relationships

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

What a vast gulf there is between love and loved! It is measureless. Still, most people have crossed it in their lives, some of them more than once.

Henry Rider Haggard, The People of Mist

Summer rumbles along. August yawns before me, and once I’m settled into my new home at the end of the week it will be a quieter month than this very to-and-fro, up-and-down July. I’ve managed to book in some driving lessons starting next week, despite the ongoing national shortage of instructors, so I should count my blessings. I’ve also been very lucky to have traveled so far. I mean, honestly: four weeks ago today I was wandering around New Orleans. Three weeks ago I was on an island. Two weeks ago I was sitting atop Montmartre in Paris, eating frites and watching the sunset.

I really have moved around a lot this summer. I should be grateful. That’s what I tell myself.

The summer holidays are a rough time to handle heartache. There’s never a good time, but the holidays really are the worst. For dealing with affairs of the heart, the best things to have around you are friends and family who will listen, advise and support you, if not a job that will keep you too busy to dwell overmuch. All of these are close at hand when you live and work in a boarding school (or any school, for that matter, though the boarding scene does amplify most things).

Come the holidays, however, and you can find yourself cut off. Marooned. It’s like floating in a wide, wide sea, in a boat that has lost its motor, looking and hoping for the afterglow of the stars you’ve been chasing, even though you know both the looking and the hoping will hurt your eyes.

I love a good quest. It gives one’s life meaning, purpose. Something to come home and tell stories about. Seeking out my long-lost family in Spain – that was a quest. Walking the Camino for my grandfather José – that was another. Even the ten-metre colossus of a drawing I created at university was a quest after a fashion. In short, any endeavour that you put your heart and soul into is a quest. So perhaps you might forgive me for trying to catch a shooting star this summer, knowing full well that they are so precious precisely because they are fleeting.

It’s just because it’s in those fleeting moments that we truly feel alive that we hunger for them so.

The hardest relationships to walk away from are the ones where you both still care about each other. Where, by whatever divine prank, the whole world stood between you, telling you to listen to reason and face the enormity of the Ocean, even as you railed against it. Bloody Hinge! Bloody Atlantic! Bloody bleeding heart!

One of you must be the brave one and make the bitterest of choices. Somebody needs to be the one to say “good bye”. Good-bye is a powerful word, and one I try to avoid – it is so much more final than “farewell”. And even when it is the right word to say, it’s never easy to cut yourself off entirely from the person with whom you have come to share a corner of your heart. But one of you must do this, and that will always leave the other with questions. What more could I have done? Did I let the flame die out from a lack of attention, or did I snuff it out from too much? Had I the winged sandals of Hermes or the might of Moses to part the sea between us, would it have been enough?

Questions come easily in the silence of the summer holidays. So I’ve been going out in the evenings for long walks to clear my head and focus on the beauty of the world around me, as the year turns.

The harvest season has begun, and the wind among the gentle fields of barley can hardly be heard over the distant roar of the combine harvesters up on the golden hills. Hay is in the air and, every now and then, the faint smell of mushrooms. Autumn is waiting in the wings. Change is coming.

One thing I’ve noticed this year is that there are so many owls up here in Lincolnshire. More than I’ve ever seen in the south, that’s for sure. Owls are an omen of bad luck in many parts of the world, but here in Europe we chose to see in them wisdom. Perhaps that’s on account of their enormous eyes, or their ability to turn their head in seemingly all directions.

Last night I saw a barn owl quartering the fields after sundown, a ghostly silhouette against the evening sky as it flapped noiselessly overhead – or rather, noiseless in its wings, for it was shrieking as it went.

Barn owls. Flamingoes. Rollers. Swans. It’s a strange quirk that the most beautiful creatures make the most alarming sounds. There is nothing alarming about the wind in the barley tonight. It rustles softer than any sigh.

Nature is a powerful healer, and so is writing. I will make good use of both in the weeks to come, until life and work begins again. A new world is waiting! I have waited long enough. BB x