dating

It’s Halloween. If the increasingly squishy pumpkins and themed sweets in the supermarket didn’t clue you in, the half-dressed ravers on the train today just might. I’m sitting in my living room, writing by the light of a standing lamp while Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis is playing on my new UE Boom speaker (my old one disappeared during my move over the summer). The mushrooms in the fridge were nearing their use-by date so I threw them into a chorizo and pea risotto for lunch. I’m only a few pages off finishing The Tiger, which has taken me far too long to read, and somewhere behind the normalcy I’m hoping one of my matches from the last week will get back to me.

I’ve tactfully avoided blogging about my dating experience at large on here – it does rather feel like airing one’s dirty laundry out in public – but after reading a number of well-written articles on the web, I thought I’d throw in my few cents on the matter, for what they’re worth. You might be surprised. Or you might not!

Total transparency here: I was twenty-seven before I dipped a toe in the dating scene. I might belong to the generation that turned eighteen the year Tinder became a thing, but I had a healthy (or perhaps unhealthy) aversion to the idea of finding a partner that way throughout my early twenties, largely but not entirely on account of being in a committed relationship for six years. My experience of that world was limited to stories of friends who had had – by the sounds of things – a really rather terrible time with these strangers they had met through their phones.

I guess I turned my nose up at the whole “no strings attached” vibe. It didn’t sit right with my world view at all. It still doesn’t.

Of the various dating apps I’ve tried out over the last five years, Hinge has been by far the best. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of matches I’ve had on Bumble and Tinder *combined* in that time. By contrast, I’ve been on several dates through Hinge, most of them leading to a second date and two of them blossoming into long-term relationships (or one and a half, depending on your take on the status of situationships). There’s hardly any difference in my profiles between the three, so I suspect the trick to Hinge’s significantly higher match rate is the ability to start a conversation without needing to pay for the privilege.

You know, the basic privilege of being human and using the power of speech.

For those who aren’t familiar with the app, Hinge puts more of an emphasis on written responses across the board, asking its users to write three responses to a range of prompts to give their profile some colour. As such, while it’s still ultimately a swiping app like the others, it allows you to look beyond a person’s looks and learn something about their character… So what you write matters. Since I’ve been a lot luckier with Hinge, it would be easy to jump to the awkward conclusion that I write a lot better than I look. Which is probably true, but there’s more to it than that.

Most profiles will give you something to react to, provided they aren’t recycling one of a number of implausibly trending prompts. For instance, if I had a pound for every girl who, for their “fun fact”, said something about otters holding hands so they don’t drift apart when they sleep, I could make a better dent in my annual student loan repayments than my last pay rise. I’m sure it’s intended to reel in some hackneyed pun along the lines of ‘can I be your significant otter’, but such a lack of creativity really is a red flag…

Matching on Hinge (or any dating app, for that matter) usually follows the same cycle. It can be a little disheartening, to be honest, but I’m a fundamentally optimistic sort of guy, so I try not to let it get me down. It runs something like this:

Scroll for a while. Read carefully. Check for the fundamentals: for me, that’s close in age, university educated and wants children. If there’s an indication that they might be a musician, speak another language or are into the natural world in some way, that’s an instant green flag. Strangely, it’s the former of these three that’s proved the hardest to find (to my shame, I still haven’t dated a fellow musician since my teen years). Having some sort of faith would be nice, but it’s not a dealbreaker. I don’t really have a physical type, but red or brown hair and brown eyes have always been a pretty dangerous combination. I couldn’t care less about distance, since every relationship I’ve ever had has been long-distance anyway, but I tend to have my outer limit set at around 45km for practicality’s sake. I have to be realistic, as my lack of both car and driving license (a red flag if there ever were one) does hamstring my options a little
Nine times out of ten, I’ll make a point of initiating the conversation with a written message. Those times I don’t are invariably because there’s just nothing I can work with on their profile. When I started out, some three years ago, my standards were sky high and I was very choosy about sending ‘likes’. These days I’m a lot more open to the possibility of meeting up and seeing how things go, so I don’t mind throwing a few more coins into the wishing well
If I’m lucky, perhaps one in forty of those coins will come back
If I’m lucky, one in three of those will turn into a conversation that lasts longer than a three-way exchange (my opener, her reply and my response). As a rule, if the conversation makes it that far, it’s usually a very good sign

As for likes received, I’m somewhat handicapped by my habit of living outside the larger cities, which may or may not account for the fact that I might get one “like” every one or two months or so. Hinge at least lets you see the most recent of these, so I treat any incoming likes like my emails: read carefully, decide on a response and discard straight away if I don’t think it will do me any good. I tend to work on the basis that instinct is a good guide.

I’m well aware that the odds are stacked against me. The ratio of men to women on dating apps in the UK is around 2:1, and that imbalance is set to worsen with the current trend of women leaving the apps in frustration at a generation of toxic, misogynistic men. If the number of alarmingly young single mothers on these apps is anything to go by, there must be a hell of a lot of those types around. My heart bleeds a little for all the implicit hurt and heartbreak out there.

Honestly? I said “if I’m lucky” a lot back there, but I do consider myself to have been rather lucky. My experience on Hinge has been, on the whole, very positive. Every one of my dates has been a learning curve. I’ve met social workers, rocket scientists and call centre operators. I’ve met people who work with the Royal Family, people who carry a genuine ‘little black book’ and people who keep a running commentary for their followers on TikTok about every date they have. I’ve been to the cinema, gone dancing like the good old days and had a candlelit dinner to the sound of violins in Covent Garden. Every one of them has added to my life in some way.

So what if my first Hinge date led to a relationship that was doomed from the start? She taught me that I had the courage to stand up for myself and walk away when things weren’t working out.

So what if my second date didn’t light a fire in me like I hoped? She taught me that I could be honest about my feelings when they weren’t there.

So what if my third date led to what can only be described as a transcontinental situationship and a broken heart? She rekindled my wandering spirit and opened my eyes to a fantastic genre of music I’d never properly understood before.

So what if my last two dates have fizzled out, and I’m to blame? They have taught me that I’m just as capable of being the heartbreaker – a necessary knock to my hubris – and, more importantly, that I’m just not cut out for the modern dating scene when it comes to weighing up my options. Following up one potential date with another the following week left me with the unmistakeable feeling that my heart was rotting on the inside. Talk about Catholic guilt! I’m absolutely a one woman man, and that applies just as much to casual dating as it does to a relationship. It’s probably not the best strategy, but it is me, and I think it’s really important to be true to yourself when trying to find somebody to share your world.

I have learned so much from my experiences and still think the world of the wonderful women I have had the fortune to cross paths with, no matter how things turned out.

The wait continues. I don’t believe in harrying a person for a response (at work or in dating), so if I don’t hear back after we’ve matched, I don’t usually try to re-start the conversation. You have to keep a clear head and remember that you’re probably one of any number of conversations the lady in question is in the middle of, so if she stops replying, it could be that she’s found someone she clicks with – or she’s just hit a wall and can’t bring herself to reply at the moment. Frankly, I don’t blame her. I feel the same way about my emails.

I think the most unhinged thing about Hinge and the wider online dating scene is that most of us on there wish we didn’t have to resort to it. You can see that a mile off from the number of profiles carrying prompts that run along the lines of ‘together we could come up with a fake story for how we met’.

The trouble is that the old ways are pretty much dead and gone. Nobody meets in bars anymore. That’s just not how it’s done. The looming omnipresence of the online dating scene puts temptation at the feet of countless school-spun and university-spun romances. There was a time when families might step in and try to make introductions, and love might blossom in the workplace. Somewhere at home, I even have my great-grandmother’s dance card, with space for the names of three men she met at a village dance.

Nowadays, a preponderance of choice, a desire for total independence and a fear of accusations of unprofessionalism have pushed a generation of would-be Romeos and Juliets into the only space left: the cold and emotionless void of cyberspace. It’s quite a depressing reality, when you think about it.

I have thought about signing off on all of the options once or twice, but my choice of a career leaves me with precious little time or mobility for most of the year, so I keep my options open. In my heart, however, I’m still holding out for some of that old school romance. I haven’t forgotten that my longest and most successful relationship to date was the result of a chance encounter, the kind that becomes increasingly hard to engineer after the university years are behind you.

My recent experiences haven’t yet stripped from me that Hispanic passion for the grand geste, that same streak that has been the driving force behind, amongst other things, buying front row seats to see The Lion King with a childhood sweetheart to fulfil an old wish, booking a Valentine’s weekend at a parador, scattering rose petals on the bed and suiting up for dinner, or even catching a flight to America for a third date. (Though perhaps after this last play I have been a little more cautious of late…)

Ultimately, I think I’ve been spoiled rotten by all the fairy tales I read as a kid. I do believe I took most of the romance at face value and still hope to find that kind of selfless love in life. I’ve been told more than once that I approach the world as though it were ‘one of my books’, and I’m still not sure if that’s a compliment or a caution.

I’ll find her someday, God willing. It’s very possible that I’m still not ready, even five months after the events of the summer, and goodness knows I have enough to be dealing with in my professional life right now. So despite the wave of wedding photos breaking across social media as my generation waves goodbye to their twenties, I remind myself: there’s no rush.

No rush at all. BB x

Today’s the last day of the February half term. Storm Eunice is on her way out, but she’s dragging her talons behind her. I’m cooped up with a blanket and a mug of Ovaltine in my study, looking out at the grey world beyond. Cars parked at angles. Wet tarmac mirroring the featureless sky. Winds of over fifty miles per hour howl across the grounds. One of the windows in my flat is permanently ajar due to some fault with its ancient locking mechanism, and the banshee wails moaning through the corridor sound like the Ice Cavern from Ocarina of Time (nostalgia trip here). Between the raging wind and the rattling tattoo of the flagpole two floors up, I might as well be at sea.

I came home from visiting my parents last night to find the whole site in darkness. From what I’ve seen and heard, Eunice had been busy while I was away, tearing her way along the coast like a hurricane and leaving great swathes of the south without power. It took me at least a minute or two scrolling through the UK Power Network website to find my postcode amidst the many hundreds reporting a power outage. After the fair number of power cuts we had last year, you would have thought I would have been prepared, but for the life of me I couldn’t find any of the candles I’d stockpiled over the years. I think my previous housemate used them all up for beer bottle decoration. Fortunately, some foresight – or hindsight – on my part led me to a hidden cache of hand-torches in a chest of drawers. The bulb had gone in the smaller one, but the other, though flickering as a match-flame, gave just about enough light to read by.

I half expected to come home to find the silhouette of the great Atlas cedar missing from the skyline, its mighty body bent and broken upon the drive like a fallen giant. Fortunately its roots go deep, like the mountains upon which its kin grow far away to the south, and there is strength in the old man still.

The same cannot be said of many of the free-standing trees that line the road into town. I promised myself I’d get a taxi home for the sake of my new trainers, but as usual, I went back on that promise, only this time it was not out of stinginess but a genuine curiosity to see the wreckage of the storm that I had only glimpsed from the train. Crawley wasn’t given a lashing quite like Brighton and Hove, but it had its fair share of casualties, scattered and trimmed across roads and gardens. The damage was less obvious deeper into the woods beyond. There is safety in numbers, it seems, even for trees: much of the forest was untouched by the storm. It was seriously muddy underfoot, though, and I spent a good ten minutes cleaning my trainers by torchlight once I’d made it home.

It seems unoriginal – not to mention extremely British – to go on so about the weather, but I feel as a writer there is nothing more important than taking the time to talk about the world around you every so often. It’s our duty to tell stories of the world as we see it, so that others who come after us can learn from us somehow. One of the books I actually read cover-to-cover last year, Nature’s Mutiny, pieces together the world of the Little Ice Age through diaries, sermons, letters, hymns and poems penned by those who saw it with their own eyes. Back then there was still a great fear of God tangled up in the awesome power of the weather, and a hundred years of savage winters had led a lot of Europeans to the natural conclusion that sin was to blame. Some resorted to witchcraft; some resorted to witch-burning. Others, of a more temperate nature, put their thoughts into verse:

In constant rancour we abide / and war is ruling far and wide
Envy and hatred everywhere / in all estates discord and fear
That too, is why the elements / reach out against us with their hands
Fear coming from the depth and sea / fear from the very air on high
In morning is the source of joy / the sun no longer sends bright rays
The clouds are raining like a fount / the tears too plentiful to count.
Paul Gerhard
Translated by Philipp Blom
(Nature’s Mutiny, 2019)

I wonder how many modern lyricists sing about the weather? Back in 2007, when the UK was plunged into its wettest summer since records began, Rihanna’s perfectly-timed Umbrella became a best-seller. There were even joking accusations on the internet that the singer was responsible for the unseasonal weather across the pond…

Now that it’s raining more than ever
Know that we’ll still have each other
You can stand under my umbrella
You can stand under my umbrella, ella, ella, eh, eh, eh
Rihanna (“Umbrella“)

Of course, Rihanna wasn’t thinking about the British summer yet to come when she wrote those lines, but four hundred years ago they might have burned her for a witch for such impeccably bad timing. Come to think of it, though, I do distinctly remember her name being on the list handed to me by the Prefect Witchfinder General at a school I worked at in Uganda, some five years later. Apparently the school’s witch-hunting guild had found a website listing known witches in the Western world? If they’d stumbled upon one of the various forums discussing the timing of Umbrella, perhaps it’s not an unprecedented conclusion. If I remember correctly, Wayne Rooney’s name was also on that list. The internet is a strange place.

Speaking of the internet, I decided to bite the bullet and give the online dating scene a whirl. Living and working in a boarding school doesn’t exactly facilitate an open line of communication with the outside world, so rather than sitting on the fence I thought I’d chase some stories for a change. After a brief browse it looks as though Bumble is the kindest of the Golden Triangle (with Hinge and Tinder), not least of all because it’s the most self-aware of the damage the online dating scene can do to the mental health of its users. It’s good to see that in an undeniably superficial meat market, some of the folks up top are aware of the dangers and offer support.

It’s almost certainly a silly idea, living as far from the city as I do, but, who’s to know? Shy bairns get nowt once again. If I had a penny for every variation of that phrase I’ve heard throughout my life, I might just have a pound. BB x