The Single Filez | romantic blog about date and dating

So get this… I haven’t been on a date in over five months and my dating life sucks balls (mind you, even when I was actively dating… my dating life still sucked balls) but for some reason, people actually want to speak to me about DATING and even consider me to be some sort of authority on the subject. Crazy huh?

Well, even though I don’t seem to be too great at doing the whole dating thing, if there is one thing I can do, it’s talk about it. A lot.

So, when I was approached by Click Tonight, the UK’s leading Party Dating website, and asked to talk about my life and experiences being a single girl in London – I figured, who was I to say no? Click Tonight is a cross between social networking and dating and definitely a site I’ll be looking at more in the future but, for now, if you’re remotely interested in hearing a bit of gossip, reading about the best (and worst) date I’ve ever been on and also my advice to the newly single and fabulous… head on over to the Click Tonight blog by clicking HERE and have a read.

Enjoy!

Tags: Click Tonight, Dating Advice, Dating Tips, Dating Websites, Interview, Online Dating, Parties, Singles

You may or may not have noticed that I haven’t been around for a little while. It wasn’t on purpose, I’ve actually been dying to blog. But y’see the thing is, a dating blogger who isn’t actually dating doesn’t tend to have much to blog about. So, that was the reason for my silence. No point in blogging about fresh air, is there?

If you remember, a couple of months ago I wrote  ’Blogging to Date, Or Dating To Blog?‘  and I admitted that I had been putting pressure on myself to date just for the sake of blog content. At the time  I decided I was taking an online dating hiatus, which, I did. The hiatus lasted for about all of six weeks before I got bored. I gave in to my itchy fingers and started browsing Plenty of Fish, OKCupid and took advantage of a free three day trial on Match.com. Can anyone say “addiction”? I may need to join some sort of ‘online daters anonymous’ group after all of this. Reminds me of my ‘Online Dating Sucks, But What Would I Do Without It‘ post. I definitely have a love-hate relationship with online dating.

Anyhoo, my break from dating websites only confirmed my theory that these days I can’t get a date unless I do the online thing. To be completely fair though, I haven’t followed through on my promise of trying out singles parties/events so I guess I’ve kinda wimped out of that one. However, it’s not too late. I’ve done some research and turns out there are quite a few singles parties and events coming up. I might check ‘em out…

Black Dinner Dating – Next event, 5th March 2011

Admittedly, not for everyone, but I do like this idea. A chance to eat yummy food, be entertained by hosts,  live musicians AND meet single men at the same time? A start-up company by the looks of things, but an interesting concept. www.blackdinnerdating.com

Lovestruck London – Next event, 26th January 2011

Lovestruck London (also in New York, Dublin, Liverpool, Singapore and other cities)  ’ghost-hosts’ drinks nights every so often. No entry free, no name tags, no games, no banners, no cringing. It’s painted as nice low-key drinks at a nice bar, except you’re safe in the knowledge that a higher-than-average number of single people will be there.  Nice touch.

www.lovestruck.com/london/party

Mixster – Next event, TBC

A friend told me about these guys. At a Mixster event you and three other single friends of the same sex create a team of four and that night you get to meet three other teams of the opposite sex, also with four people in them. The three guys’ teams are placed in a different pub or bar in walking distance of each other. Each girls’ team visits a pub spending 30 minutes with each before swapping. At the end of the evening everyone meets up in a late-night bar. Dating with friends, sounds kinda awesome, right? www.mixster.co.uk

Original Dating – Next event, 26th January 2011

London’s favourite speed dating events and lock & key parties – according to their website anyway. These guys look like they’re the champions of the London dating scene. They run up to five packed speed dating events every single week across the city. Wine tasting, quiz dating, speed dating, lock & key parties – you name it, they do it. I think I need to check out one of their nights, pronto. www.originaldating.com

Metro Urban Dating - Next event, TBC

Definitely not as low-key as the Lovestruck events. In fact, these events sound like slightly-embarrassing-cringeworthy-date-matchmaking-territory. Not necessarily a bad thing, I mean, you do get a free cocktail and the chance to win a spa date for two. They have ice-breaker games, speed dating and a photo wall. The fact this event is tied up with national newspaper, Metro, means they have a huge marketing budget and therefore attract a large crowd. This one is a biggie. www.metro.co.uk/lifestyle

With all that said and done, I do have a date later on today. A date from Plenty Of Fish, of all places. Huzzah!

Tags: General Dating, Singles, Speed Dating

I’m not ashamed to admit that I love a good chick flick. It’s evident just how much when you check out past blog posts. Long time readers may remember posts about Sex And The City 2 and The Back-Up Plan. Not too long ago I bitched about the fact my solo trip to New York wasn’t anything like my fave NY-based rom coms; Hitch, How To Lose a Guy In 10 Days and Brown Sugar.

It started while I very young. As a kid I was enamoured with films such Grease, Dirty Dancing, Pretty Woman (I own all three films on DVD as an adult, FYI) as well as movies featuring greats such as Doris Day, Judy Garland, Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire, Rock Hudson and Bing Crosby (Seriously showing my age here). I’ve always been a sucker for a happy romantic ending.

Happy Ever After Addicts

A friend of mine forwarded me this article on the Grazia website, “Are Romantic Films Ruining Your Love Life?”

and it made me think. Once again I’m going to refer to that book, but I remember Marry Him: The Case For Settling For Mr Good Enough also had a chapter that touched upon romantic movies and how they’ve manage to drum it into our heads that the handsome, perfect, Knight-In-Shining-Armour-type is what we should be looking for. In my late teens and twenties, there was a part of me that thought it normal. It was what I was aiming for, I wanted the same thing that Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts had. However now, being the bitter old cynic that I am, I watch these movies and think “Pssh. Yeah right, like that would ever happen in real life.” Unrealistic-ness aside, I still love the fantasy of chick flicks and nine times out of ten, I’ll have an lump in my throat by the time I get to the end of the movie. Sometimes, (ahem, most of the time) I’ll end up straight bawling my eyes out. Just a couple of weekends ago I tweeted while watching 500 Days of Summer -

“What I’ve learnt from 500 Days of Summer: Act like you don’t give a shit & THEN that’s when a nice guy’ll want a relationship with you. Duh.”

and I received this interesting response from New York blogger Jack From Brooklyn. Oh, how I do love a male point of view -

“Romantic comedies RUIN relationships; in real life good guys appreciate women who are good to them #chickflicksSUCK”

So there you have it, “Romantic comedies RUIN relationships” and “Chick Flicks Suck”. Ouch. That’s another vote against ‘evil’ chick flicks then. Are rom coms really to blame? I don’t think so. Just as I don’t think horror films are responsible for creating serial killers. If a person knows their ‘own mind’ surely they can’t be swayed into making life decisions based upon Hollywood make-believe?

As for my views on the Grazia article: Hell no, I don’t think rom coms have rose-tinted my vision and yes, there is most definitely something wrong with being caught up in chasing the perfect Hollwood ending. Wake up people, this is the real world!

Tags: Lori Gottlieb, New York, Relationships, Singles, The Back-Up Plan

Over the past week or so quite a few of my Twitter friends have been asking me about Older Guy. I guess it’s to be expected. I hyped him up so much in the beginning that it’s only natural people are going to be curious now. Well, if I’m totally honest, there hasn’t been any developments since I wrote ‘Confused? Moi?’ a couple of weeks ago. The only thing that has changed since then is that I’m a lot less confused now. Now I know for sure that whilst he is a lovely guy, this thing with O.G. really isn’t going anywhere.

Despite him suggesting we don’t date other people, fireworks are still nowhere to be seen. We’ve gone out twice in the past fortnight and not once was the subject of our dating situation brought up. He’s still reserved (shy maybe?) and not at all the affectionate type I’m used to. There still hasn’t been any exciting,  flirty late night conversations or text messages and the only time we speak on the phone is to arrange our next meeting. A friend I spoke to recently made a very good point; she told me “exclusive dating should be happening between two people who communicate at least every day or two and who get together at least a couple of times a week”.

And its not like I haven’t tried to give it a chance. He’s a nice guy and there were things I liked about him (he’s older, he’s thoughtful, he’s got his shit together etc) so I didn’t want to be too hasty because I’ve had the excitement and the fireworks with guys in the past and none of those stories have ended well. But after nearly two months of dating and no improvement, it’s time for me to admit that O.G is not going to be ‘the one’.

Thing is, I need to tell him this and I’m dreading it. A male friend of mine reminded me “He’s not your man, you’re only dating. You’re not in a committed relationship with the guy”. That’s true, but I did agree to date him exclusively so that’s a ‘sort of relationship’, isn’t it? I owe it to him to tell him something. I’m still trying to figure out what to say…

“I’m happy to hang out with you from time to time but I think we should go back to dating other people…”

“I don’t think its working, it’s been over two weeks since we agreed to date exclusively but it’s all so ‘meh’…”

“Dude. Let’s get real, we are just not that into eachother…”

I can’t imagine any of this being a huge surprise to him. I’ve not called him since the last time we went out but, he’s not calling me either. Surely he must feel the same? Surely he must feel that things aren’t amazing between us? The whole ‘fairytale and fireworks’ scenario tends to be more of a female thing, but men feel it too, right?

No romantic chemistry and definitely no fireworks. If it doesn’t feel right, then it probably isn’t. I can’t force something that’s not there. That wouldn’t be fair to me… or to him.

Tags: General Dating, Relationships

It’s been awhile since I last went on a date. After East End Boy last August I needed a break. I was tired of the dating merry go round but, even more tired of  discovering that whenever I liked a guy (even just a little bit), he’d always turn out to be of the douchebag variety.

It’s been five date free months and although I’m still not totally convinced that online dating is the way forward for me, I’ve decided its time to try get myself back out there again. It’s no secret that I’d prefer to meet a guy the ‘old-fashioned way’ (through friends, at the gym, at a bar/shopping centre/through work… anything) but it doesn’t happen that way for me anymore. It really doesn’t.

I figured it would be good to spice things up a bit by checking out new dating sites to try.  The search for the ideal site that I like/can get decent dates from/not receive ridiculous idiotic messages on, continues. First up in 2012 is (drum roll…) DoingSomething.co.uk.

DoingSomething is actually a pretty cool looking site. It’s colourful, vibrant and fun plus I love the way it talks to me in a down-to-earth friendly tone of voice. The site is based on the idea that dating can be awkward and a bit dull – it’s always the same old, let’s go for a drink in a bar type thing. The goal is  to change this  by encouraging people to meet up and literally do something together – go for a scenic walk, attend a wine tasting class, go to a comedy show etc. Nice concept, right?

Unfortunately, nice concept aside, it’s not going too well so far. My first thoughts include;

• There doesn’t seem to be too many guys. I keep seeing the same profiles over and over again. Literally every time I log in I see the same faces as before
• There are lots of guys who haven’t updated their profile in ages - each person’s profile contains a selection of date ideas and the plan is that you find someone who likes to do the same things you do. Problem is, I keep coming across profiles  with date suggestions that haven’t been updated in 2/3 months. Doesn’t necessarily mean the guy hasn’t logged on, but it sure does makes the profile look inactive
• You can’t see when others are online. It leaves you wondering if anyone is actually out there. It feels like a solitary experience and not very interactive at all, speaking of which…
• I set up my profile a little over a month go and so far I’m averaging one view a week.  Not that I’m big headed, but only five views in five weeks? But honestly, is anyone actually out there??
• It doesn’t automatically remember my search settings. Every time I log in I have to specify what I’m looking for. The search function always resets itself to ‘women between the age of 18 to 18′ which has already led to some embarrassing mistakes -

I’ll keep plodding on because I’m keen to see how it goes. I plan to do another review in a month or so and hopefully by then I’ll have more positives to share.

Until then… watch this space!

Tags: dating sites, Dating Websites, DoingSomething, Online Dating, Singles