Discover Top Posts Tagged with #fish flop

The day I check for Flight Rising's reg window rto be open is the closed date I'm so done with myself

I see some people groan as they tackle the day with no sleep, and I laugh to myself thinking 'welcome to my world'.

But to be honest I'm ridiculously hyper with no sleep and the longest I've stayed awake was for almost three days.

Not-For-Me Guy

I’m starting to think I’ve gone about this online dating thing all wrong. I’ve ploughed into first dates like they’re going out of fashion and so far have yet to make it as far as a second date. Aside from the rare occasion where I’d fallen head over heels and was in turn rejected in true twenty-first century style via text (or lack thereof), the main reason for these fruitless dates stems from basic incompatibility.

I’m going to take a fair chunk of responsibility on this one. Not because I’m a bunny boiler/scary cat lady/have a less than sparkling personality, but because I exchange a measly few messages with prospective fish and then quickly arrange a first date. I justified this to my, admittedly more successful, fellow Poffers by explaining that “I’m not looking for a pen pal; you might as well meet them in person and then figure out whether you like them.” However, after a string of dates where I’ve realised in minutes that this guy is ‘not for me’ and still had to endure the painstakingly boring and repetitive few hours of getting-to-know-you chat, it becomes glaringly obvious that all this could be avoided by establishing some common ground prior to said dates.

Take the latest Not-For-Me Guy. We met on a drizzly Sunday evening while I was nursing a pretty awful hangover on Clapham High Street. I arrived, looked him up and down and realised that, apart from the fact that he was shorter than he’d described (seriously – stop doing this guys!!), I just did not fancy him in the slightest. He was wearing a leather cuff, for God’s sake. I told myself that if I didn’t see any potential then I’d have a quick drink and leave sharpish. But he’d come all the way from Kingston and it quickly transpired that he had planned a drinks, dinner, more drinks affair. I’m far too politely British to crush someone’s expectations like that!

Two gin and tonics, a large glass of wine and a seafood risotto later, I felt like it was now acceptable to make my exit. The conversation had been pretty dull and I was conscious that my fake smile was becoming less and less convincing as the minutes ticked by. In truth, I felt myself looking down on the poor guy. I hate to be judgemental (although it’s what I do best), but the fact that he was 30 years old, working in a shitty sales job, living with three other people and still in a band which were ‘just on the cusp of getting discovered’, made me recoil further and further with each new revelation. As we walked down the high street towards the station (so close!), he suggested going for a cocktail in one of the nearby bars and, repressing the knee-jerk reaction to comply, I feigned an excuse about being tired and finally made my escape.

Afterwards, I moaned to the most successful of all my fellow Poffers (successful in that she found her Nemo via POF several months ago and has beenannoyinglyblissfully happy ever since), who has long supported the continual back and forth messaging, and even told me that she used to add every guy on Facebook before even considering a date. Firstly so there’s someone to trace back to if your mutilated corpse gets found in a bin behind Currys, and secondly so you can carry out some further research into what kind of a guy they are; better known as Facebook-stalking. She gave me some tough love: “Cut down the dates, talk to them for longer, see if you actually have anything in common.”

Originally I rejected this, what I considered, unnecessary advice, but I’m starting to realise it makes a lot of sense. Why not get the boring ‘what do you do’, ‘where are you from’, ‘why am I here’ questions out the way first over email, where you can politely bin them off (quite literally – I love that ‘delete’ button!) if the answers aren’t as pleasing as you’d like? I used to think that if you found out all of that stuff before the date that you’d have nothing to talk about when you were there, but I now see that would only be the case if you had nothing in common in the first place.

So after ignoring all advice for the past two months and only now opening myself up to it, I feel enlightened! My whole way of fishing has been revolutionised; the only thing now is to brush up on my terrible online chat..

..Perhaps there was another reason why I tried to keep that part as short as possible.

x LB

#online dating #pof #plenty of fish #fish flop #awkward #enlightenment #first date