The Single Filez | romantic blog about date and dating

Following on from my last post, “Is ‘Nice’ Ever Enough” it got me thinking about the notion that the older we get the more we should give up on the idea of the perfect ‘Mr Right’ and just settle for the nice ‘Mr Good Enough’ instead.

A lot of women were up in arms after the book release of Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr Good Enough by Lori Gottlieb. Lori, a 43 yr old single mother, believes that we should,

“Forget about the perfect 10 and look for the perfect 8″.

Gottlieb also says,

“Every woman I know – no matter how successful and ambitious, how financially and emotionally secure – feels panic, occasionally coupled with desperation, if she hits 30 and finds herself unmarried.”

Personally, I’m not hugely fussed about marriage just yet (need to find a man first!), but the fact that I’ve past the age of 30 and I’m still single has not gone unnoticed by myself, my parents or my friends. My Dad is already hinting that he wants to be a grandfather *groan*. The “perfect 8″ Gottlieb says? Hmmm… maybe I need to realise that “nice” is not a bad thing at all. But the word “settling” sounds like something a loser would do. It sounds like making do with the booby price.

Mr Cheap, Mr Rude & Mr Jackass – Yep, I know them well!

“Italian Guy” was sweet, funny, not ugly and wants to go out again but yet because I didn’t get ‘that feeling’, because we didn’t have a ‘rom-com look into eachother’s eyes moment’, I didn’t come away from it feeling excited. Is this the ‘too fussy syndrome’ my Mum swears that I suffer from? Why can’t I be happy with someone who likes me and who is perfectly nice? I’ve met guys in the past with whom I’ve felt an intense attraction to and had sparks flying from day one but, where are those losers now eh? Exactly.

Maybe my “Mr Good Enough” is someone who isn’t my usual type? According to Andrea Syrtash, author of He’s Just Not Your Type (And That’s A Good Thing),

“women should widen their scope (and their ideal mate checklist!) and be open to meeting men outside of their comfort zone.”

I’m happy to say this is what I’ve been doing since I started this blog – dating guys I wouldn’t have previously. It’s early days yet, lets see if it makes a difference. Yes, I’d settle for a ‘nice guy’ over a ‘hot guy’, but settle for just anyone? Never.

Shemar Moore; totally my type.

Tags: Andrea Syrtash, General Dating, Lori Gottlieb, Relationships, Singles

Things are never straight forward are they?

Last night I secured a date with a guy I’ve been speaking to on Plenty Of Fish , which, considering getting a date has been my goal since starting this blog last week, I should be happy about it, right? Well, I was happy about it until after I gave him my number he asked “which network are you on? That looks like a T Mobile number”. *Cue alarm bells ringing in the distance*. Why is he asking which phone network am I on? I haven’t had a guy ask me that since, oooh let me see… 1997.

I text him to let him know that I’m with Orange and he replied saying he’ll call me soon but at the moment he doesnt have enough ‘minutes’ so needs to top up a little first. Aarrrgh, now he’s ruined it all before we’ve even spoken. You need to top up your minutes? You’re 30 years old and you have a pay as you go phone? Something doesn’t feel quite right about this little scenario…

I wouldn’t say that I’m a snob, far from it in fact. However, I was kind of shocked to come across a 30 year old man with a ‘pay as you go’ phone. The fact I felt this way made me take a good look at myself. Why was I so shocked? What did it mean? I’ll tell you what it means, it means I’m worried he’s a cheapskate. It means that I’m worried he doesn’t have good enough credit to get a contract phone. It means I’m worried that if I were seeing him it would be a constant stream of “I’m low on credit, can you call be back babes?” or me receiving missed calls in an attempt to get me to call him back. The crazy thing is, wouldn’t you think that he would realise this was NOT a good thing to say to a potential date? Did he think telling me he didn’t have enough credit on his phone to call me was going to impress me or something? Well, you thought wrong Mister!

However, being the equal opportunity employer that I am, I will try and push these feelings aside. He (lets call him Mr. PAYG going forwards) maybe perfectly nice and perfectly sweet. Everyone deserves a chance, right?

What do you think? Am I out of order for feeling that a pay as you go phone shows signs of him being a boy rather than being a man? Am I right in giving him a chance and still going on the date? Let me know if I’m being too harsh or too hasty. Please do share your thoughts…

Tags: Dating Tips, Dating Websites, Online Dating, Relationships

As we get older and more experienced our radar for bullshit gets stronger. At least, that’s what we hope anyway. My problem is that just when I think I’m getting better at picking up on signs something happens to throw a spanner in the works. To be honest, even after all these years, I still think I don’t have a bloody clue.

There was a guy I dated last year whose ‘full of bullshit’ signs I stupidly chose to ignore because he seemed sweet. More fool me. Then, there’s Mr PAYG, one of this years dating disasters whose bullshit I documented in detail here and here. When I look back on it, I knew the signs weren’t that great after the first date but yet I still went on the second one. Once again, more fool me.

Is it that my bullshit radar is waaaaay off? Or is it that I chose to ignore the full of bullshit signs in the hope that actually “he might not be that bad” or “there might be a good explanation for that behaviour” or the most likely “I might miss out on a good thing if I don’t give this guy a chance”?

Bullshit Signs?

Last Saturday I had plans to go on a date with a guy I’m going to call ‘Fit Irish Guy’.  Fit, because he’s a PE teacher and because in all of the messages I’ve received from him on DatingDirect.com he talks about having played some type of sport that day – football, basketball, running etc. Basically, he sounds like the type of guy that would make me feel like a right lazy bastard.

Is he really that interested? Fit Irish Guy and I had been exchanging messages for about a week before he suggested meeting up. I’d spotted his profile and took the first step of sending him a message. He replied and the message exchanging began. However, he never seemed overly enthusiastic, maybe one message a day. There was never ongoing back and forth conversation, even if we were online at the same time. With this in mind, I was genuinely surprised when he suggested meeting up.

Does he really want to meet up? Firstly he suggests meeting on the one date I’d already said I couldn’t do (weird). Then when suggesting another date option, he also asks “Do you have any single friends that you want to bring for my friend?” (weirder). I laughed out loud at that one! He wants to make our first meeting into a double date? What, is he too scared to meet me alone? My first thought was “no, my friends would barf at the idea of a blind date”, secondly I’m thinking “dude, I know nothing about your friend”. To me a double date/first date sounds awkward. Also, what if his friend is hotter than he is? He obviously didn’t think that one through. To top it off, a minute after texting me to tell me his friend is “Italian, 5′ 8″, got a maths degree and is a good social talker for occasions like this”, he then followed it up with another text saying “Probably best to leave it to us two, my mate isn’t feeling well. I’m looking forward to meeting”.  Huh?! Now he’s just confusing annoying me.

The ‘last minute drop-out’ move. I should also mention that he went quiet when I asked where and when we should meet. So much so that I had to follow up with another text on date day asking “what are the plans for later?” With the above points in mind, I was not one bit surprised when I received a text message from him saying “Can we leave it 2nite please, I feel like shit and can’t face coming into central London.” I wasn’t surprised at all. In fact, I was kind of expecting it. I’d already picked up on the bullshit signs.

After I received his text, I replied pretty much straight away saying “No worries, lets leave it then” and not having received a “let’s re-arrange for another time”, or “sorry to let you down at the last minute” message from him, I assumed that was that. The End.

But oh no, that would be too easy right?  Fit Irish Guy then decides to throw a spanner in my bullshit radar signals by sending me a text message saying “Really sorry about not meeting tonight, I hate letting people down but its been a long week and it all caught up with me. Hope you’re having a nice evening. I would like to to meet up at some point if you want to try again!”.

If I give it another go and give him a chance will I just be letting myself in for another shower of bullshit? Do I ignore the previous signs? Should I ignore the lack of enthusiasm, the weird double date/first date scenario, the letting me down at the last minute – all just in case there is a chance he turns out to be okay?

Tags: General Dating, Online Dating

It didn’t take very long, but things have already gone sour with East End Boy. I spent my evening sat at home eating Marks & Spencers chunky chocolate cheesecake (it’s amazing, go buy it) when I was supposed to be out having my first non week-night date with a guy who I was actually excited about.  I wish I was able to explain exactly why I was home stuffing my face and drinking wine (pity party, much?) instead of being out enjoying a date, but I can’t,  because I don’t even know the answer to that one myself. However, I can tell you how it all played out…

Our first date was so enjoyable that I stayed out until 1am on a week night. That same night we made plans to meet up again at the weekend. Last Sunday, despite the fact it was raining cats and dogs and I wanted to stay cosy indoors, I went on our second date. It turned out to be the best date that I’ve had in a very long time. We went for a walk around Spitalfields market and ate dinner and shared dessert at Giraffe. Like before; plenty of good conversation, plenty of laughter, plenty of discovering we had many things in common and generally having a really good time.

We got a bit smoochy when it was time to say goodbye (PDA alert!) and he asked the same question he asked at the end of our first date, “when am I’m going to see you again?”. I was crazy busy over the next week but we managed to agree on a convenient day for us both. When I pointed out that we’d be seeing eachother again in only two short nights’ he laughed, he hugged me and he said “you’re not used to this are you?”. I admitted that it’d been a long time.

I got home and realised I had double booked myself. I already had plans on the evening I was to meet him. I wanted to see him but I didn’t want to let my friends down, so when we spoke on the phone the following night, I told him I’d do both. I’d spend a couple of hours with my friends and then meet him afterwards. He wasn’t happy with that idea because it would mean we’d only get to spend a couple of hours together. He suggested moving our date to another evening (tonight) when we’d have more time. He said, (NB: HE  said), that he wanted to spend time with me to get to know me. I thought it was sweet and I was totally up for the idea of seeing him at the weekend.

Knowing I’d be out with my friends instead of seeing him, he told me to give him a call when I was on my way home so that we could have a chit chat. I called him Tues night, he didn’t answer. He text the next morning to apologise and said he’d call me that night. That text message on Weds morning was the last I heard from him. I called him on Weds night but once again got no answer. I didn’t think much of it until it got to Thursday night and I saw him online on Plenty of Fish. Absolutely nothing wrong with him being on there (hell, I was on there trying to hook up other dates too), but I found myself getting annoyed. He hadn’t returned my call. He could see I was online but oh no, he still didn’t message me. On top of all that, we had made plans for Friday night and now I was being ignored?

Friday came. I still took heels to work, just in case. Throughout the day, everytime I received a text message I thought it might’ve been him. But no, I didn’t hear a thing. Admittedly, I didn’t chase him.  I was waiting to see if I would hear from him. I felt that chasing him to find out why he hadn’t gotten back to me would give him the upper hand. It would make me look like the weak one, begging for his time and attention. It would give him yet another opportunity to ignore me. Does that make sense? Or am I being too petty? Should I have contacted him to find out why he’d suddenly gone quiet? Or was I right to leave it alone?

What confuses me (about him and others this has happened with) is how does he go from wanting to spend more time with me, wanting to get to know me better, kissing me, enjoying that everything feels familiar with me… to not returning my call, to being online (on POF) at the same time as me but not messaging me and to going all quiet when we had previously made date plans? It doesn’t make sense.

With all of the guys I’ve dated but not been excited about, I’ve let them know. Yes, I am a huge coward and I tend to do it via text message, but at least I do let them know. The difference with this is he WAS interested. He wanted to see me, spend time with me, he would grab my hand while walking down the street FFS! So shouldn’t he have had the common courtesy to let me know what had changed?

I can’t deny it. I’m actually quite disappointed. I had bought a new top, I had researched places for us to go. I was really looking forward to what was going to be our first non-weeknight date.

More fool me, eh?

Tags: General Dating, Men, Online Dating, Relationships, Singles

When you’ve been single for awhile (or forever, in my case) it’s extremely easy to have very low self-esteem. It’s easy to come to the conclusion that something is wrong with you. It almost makes sense for you to think you’re not good enough because everyone else around you – siblings, parents, cousins and friends – can find people who want to be in a relationship with them, but you never can. It doesn’t matter how many people say you have a stunning smile if  you’ve never been able to keep a guy interested in you for more than a few months at a time. So, yup, low self-esteem is inevitable.

Not too long ago I was on Twitter and I came across a few tweets that made me sit up and take notice. It felt as though The Dating Optimist‘s tweets were directly aimed at me:

“Do what you need to remind yourself why you’re awesome. If YOU think you’re worth dating, others will think so too.”

“The BIG advice: Write a list of 50 things awesome about you: What you know, what you can cook, jokes you tell well, how big your heart is…”

So I decided I should write a list to remind myself exactly why I’m awesome. Not a list of 50 things because that’s way too much and I can’t even think of 50 things. Also, wouldn’t 50 things would be an absolute snoozefest of a blog post? Anyhoo, with that in mind, here are 20 things that are awesome about me:

1. My lips – full, juicy and all kinds of amazeballs when plastered with MAC lipglass
2. My boobs – they’re full and juicy too*wink*
3. My smile – this is the one that I get told over and over
4. My laugh – infectious
5. My warm and welcoming personality – what can I say? I’m a people person
6. My sense of adventure – open to new experiences, I’ll try most things
7. My ability to always try to look on the bright side – I did say, try
8. I’m independent – I don’t let being alone stop me from doing anything
9. My love of travel – I get itchy feet if I don’t have a flight booked
10. My love of food- I maybe small, but boy do I love my food. Definitely not a fussy eater
11. My ability to stay small even though I should be about three sizes bigger – see #10
12. My fierce sense of loyalty – don’t mess with my close friends and family!
13. I’m brave and courageous – more than I give myself credit for
14. I’m great at keeping secrets – I’m a Scorpio, we’re secretive by nature
15. My sense of humour – when I’m comfortable with someone, I can be a right silly cow. I love to laugh
16. My sense of determination – once I have a goal set, I will always work my hardest to achieve it
17. I can throw down in the kitchen – damn shame I’m the only one who gets to appreciate it
18. My long term friendships – I’ve lived in London for a long time, but I’m proud to say my best friends are still the ones from my hometown
19. My life achievements so far – I come from a single parent household, from a not too great area but now I’m in London, I own my own home, I have a great job and I take regular holidays. I do okay
20. My potential to be a great girlfriend – admittedly, I’ve not been able to prove this one yet, but I’m sure I’d be awesome!

Sometimes I forget that I actually have plenty of reasons to be proud of myself. We covered this in the Get The Guy Women’s Weekend too, sounds cheesy I know, but I need to truly realise my own value and know that I am a person worthy of being loved. Thanks to the friends who helped me out with this one, you know who you are! And thanks to Dating Optimist (follow her on Twitter, here) for the pearls of wisdom!

ASSIGNMENT OPTIMISM: Remember that you are worth the good stuff. Great things should, can and WILL happen to you.

Tags: Dating Tips, Relationships