The Single Filez | romantic blog about date and dating

It’s been a while since I’ve done a dating update. I guess the combination of being ditched by Pussy Boy, being totally underwhelmed by teenager in a 30 year old’s body Mr PAYG and then the slightly too intense Italian Guy back in May. Followed by my failed attempts to meet up with Fit Irish Guy in early June was enough to put me off dating for a little while. I became disheartened by the calibre of men I was meeting (i.e. they all sucked!) so felt, that since I had a trip coming up that it would make sense for me to take a date break to allow me to come back feeling fresh, raring to go and ready to date again.

Who Is He?

‘The Business Man’ is a guy I’ve been exchanging messages with on POF for about a week before we decided to meet up. He’s 32 years old and like me, he’s not originally a Londoner but has been living here for many years. The Business Man gets his name because duh, duh, duuuh…. he owns his own business. He seems to be doing well but poor thing, it’s left him too busy to date, too busy for fun generally by the sounds of things.

First impressions before meeting him were all positive. Good flowing conversation on POF, a couple of phonecalls plus he initiated a good amount of ‘Hey, how was your day?’ text message conversations in the lead up to the date. He seemed keen, and guess what? I didn’t mind one little bit.

*Sidenote: Isn’t it strange how when we’re not sure about a guy, exchanging lots of text messages before meeting up can seem way too eager and kinda sorta creepy? But yet, when we’re feeling the dude, it can feel absolutely fine, normal even. Funny that.

The Positives

- He looked cute.

- Although his spelling/grammar wasn’t great (sorry, an online dating pet peeve of mine), he had a sense of humour about it. In brackets at the end of his first message to me “Look, all of my capitals in the right place. Just for you”. Cute!

- Sounded nice and was easy to talk to on the phone.

- Um. Did I mention he was kinda cute?

The Negatives

- Messed me around a bit sorting out the date (which turned into a positive when he moved work-related things around so that he was able to see me).

- His spelling made me cringe a little, especially when he spelt Leicester as “Lesta”…

The Date

As you can see, I was *really struggling* to find ‘before date negatives’ for this particular update because to be honest, there really wasn’t anything that bad. I guess that’s the reason why I was actually looking forward to this date – he seemed promising, and normal.

He looked like his pics, shorter than his profile indicated but he had lovely muscular arms (a weakness of mine) which his profile hadn’t indicated. He was a nice looking guy. Not in a ‘phwoar’ kinda way, but in a ‘he’s actually quite cute kinda’ way.

Within the first 30 minutes of the date he complained about a leg injury, a shoulder injury and his allergies. I found out he doesn’t drink alcohol (yes, you read right. He DOESN’T. DRINK. ALCOHOL.) he only eats Halal meat and he doesn’t like hot weather. In mind head I was thinking “Sweet Jesus, get me outta here NOW!” but then I stopped and made myself think about the ‘Mr Good Enough’ theory. I had to literally tell myself, “C’mon now, stop looking at every little superficial thing as a reason to write him off. You picky cow.”

I’m glad I stuck it out, he turned out to be OK. He was pleasant, I found his background really interesting although I probably scared him half to death with all of my questions about his family once I found out they came from the African country of Malawi but his Dad was Indian and his Mum was half black/half Indian. Fascinating, right? I learnt loads about the history of Malawi. Both cute AND educational. Bonus.

Overall, it was a strange date. He spent a lot of time on his phone – work stuff? He thought we were only meeting for a quick coffee while I had been thinking we were meeting for Friday evening (alcoholic) drinks. I was the one who suggested staying out and the idea to go get something to eat, came from me. I don’t know quite how to evaluate this one. Yes, he did offer to give me a lift (in his very fancy car) to the train station but other than that, I didn’t come away from the evening with any indication that he was interested in me. There was no mention of another date, no mention of giving me a call. Nothing. I text him to let him know I was home safe and to thank him for a lovely evening, all I got back from him was “Oh that’s good, didn’t take you long to get home”. Reckon I’m going to write this one off as a no-go methinks. Good thing I have a date with a different guy lined up for this Thursday eh?

NEXT!

Slightly off topic I know, but, HAPPY MONTHIVERSARY to meeee! Ignoring the few random posts I did last year, The Single Filez  blog didn’t really and truly kick off until exactly a month ago along with my Twitter page and, what a month it’s been eh? Ok, admittedly, I still haven’t been on a date yet (and that is kinda the whole point) BUT I have been exposed to a whole new ‘world of dating’ that I didn’t know existed. Thanks to Twitter I’ve discovered lots of interesting, funny, sweet like-minded people many of whom are in the same boat as me. Also, I went a singles event courtesy of Sitting In A Tree and just yesterday I was included in We Love Dates Top Dating Bloggers on Twitter List (click here to see the list). Not bad for a month’s worth of work eh? Now, all I need are some actual dates!

So, back to the matter at hand, this week’s dating update. Obviously, there’s the date with the 25 year old (see Friday’s post to do some swotting up), but even this is proving to be a pain. We haven’t managed to put a date in the diary yet, he lives and works in Basingstoke and only comes to London on the weekends but is busy for the next couple of weekends…. blah blah blah. I found myself losing interest with each text message. Too much hard bloody work! When/if he feels he can slot me in, we’ll take it from there.

Other than that, I’ve got a few conversations happening over at Plenty of Fish and I’ve revived my DatingDirect.com membership so have a few conversations going on over there too.

A bit bored of all this talking online to be honest. I’ve licked all my wounds from last year’s dating disasters and now I’m finally ready to dip my toes back into the dating pool. Question is, do I just do ahead and accept date offers from guys I’m not initially attracted to? I need content for this blog godammit!

I’ve gotten to the point where I’m thinking of  just lining up dates specifically so that I can blog about them. It’ll be fun,  right?  It’ll give me stories to share, it might open me  up to guys I wouldn’t normal consider AND who knows… I might find Mr Right in the process? What do you think? A good idea? Too harsh? Should I just be more patient? Please do comment share your thoughts…

Tags: General Dating, Online Dating, Relationships, Singles

Last week I had my first ‘non-online dating date’ in what feels like forever. It was with a friend of a friend and that fact alone made me the most excited I’ve been about a date in a while. Unfortunately, in true The Single Filez style, it didn’t end so great. But first, the backstory.

Who Is He?

Before Easter, a friend told me that her work buddy saw a photo of me on her phone and asked who I was. This, of course, sent my friend into super-charged-Cupid-mode. I didn’t mind. I’m totally open to the idea of friends setting me up. In fact, I prefer the idea of my friends matchmaking versus trawling endless dating sites.

My friend insisted that exchanging BBM pins with her work buddy would be a good way for me to see whether I wanted to meet him. Now, we all know how I feel about conducting ‘getting to know you sessions’ via BBM but, it actually wasn’t too bad. Adding him as a BlackBerry contact gave us a chance to break the ice and it give me a chance to see what he looked like – y’know, those people who change their BBM profile pic every day? Yeah, that.

The Positives

- My friend has worked with him for three years and she only has good things to say about him. That has to be good, right?

- We only had one phone conversation prior to meeting, but it lasted for TWO hours. One of those, ‘where the hell did time go?’ conversations. We talked and laughed smoothly for 120 minutes without even realising how long we were speaking for.

The Negatives

- Being the cynic that I am, I always feel suspicious (and cringe-y) when a guy calls me ‘baby’ and ‘honey’ and sends me ‘Morning Beautiful’ texts before they’ve even ever met me.

The Date

Apart from the fact that he was 30 minutes late (bad), shorter than I was expecting and wearing an outfit like that of a boy band wannabe (extremely bad), the first part of the date was quite enjoyable.

*Sidenote: Fellas just because Cristiano Ronaldo, JLS, Justin Timberlake and Usher tuck jeans into boots – it doesn’t mean its actually a good idea. Just sayin’.

The first part of the date wasn’t terrible. We went for drinks at a favourite bar of mine (he couldn’t think of anywhere to go so I took charge, also bad) and then we went to eat at another favourite spot of mine (where he moaned about the food being too spicy – wuss) but those points aside, there was good conversation and lots of laughter.

Other things that stood out to me during the first part of the date;

• When asked why I switch my BlackBerry to silent overnight, I explained “I don’t like being woken up in the middle of the night”. He give me the sexy *side-eye* which made me laugh. My explanation obviously made his mind go somewhere it shouldn’t have been. A bit pre-sumptious of him, but still funny.
• He took a pic of me with his phone and told me he was going to put it as his phone wallpaper. This was my turn to give him the suspicious*side-eye*. Dude, you’ve only ever met me ONCE.

• Once outside my building he asked to use my toilet, which is absolutely fine but why then three hours later at 5am, am I having to do the stretch, yawn “I’m so tired I think I’m gonna get ready for bed” move for him to get the hint to leave?
• During those few hours he managed to (jokingly, apparently) invite himself along on my NYC trip.
• He was a bit touchy-feely and when playing with my hands, he removed one of my rings and put it on my wedding finger (errr, what the….?). I swiftly stopped him by explaining that it’s bad luck.
• When saying goodbye, he landed a kiss on me. I wasn’t feeling it but I didn’t want to be mean so managed to turn it into a nice hug.

I get that he was just showing his interest and that’s a nice and all but woah, this was the first time we’d ever met. If you turned it all around, if a woman did all of those things to a man on the first date he would get the heebie jeebies and never been seen again. Well guess what? Sometimes it works the other way around too.

There’s being interested and there’s coming on far too strong. Neeeeexxxxt!

Tags: General Dating, Relationships, Singles

I have the worst luck with men. FACT.

Lately I’ve been blogging about my recent spate of crappy dates (and wow, were they crappy), but do you know what? Considering my previous luck with men, these dates shouldn’t be that much of a surprise. I wish I knew what it was. I wish I knew why I constantly attract such jerks. Seriously, you would not believe some of the experiences I’ve had. Recent dating disasters aside, let me share one of my best (or should that be, worst) dating mishaps from my past.

Multiple Personality Disorder?

I met Felipe Santos*, a hot afro-Cuban dude at a magazine Christmas party in 2003. I was so-ooo chuffed when he approached me after the party to ask for my number as I’d already spotted him during the night (true to form, I hadn’t made eye contact though). Anyways, we started talking and texting everyday and went on a good few dates too. If I’m honest, I quite liked him. He was a gorgeous financial advisor, was funny, we had good conversation, was into his music and did I mention he was hot?

After four weeks of communicating everyday and a grand total of five dates. Felipe suddenly disappeared on me. Just like that, gone. Stopped replying to texts, email and voicemail. I was actually worried, thought he might’ve been in a car crash and allsorts. I guess that was because it didn’t make sense to me, the last text I received from him had said he was thinking about my smile and was looking forward to seeing me again. So yes, stupid, naive little old me thought that something was seriously wrong. I was distraught.

Fast forward three years later, its 2006 and I decide to pop to the post office on my lunchbreak. I see a guy who looks familiar wearing a post office uniform selling some sort of utility (gas? electric?) to not-very-interested post office customers. When he approached me, I told him I wasn’t interested in purchasing whatever he was selling and thats when he gave me a confused look and said “don’t I know you from somewhere?”. At that very point, I knew it was him. Mr Felipe Santos* had re-appeared! And he was still looking fine, wearing a name badge that said “John”, but otherwise fine. I played stupid and looked at him, purplexed, “no, I don’t think I do know you”. He carried on “didnt you used to do PR for ….? Yeh, we met at the Touch magazine party” etc. Then I hit him with it, “but, I thought your name was Felipe?”. Cue lots of stuttering, “Errrr, yeh Felipe is my middle name”. Whatever dude.

The Ultimate Douchebag

Since then me and “Felipe*” now have  a mutual friend. Thanks to the friend I now know he wasn’t a financial advisor, he isn’t of Cuban origin, his name is actually John and his surname is a Nigerian-sounding Ade, Abe something or another and I now know that he had a girlfriend at the time we were dating. On the positive side, I also now know it wasn’t anything I said or did. He just happened to be a big, fat DOUCHEBAG!

Yep. Just my luck eh?

*Not a case of a name being changed to protect his identity. It wasn’t his real bloody name anyway!

Tags: General Dating, Relationships, Singles