my right hand had been developing a nervous twitch until two weeks ago, when it kind of froze mid-air and I had to work out how to swipe right. It doesn’t come naturally – swiping right or thinking somebody might just be ‘the one’.
He zoomed straight onto my ‘possible’ list. Well, he was the list.
He was, is, gorgeous. Totally. Gorgeous Gabe. And when we swapped messages he seemed as nice on the inside as the outside. Kind. Thoughtful. Funny. Self-deprecating.
Definitely a possibility.
The perfect guy to help ease me back into the dating game.
Okay, let’s be honest here. He was the only guy after several weeks of swiping who seemed remotely normal. Wow, who knew so many people existed who wanted to thrust their appendages into a woman they don’t know? In fact, I had no idea some of the things I was messaged about were legal, or even possible in one case, until I entered the murky world of internet dating.
So why am I here? Why did I sign up on dating apps, which we all know is more likely to be a route to a total self-esteem crash, than total satisfaction?
Because I am crap at finding a date. I cannot do what my mate, Bea, does and just stroll up to any guy she fancies and openly flirt.
Eurgh. I mean, flirt, with a total stranger? Okay, I admit it, I did try it once in the coffee shop up the road, when I was in the queue for a cappuccino, and finally plucked up the courage to say something to a guy who I regularly saw in there. We were kind of on nodding terms, but for the first time ever he smiled at me as he picked up his coffee and waved! I waved back and said I loved his new scarf. He gave me a funny look, then stepped past me to the woman behind and kissed her! OMG, the embarrassment. I couldn’t go in there again, just in case I bumped into either of them. I now have to buy inferior coffee from a place further up the street, which is ridiculous, and more expensive, but necessary.
And then there was the guy in the pub (okay, I have tried to flirt more than once – this time it was with Bea’s encouragement after three drinks, which made it worse). I mean, he could have been a mass murderer, married or thought I was a total weirdo and pretended he’d not seen or heard me. But I did it anyway. And he did. Pretend he hadn’t seen me. Yup, it happened; it’s never happened to Bea.
Then there was the guy Bea fixed me up with, who just wanted to talk about Bea, and after I winked at him suggestively asked if I’d seen a doctor about my nervous twitch.
So this is why I needed a different approach.
The issue here is that I’ve only ever dated one person. Robbie. We kissed for the first time when we were fifteen, started to see each other seriously (in a groping and proper snogging kind of way) when we were sixteen, had sex at seventeen, shared a holiday at eighteen, and it all developed from there. Until he left the country at thirty to find himself, and never came back. Thirty, I ask you? Which bits haven’t you discovered by the time you’re thirty?
I’m not sure if he’s still looking, or if he just found out he was a different person than he expected. Or if he actually just found a totally different person who he decided he wanted to shack up with. The details aren’t clear.
But shortly before he left I think we both realised that this wasn’t ‘it’. And we still had time to say so and get out before it was too late. So he did. And I’m a bit cross I didn’t have the guts to do it first.
It took a while for us to admit it, because it’s hard and scary to take the leap of faith. But we’d grown up and grown apart – matured into two individuals with different expectations and desires. His evolving man-buns (cool), tantric sex in a tepee (from the photos I could see on his Facebook page after he’d set off on his travels, but OMG what if people were listening?), green tea (yuk) and mung beans (not tried them, not going to try them), and looking after the planet.