#datingintheuk

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The End (for now)

After months of rubbish dating experiences I have called the experiment of dating in England to a close. Reflecting back, I truly think it would have been best if I had quit after the The Footballer while I was ahead. At least no one can say I didn’t try!

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The Spark and The Friend of a Friend

The Friend of a Friend and I had agreed to start of with a clean slate. I told him I wasn’t sure what I was capable of handling relationsip-y wise. 

Then I met The Spark.

The Spark was adorable, dopey, 6’ 3”, from Crosby, loved racecars and whiskey, and drank way too much every weekend. He was immensely fun and reminded me a lot of one of my best friends. I was thrilled. The first two nights I spent with him I ended up tucking him into my spare bed because he’d drank so much. We hung out for a few weekends and chatted all week when he was at work.

My friends commented on how I was smiling a lot more and seemed genuinely happy for the first time since they’d met me. They also notified me that I absolutely had to break things off with The Friend of a Friend …again.

The Friend of a Friend and my final talks were very honest and hard. I told him that I wanted to see other people and said that I thought, as his friend, he should absolutely not continue hanging out with me. At first he agreed to dating other people, but I told him to take a couple days and run it by his close friends as I really didn’t think it was a good deal for him. The next day he came to mine and started tearing up. I told him “you can’t see me anymore”. He nodded and apologized. I apologized. We hugged. He left and didn’t hear from him again. I hope he’s well.

I was sad for how things had gone with The Friend of a Friend, but ecstatic that I was now free to hang out with The Spark guilt-free. Then The Spark began texting slightly differently. He still used hearts, smileys, and teased me, but he had dropped the pet names. Two weekends after, The Spark went to a birthday party in Leeds. The week after that he texted back slower. That weekend he went to Liverpool to celebrate his birthday. I didn’t hear from him. Thus The Spark disappeared.

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Meeting My Local Police and The Postgrad: Closure

During exams and a month after our new years interaction I dropped of a hand written letter at the postgrad’s house explaining how much I had enjoyed getting to know him and stating that I wasn’t sure what had caused our contact to cease but that I’d ‘see him around’ as they say. 

On A Tuesday, a few weeks later, I received this facebook message from him:

“Sorry for the slow reply, Don't know how long your letter has been there for, it got dropped in a pile of leaflets and takeaway menus so could of been there a while.... Anywho, sorry for being so slow, have been mentally busy with exams and such like then had mates over from spain for a while so havn't really touched base until this weekend. I'm really sorry, but honesty is probably the best policy and I've started seeing someone, who I've known for a long time so it kind of happened very quickly. sorry for leading you on over new years though. no excuses for that! x” 

Closure, but I was absolutely devastated. I had really fallen for this guy and after the dating failures of the previous few months I was one broken little lady.

Same week (Thursday), I was sexually assaulted by a stranger while I was walking home from work. Luckily, in my wounded lonely lady status, I was wearing high-waisted pants and two jackets so attempts to get at my goodies were unsuccessful and only resulted in over the clothes contact. I was shaken, had to relinquish my clothes to the police as evidence, and spent 4 hours with them recounting the event. I spent the entire weekend with female friends and wasn’t comfortable walking alone at night for a week.

The assault is how I wound up back with The Friend of a Friend. It wasn’t fair to him. I was a bit fragile mentally and knew I didn’t desire him as a boyfriend, but longed for the companionship and protection his presence gave when walking around the city. 

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The Postgrad Returns

Over winter break The Post Grad and I picked up where we had left off with plenty of whatsapping and snapchatting (as texting internationally is wicked expensive). 

New years eve rolled around and I flew back to Liverpool. I went straight from the airport to work, from there to home, pulled myself together, and from home straight to The Postgrad’s. He was the only one that I knew at the party (second year I went to most parties alone) so I needed to put in a fair amount of socialization effort.

Plenty of german chocolate, whiskey, new years eve traditions, and couch fort building later— things were going swimmingly. I had met his best friends, talked to lots of strangers, and was having a rip roaring time. The night mellowed out but The Postgrad had guests filling up his house’s rooms so we went back to mine. Now you might recall the last time The Postgrad and I were alone he had said he ‘wanted to wait’, which was incredibly sweet and gained him some serious points. This time we got straight to business.

And after about a minute business ended. I was really into this guy and I didn’t care one lick how long he had lasted. It’s a bit patchy at this point but I recall Postgrad mumbling something about ‘it’s been a long time’ right at the moment that I shifted causing a funny noise. The noise made me laugh, but I’m still not sure if my laughter was explained or if perhaps the ill timing caused a miscommunication. By 9a.m. we were awake. He threw on his clothes and said he needed to get back to his guests since he’d sort of abandoned his own party and told them he’d be home early in the morning to attend to hosting and cleaning duties. We hugged, casually said maybe we should all meet up later to walk my dog (as I’d be doing that anyway), and he left. Later in the day I saw he had re-friend requested me on facebook and I re-added him.

The next day I texted him asking if he wanted to meet up on the weekend for a do-over. He replied that he might be heading to Wales for a birthday party, but would let me know. On the weekend he mass snapchatted (including to me) an image of him drinking with mates in his room. I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

I had had a disagreement with my phone in the following week and we were heading into final exam period so I knew time would be precious and a date out of the question. Having lost all my contacts, I facebook messaged him asking for his again and whether he would be up for celebrating after exams were done. No reply.

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Winter Break: The Postgrad and The Friend of a Friend

With winter break looming, it was time to bust out the ‘what are we’ talk with The Friend of a Friend. I tried to make it as un-intimidating as possible, but Friend of a Friend was shook up nonetheless. As far as I saw it, we were either: a) just sleeping together b) casually dating c) dating exclusively. I didn’t want to do wrong by him during winter break, but I also didn’t want to waste my time.

In between bringing that up and getting a response, there was a course Christmas party. I hadn’t heard from The Postgrad for a couple weeks at this point as he was ‘super busy’, but that Friday he shot me a message. We were both pretty drunk (me at my course do and him at his) and never actually managed to cross paths in person that night, but the game was somewhat back on.

Friend of a Friend took a couple of days to think and decided on: a) just sleeping together…but said maybe in a few weeks he’d feel differently. This wasn’t what I was looking for so I confirmed that this meant we were both perfectly acceptable to do what we please with other people and planned to slowly bow out and say adios (unlike these disappearing acts I had been experiencing). The last day before he left he admitted something that changed the game, before me he had been a virgin and had never really been in a relationship before. Oh. Fucking. Shit. Now I was in it and I was feeling the pressure to coach this naïve, sweet dating newbie through his first fumbling steps without ruining him for the future. He was better than most of the jerks I had been encountering.

But, I was still interested in The Postgrad. Over break I went home and discussed everything with my best friend. After many hours of catching up, we agreed that I was going to The Post Grad’s New Years Eve Party that I had been invited to over a month ago. The Friend of a Friend was to be taken at his word and held to decision a, for better or for worse. 

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The Friend of a Friend

During all this hullaballoo of disappearances (The Look Alike, The Postgrad, and The Girl from the Wirral) I had gotten back in contact with The Friend of a Friend through our mutual friend. While he was, to put it bluntly, ugly he was nice and I figured we could be friends. He was up to date with all my dating failures and by the time The Girl from the Wirral disappeared on me he offered to jump in on the date she and I were supposed to have—a replacement date so to speak.  We went to see Carrie, neither of us really knowing what it was about.  Never watch Carrie on a first date. It is a terrible first date film. He seemed a bit flustered by the movie and quite nervous in general, but I had a nice time and all of my other dating leads had dried up anyway. The Friend of a Friend and I kept hanging out every few days from there on out. We never did anything particularly memorable or exciting, but we were having a good time.

[americandatinginengland-blog]

The Postgrad

After about a week of Tindering/texting, the Postgrad and I met at a café on campus one Monday near the equivalent of midterm week(s). It was a bit uncomfortable at first since we weren’t entirely sure what the other looked like in person and the café itself was very busy that day. We decided to walk into town and go to a quieter café there instead. We popped into a Starbucks and headed to the less populated top floor. While we had intended to just have a casual, quick meet up we actually ended up talking for a couple of hours (mostly him telling me about himself and he even missed a lecture because of it). I had a lecture later in the afternoon so we walked back up to uni, hugged, and split ways. A few minutes later he texted and asked if I wanted to meet up again. I wasn’t quite sold, but personality wise we actually seemed to hit it off pretty well. He was smart, straightforward, musical, incredibly honest and open, loved animals, was cheeky, and actually knew about where I was from as his family had lived there for a year. I was still Tindering with The Look Alike and The Girl from the Wirral at this time so I wasn’t as eager as I perhaps should have been for date two.

The postgrad offered to make dinner at his, but I didn’t know the guy very well and felt that was a bit more serious than we should be indulging in just yet. The following Friday we met up at a café near both our houses in the student area.

I had just finished a spotter/midterm and had actually gone to the café to relax for a minute with my mates, so one of my friends was still there when Postgrad arrived. This meeting was when my friend dubbed The Postgrad ‘2p.m. news’ or ‘beige suit’ as he found him very dull and physically bland for my taste. My friend left and I wasn’t really vibing Postgrad any more than I had the first date— meaning he was in the bro territory rather than the potential partner territory. We kept talking. He was very candid and said that he had slept around quite a bit in uni so far, that he agreed the dating in England was odd and that he wasn’t fond of the tendency people had for keeping a back up person to disappear to once things got too serious with another person. I was starting to really warm up to him. I walked him home and he told me that if I was up for it I should come over later in the night after his sporting event ended and we could watch some Disney films.

Date two of the day, three in total. I headed to Postgrad’s house. We settled on watching Mulan and The Road to El Dorado (which had a hell of a lot more singing than I remembered). He was teasing, affectionate, and a great kisser. I felt comfortable and I was starting to quite like The Postgrad. We made a back-story for how met as he said, “when you meet my parents we can’t just say we met on Tinder”. He invited me to his new years eve party (which was about a month and a half away at this point).The night grew very late, but postgrad didn’t want to move any further as he said he “didn’t want to move too fast since he actually likes me and it’s not like that” (‘that’ being an empty, random hookup). I found that incredibly sweet and headed home giddy that things were going swell.

The postgrad had some sort of master’s project to work on and grew very busy the next couple of weeks. He texted less and less and then didn’t text at all for a week or two. I figured he had disappeared as well.

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The Friend of a Friend

I initially met The Friend of a Friend at my friend’s 21st Birthday party the Wednesday following The Douchebag’s silence and in the midst of my new Tindering hobby (prior to any of the dates being set-up).

I was a bit under the weather and hadn’t eaten much that day so got more inebriated than I had intended. My ‘friends’ peer pressured me to keep drinking, then went home without me, and I ended up hooking up with The Friend of a Friend. For some description, my mate once said about him, “it’s nearly impossible to find someone that is unattractive from all angles, but unfortunately that guy is”. I was blackout drunk and I certainly don’t consider it to have been a consensual interaction (I later found out he carried me to his room and that I refused to remove my underpants), but what happened happened.

The Friend of a Friend insisted on walking me home, which was sweet, and then that was that.