Opting out of the benefit of the doubt
Why I will no longer date men with tiny ponytails and big clocks
Hello lovely new followers and thank you all for finding me on here. I have had such lovely comments and feedback on my disastrous love life that I am reliving the trauma of an actual Hinge-arranged coffee date to illustrate what it is really like out there.
Am I exaggerating for comic effect?
Hahahahahahahaha. If only.
On a broiling day last summer, I set out to meet a man off the internet. Hair washed, legs shaved, coffee date-appropriate dress.
So far, so familiar. Also present, the feeling of impending doom that is familiar to all of us who do this crazy thing.
Looking for shade on the baking concrete of Great Western Road, my internal stern voice reminded me why I was giving up my Saturday afternoon to what felt like a fool’s errand.
Internet dating is a numbers game. You have to just do it. Put yourself out there. Maybe it will be fun. You could learn something.
(The voice got increasingly desperate.)
He could be a useful contact for work.
Perhaps he will have a hot brother.
Waiting at the cafe was a guy with a combover in a nylon polo shirt. A bingo card of things Anna does not find attractive would have thinning greasy hair, t-shirts with collars and synthetic fibres front and centre.
This was going to be a very flat white.
He wanted to eat. He was a vegan. Deploying one of my favourite transferable jokes, I asked if that was even legal in Lanarkshire. He didn’t laugh.
The patient waitress offered him a chicken sandwich without the chicken.
Bread with unappetising roast vegetables arrived. He worked his way around some slimy onions, explaining the benefits of eating plants and listing various ways of cooking them.
I, a vegetarian for 20 years, a food journalist shortlisted for a Guild of Food Writers award twice and, at the time, a restaurant critic, smiled and nodded. Sweat trickled down my back.
Could it get worse? Have you met the internet?
He was a reiki master He was looking for more reiki therapists to join the practice he was hoping to set up in Motherwell but was currently operating out of his spare room. I had exactly the right kind of energy.
If he was looking for someone squirming in a plastic seat, wishing they’d ordered a long black cyanide with caramel syrup, he was bang on.
We had nothing to say to each other. He showed me pictures of the boat he was renovating, currently sitting landlocked on his drive. Then selfies with his daughter, an air steward. He raved about her favourite destination, Dubai.
Now I am not proud of what I did next but the heat, the condescension and the idea that I might want to practise reiki in Motherwell got to me. Was this my life now?
I excused myself to go to the toilet, paid the bill, left through the side door and deleted Hinge on the way home.
What did I learn from this? First and most important, to read men’s dating profiles more carefully. When I finally crawled back onto the app eight months or so later, it was with Maya Angelou’s wise words as my motto.
“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
I’m also more honest about myself and the kind of person I want to meet. Dating apps are where any delusion that you are a good person go to die and some of these criteria are, frankly, trivial. But attraction is fragile and subjective. I know that I will never, ever feel it towards someone who has an enormous metal clock on their living room wall.
Before reikigate, I was giving potential matches the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps, pictured beneath that hideous timepiece, was the smart, funny architect with a holiday home that I seek. No longer.
It’s simple self-preservation. Going on a date with someone you’ve found on the internet is not a cost-neutral exercise and I don’t just mean having to buy a mansplaining weirdo an overpriced focaccia.
It takes a lot to dust yourself off from the last shitshow, iron a blouse and think of cute ways to frame your disastrous relationship history to a stranger in a coffee shop.
The more you do it, the grimmer it gets. You leave a little piece of yourself behind every time.
I said yes to reiki guy because I thought I had to play the numbers game with marginal matches. He convinced me that it’s just not worth it. It did not bring that elusive date with someone who is actually smart, funny and wears natural fibres closer. Instead, it made opening the app feel like a terrible idea.
Other ways online dating nibbles away at the soul? The initial chat that fizzles out: am I really so uncompelling? The rat’s tail plait that did not figure in the profile pictures: that should be a hate crime. Then there’s the post-date message that says, hey you are so great but I don’t fancy you. That is particularly tough.
And do you know what makes it worse? Reiki guy is still pursuing me. Honestly. He quits the app, reinstalls, tweaks his profile and starts the whole agonising process all over again.
The first time I didn’t recognise him, gave him the benefit of the doubt and started chatting again. (His messaging patter is superior to anything he can manage IRL.) Then a fleeting mention of a boat gave the game away and I banished him to Hinge purgatory.
This did not stop him liking my picture again just the other week. But I’m older and wiser now. I pressed the cross of doom and scrolled right on.
Please also enjoy some actual journalism - I really enjoyed the fantastically waspish Julian Spalding’s thoughts on the greatest disappointment of his career.
I’ve also been to see some object theatre and an excellent family show from Paisley’s wonderful PACE.