as well have been proposing. It shouted not just ‘I’m from Tiffany’s – but also an ‘I quite like you’ too.

But what do we expect when we’re single? Being newly single and after last year’s lack of romance I’m sort of happy that I’m without a man this year. Okay so maybe I’m slightly jealous when I see women holding flowers and maybe my lip does a little wobble when I pass card shops which are adorned with red and pink heart shaped cards but being single means there’s no fuss, no need to get dressed up and no baking of silly heart shaped cookies. And come February 15th it’s all forgotten anyway.

Other single friends have organized single’s parties, some will be burying their heads in their duvet for most of the day, and some have just forgotten the day exists all together. Me, I don’t have any grand plans – apart from waiting for the mounds of cards to arrive at my door and deliveries of flowers to commence of course. Well, a girl can dream I suppose.

And as for the men reading – we don’t need a proposal, hell we don’t even want flowers (okay, some roses would be nice) – just an acknowledgement that it is actually Valentine’s Day and you’ve remembered would be appreciated. And if your admiring from afar – isn’t it the perfect time to tell us? After all it’s probably the one day of the year when we might take pity on you enough and actually agree to a date!

Happy Valentine’s Day…….x

It’s a google thing……

Okay I’ll admit it, it’s one of my guilty pleasures – spying on exes that is. And I know it isn’t just me. Whether we’re happy in a new relationship or you’re single and hoping he comes to his senses any day now we’re all a little curious about what our exes are up to.

Even with exes who I despise, and would rather sleep with someone like Darren Day than bump into them, I weirdly find myself googling their name or stalking down their facebook page, in the vain hope that I may find out who they’re dating or what life has thrown at them since we parted ways. But what am I looking for? Something to tell me they’ve moved on? Something which shows they’re having a miserable life without me? Or just for a little giggle?

When I facebook stalked an ex last week I found out he’d gone on a blind date. I couldn’t help but have a little chuckle to myself – if you knew him you’d understand. I could just imagine him turning up to the date with as much enthusiasm as a clown on crack cocaine, the poor girl would leave wondering who the hell it was she just met.

And as my Mum always says (Yes I know Mums are always right!) you’ll never find anything good from snooping. But of course curiosity gets the better of us. And if they’ve dumped us we obviously want to know about how painfully unhappy they are since he made us cry (for at least two days – straight!). So of course we want to know if our recurring dream of them being dumped by their new girlfriend, losing their job and reaping that karma back has happened yet. But usually you’ll just find hurl inducing pictures of him and the new girlfriend smiling back at you.

A recent ex, annoyingly, had an open profile on facebook. And believe me, I tried my hardest not to facebook stalk him. When I dated him he proclaimed that he had an open profile because he had nothing to hide. Of course I realised the real reason when he dumped me - he was just a big show off. Especially as his profile gave me a running commentary of just how quickly he was getting over me and moving on, it quickly made those daydreams of reconciliation as realistic as ever snogging Bradley Cooper is.

And then, secretly of course, the comparisons start. ‘Why the hell is he seeing her? I’m so much prettier,’ ‘ha, gutted, he’s still living with his parents,’ ‘yes, he lost his job,’ and the list goes on until you feel like the gold medal winner in the race for ‘who has the better life’.

And it’s not just facebook which has been at the hand of my guilty stalking. I’ve also been known to use a little tool called google too. Being a journalist of course it's just research but sometimes I feel like I’ve crossed that line from sane individual to a deranged one. Do I really need to know how they’re doing at work, what they ate for dinner last night or how well they did in the egg and spoon race in 1988? Well you never know.

A friend of mine bumped into my first ever boyfriend the other day. Being over four years since we split up you’d think he’d have forgiven me for dumping him by now. After all I didn’t do any dirty deeds on him like cheat on him with his best friend, spit in his Mum's face or cut off any of his manly parts. But his childish behaviour would make you think I might have. So when my friend asked him why he wouldn’t accept her ever so polite friend request on facebook his reply was ‘well you know Sarah don’t you?’ Unlike me he had gone the other way –he was making pretty damn sure that I would never pop into his life unexpectedly and probably hoping that google will cease to exist any day now.

I’d like to say I’ll give it up one day, be the bigger person, get on with my life and not care about what they’re getting up to in cyber land. I’d like to think I could drag myself along to SEBA (stalking ex boyfriend’s anonymous) one day and say ‘My name’s Sarah and I google my ex boyfriend’s,’ but I really don’t think it will happen. Mainly because I’m sure a group like that doesn’t exist but also because it’s only a bit of fun. Of course, if I’m ever issued with a restraining order I may change my mind. But for now I’ll happily keep on googling and facebooking them – in secret of course, I mean I don’t want everyone knowing!

It’s a Bliiinnndddd Date!

I’ve always frowned upon the concept of blind dates – at least when you’ve met a guy in a bar you sort of have an idea if you fancy them and get on. And the same goes for internet dating – their picture has caught your eye and you’ve had a chance to assess his height, if he’s a smoker and if he can spell correctly.

So when some friends of mine told me they had found me the ‘perfect guy’ I brushed it off. Did they really know my type? What if I didn’t like the look of him – would I hurt their feelings? Would I have to let them down gently, as well as him, if the first date was disastrous?

None of my blind dates have ever been that bad – but I've heard enough horror stories. The one that didn’t even bother to show up, the guy who bored my friend stupid about his ex girlfriend and the guy who was so far from my mates type she thought they chose him for a joke. And then there’s the rejection – before and after the date. When the matchmaker shows them your picture and apparently it’s a no go, when your friend says ‘actually I better not set you up – he’s a bit fussy’, or your date acts fine on the night only to forget you exist after you leave his company.

A friend of mine had a pretty disastrous blind date. She’d met him online only to realise that his profile had forgotten to reveal one small minor detail…..that he was the most boring guy she would ever meet. And once she got past the fact that he was 30 and still living with his parents, she wondered why she had given up a perfectly good night to spend it with Mr Boring Geeky Guy. So she did the only thing she could – she faked an illness! And after her golden globe winning performance, he left and she quickly threw on her dancing shoes and had one of the best girlie nights she’d had in a long time! Who needs men eh?!

And then there’s the guy I dated who had actually been on Blind Date, you know with Cilla and everything. Apart from him boasting about this and thinking he was famous because he had been the ‘picker’, it made me wonder how far my luck would stretch if I had ever got on it. Would I be date number three who went home empty handed and dribbling over the guy who rejected me? Or the one who picked date number one because of our shared interest in Matt Damon and musicals – only to find out the real reason he went on the show - a free holiday and a chance flirt with some Spanish boys?

But of course there are the exceptions. Some people have gone on to meet the love of their lives after an ever so kind friend set them up. I bet Gary Linekar got more than he bargained for when he turned up to meet Danielle Bux on their first date. He probably couldn’t thank his friend enough for setting him up on a blind date with her - and at least she gets free crisps for the rest of her life!

So when I turned up to the date I ‘tried’ not to have any expectations. I’d seen his facebook profile and a few emails had gone back and forth, but he was still virtually a stranger. So I was pleasantly surprised when I turned up to meet him - he wasn’t a loser with a chain smoking habit and neither did he bore me stupid about his Lego collection. In fact, he was pretty damn cute.

And he seemed pretty normal too. No other weird hobbies. No puffing on cigarettes on the way to the next pub. He wasn’t abnormally tall and seemed quite good at making sure the evening didn’t go from ‘good date’ material to potential ‘yep I see a blog in that – but not in a good way’ material. So it was just down to me to f**k it up really.

But I didn’t. Well only if you count how drunk I got and the amount of times I told him it was my birthday soon. But that’s just a normal date, right? And as the night progressed I realised we actually had stuff in common too, we made each other laugh, there were no awkward silences and he even let me share his crisps – what a gentleman!

The conclusion? Maybe I should let my friends pick all my dates in the future – especially when they obviously know my type more than I do.