Dating 101: Why he’ll never call you after that fantastic first date

Wow, that went well. You’re positively glowing, aren’t you? A first date has never played out so smoothly; absolutely nothing went wrong. An ideal venue, nary a break in the conversation, plus a bright smile and a promise to do it again at the very end. And then a cherry on top: an affectionate kiss on the cheek and a warm hug to send you on your way. Could this be it? The one? You don’t know. Maybe. You hope so. Excellent. On the bus home, you beam as widely as you dare allow yourself without making your fellow passengers want to switch seats. You can’t wait for round two.

Tough. You’re never going to see him again. Ever.

The phone doesn’t ring. No text comes through. Your inbox remains desolate, forgotten. You wonder if the date happened at all. Was it all a dream? Did he die?  Has he been kidnapped? No. He just doesn’t want to see you. He lied. But why? What did you do? Cast your mind back. Anything sounding familiar?

You blew your horn
Nothing wrong with being proud of your achievements. Aeroplanes don’t guide themselves safely onto runways using lights secreted in bushels, true, but there’s a time and a place to trot out your résumé.

Everyone deserves their time to shine, but maybe a lower wattage is advisable on a first date. Ticking off a list of your personal and professional wins might seem like a good idea – success is sexy, after all – but nobody loves a show-off.

You overshared
Dating rules are terribly boring and generally for people who would struggle in social situations anyway, but if there’s one that’s worth adhering to, it’s retaining that ‘air of mystery’. Did you feel so comfortable that you were opening up about anything and everything? Does he really need to know you had a difficult relationship with your mother as a teenager or that your father was more at home in the pub than helping you with your long division? Uh-oh.

Have you put him off by leaving him nothing else to discover about you? You’ve shrunk your life from a gripping 26-episode box-set into a throwaway 25-minute pilot episode that has no hope of being commissioned. In fact, if you mentioned your parents even in passing then you’ve said too much. Don’t bother memorising his phone number; you’re not going to need it again.

You disappointed
Disappointed dates tend to behave in one of two ways. Either they’ll immediately let you know that you’re not what they were expecting – perhaps the colour will drain from their face or they’ll back away from you screaming – or they will very skilfully try to compensate for the fact you’re not quite up to scratch. The demonstrative type can be painful to deal with, but you know where you are with them – the compensators lull you in a false sense of ‘I may get some sex this evening’ security.

In an effort to let you down gently, the compensator will dig out his best acting skills and, to his credit but your eternal confusion, actually be nicer to you than a normal date would be. Did he listen really intently and seem hugely interested in everything you had to say? Even that 10-minute diatribe about your local supermarket running out of avocadoes? Hmm. Did he laugh loudly at your jokes? All of them? Even the ones you pilfered from the least funny person on Twitter? He’s a compensator. He’s trying to be nice. He’s decided that since you’re both here anyway and awkward silences make any date seem twice as long and five times as excruciating, he’s just going to go with it. He’s a good guy. But you are never going to see this guy naked. You should have feigned tiredness after drink three and made a dignified exit.

If none of the above rings a bell, consider this quick checklist of “never again” enablers: you drank too much; you tried to ‘do sexy’; you were late; you talked politics; you kept absent-mindedly tweaking your own nipples; you talked about your ex; you sympathised with an unpopular reality TV contestant; you admitted to watching reality TV; you lied about your height/age/job/inside leg measurement.

If you’re still none the wiser, console yourself with the default reason, the one I always run to when the phone falls silent: you were just too hot and fantastic for him and he knew he’d never be able to keep up with you, so is letting you go now, into the arms of the one who truly deserves you. There, all better now.

Say no to couple envy

You’re in a half-empty pub. Perhaps you’re waiting for a date, but more likely you are idling away the hours alone with some much-needed human company before going back to the stark solitude of the dungeon walls which hold up the roof on your supposed bachelor pad. Out of the corner of your eye, you spot a hint of romance. Maybe you’ve heard the gentle slurp of a kiss or caught a glimpse of interlocking fingers.

Whatever it is, you look up and see them, or it, if you think of them as a singular unit. They certainly do. They are your enemy, your nemesis – the beast that mocks your single status just by being. Yes, at the next table, you can see, in their natural state of togetherness, a couple.

The Christmas fling

Guy no: 28
Where: Marylebone, London
When: Winter 2010
Stats: 33, 5’9”, brown/green, London
Pre-date rating: 7/10

Winter. Brrrr. Mulled wine and Christmas shopping, festive drinks, tinsel and coupledom. I’m not really thinking about what the festive period is going to be like without a significant other – it’s best not to – but I am wary of starting something at this time of year. Being alone in winter can be quite scary. I don’t want to over-compensate, or see romance where there is none, just so I won’t be flying solo during party season. Draping tinsel over a ‘maybe’ shouldn’t make it a ‘yes’. Shit-shining is not for me.

Nevertheless, here I am on the dating site allowing myself to be very cautiously wooed by our latest contestant. He’s neither brash nor particularly confident but he can’t seem to say a thing wrong. He’s sweet, intelligent, funny and, from his limited number of public pictures, handsome. He’s a current affairs journalist and we talk about pretty much anything, settling into a jocular tone very early on. I don’t ask him out for a drink because I sometimes worry that something so perfect electronically can turn out to be only a disappointment when flesh comes into play. If he asks me, however, I won’t say no. The games you play with yourself and others. How beautifully time-consuming and utterly pointless it all is. He does ask, and my hand is forced.  The date is a long time in the making: conflicting diaries and last-minute work commitments mean that the first meeting is delayed twice. By the time we do meet, we’re breaking into December. I am to meet him on a Tuesday night in a pub in Marylebone that’s brimming over with Christmas cheer and ambience.

The northerner

Guy no: 24
Where: Soho, W1
When: October 2010
Stats: 36, 5’11”, black/green, Leeds
Pre-date rating: 7/10

Being a Yorkshireman, and knowing what a pain in the arse they (i.e. I) can be, I tend to stay away from them as potential dates. The familiar accent and anecdotes about growing up in the north don’t particularly interest me. Why go all the way to China and have a cup of Tetley tea when there are so many other varieties available? Nevertheless, when I’m contacted by Guy 24, a fellow Yorkshireman, I’m sufficiently interested to meet him for a drink. What harm can it do to slip on a pair of comfy slippers after a series of dates wearing tight, pinched brogues?

His patter is fairly low-key. He seems keen but he doesn’t overplay it – a very typical Yorkshire trait. In his photographs, he looks clean-cut, sensible and handsome, the kind of man I always tell myself I fancy and would be good for me. He seems solid, reliable, honest. A bit boring, I suppose. But bad boys are over-rated and everything looks to be in the right place so I agree to give it a go.

The guyliner, as told by The Male Nanny

I went out on a ‘date’ with another anonymous blogger, the very charming Male Nanny. We each wrote a post about it, and both appear here. You can also read my account of the night; it matters not which one you read first.

“Most blogs are shit. But, when I discovered theguyliner’s, I couldn’t stop reading. It is a brilliant blog because it depicts an interesting sub-culture and is written with skill and cynicism. But it struck me that he is operating in a comfort zone; aloof and perplexed, the straight man on a raft, in a sea of drowning oddballs. Writing the blog elevates him, detaches him. He is on the front line, yes, but he is watching the sun-set from a deck chair, while the other soldiers howl at it, from a pit. I wanted to get him out of his bubble. I wanted him to meet me.

Because I have no designs to fuck him, and because I am not mental, and because we are both anonymous bloggers, a parity exists that would remove potential for the haughty judgement that facilitates the dark humour in his blogs. It would be a challenge for him.

Clearly, gays like a challenge, because he agreed to meet. I suggested we both write about the experience, and that he post it as a blog; a two pronged perspective piece with some high-powered perception pointed at him, for a change. He bravely, and perhaps slightly reluctantly, said “okay”.

The male nanny

I went out on a ‘date’ with another anonymous blogger, the very charming Male Nanny. We each wrote a post about it, and both appear here. You can also read his account of the night; it matters not which one you read first

Guy no: 50
Stats: That’s classified, I’m afraid
Where: London, W1
When: November 2011
Pre-date rating: 8/10

If there’s one thing I’ve learned after going on dates with almost 50 men, it’s to expect the unexpected. I’m currently taking a break from the dating scene, the hapless loners and plump-chested braggers holding less appeal as the year wears on. A whopping three months after my last date, I am asked, via Twitter, if I would like to meet by The Male Nanny, my very favourite blogger (sorry to that blogging lady who posts pictures of her sodding cat all day – you’re a very close second, honestly).

The twists here come thick and fast: he is straight, for one – not even remotely curious; and he has no idea what I look like. Our flirtation has been purely intellectual and refreshingly free of any carnal desire. Despite our difference in age, we seem a good match in personalities, yet I’m hesitant. My general rule is never to meet anyone from Twitter, but, like me, he’s an anonymous blogger, albeit with considerably more to lose should his identity be revealed. And so, after mulling it over, I agree. We set a time and date over email, his communiqués making me laugh out loud (an occurrence all too rare) and then it is done. It is happening. Guy 50, then, may be the oddest proposition of them all.

The right Peter

Guy no: 43
Stats: 30, 6’0”, blond/blue, London
Where: East Dulwich, SE22
When: Summer 2o11
Pre-date rating: 8/10

I’m a big believer in putting things right if I can. If I’m in a supermarket and knock something over, I’ll quickly pick it up and place it back on the shelf. Should I underpay (or overpay) for something, I’ll endeavour to fix it so that nobody’s out of pocket. I like everything just-so. My date with this guy, then, simply had to happen whether I wanted it to or not, so I could make amends with myself for the fact that I accidentally went on a date with a guy who had the same name as this one, thinking it was him. It was time to go on a date with the right Peter after all.

Regular readers will be aware of my hugely embarrassing faux-pas when I agreed to go on a date with a guy over text, only to discover that it was someone else entirely, who I didn’t want to meet. I duly went on it anyway, and had an excruciating couple of hours in the company of the wrong Peter and his offensive cologne. You can read up on this, if you like. So, 6 guys and a pile of texts and instant messages later, here we are ready to do battle with the guy I should’ve gone out with in the first place.

On first glance, everything’s pretty good. We have been chatting for months on a dating app (well, I use the term ‘dating app’ very loosely; very few dates seem to actually happen) and he seems clever, handsome and funny. He doesn’t say much about himself on his profile. I know that he works in TV, and his age and his height and that’s about it. The only blurb he has says “Straight-acting, good-humoured guy looking for dates”. My eyes narrow a little at the ‘straight-acting’ tag he’s so keen to get out there. What he means here is that he isn’t camp, I suppose. He should maybe say that instead, rather than aligning his firm-wristedness with the heterosexuals, but I resolve not to get too bogged down in this. Finally, after months of toing and froing – not to mention the abysmal date with his dreary namesake – we actually arrange a time and place to meet. The date comes during a busy period; there has been a flurry of meet-ups and most of them wildly unsuitable. Peter comes right after my extraordinary evening with the eccentric composer, so I am looking forward to hooking up with someone regular, down-to-earth and, dare I say it, normal?

I arrive on time at the pub and have a look around. Can’t see any six-foot blond guys anywhere, so I get myself a drink. He texts to say he’s on his way. I don’t reply; it seems pointless if he’s nearly here. I sip my lager and wait on. The phone rings. It’s his number.
“Hello?”
“Oh hiiiii.” Strange. He appears to have asked camp comedian Alan Carr to call me up. Perhaps it’s a stunt and I am appearing live on his chat show – Peter does work in TV, after all.
“Er, yes?”
“Sorry, are you in the pub? You didn’t answer my text,” says Alan, who clearly isn’t Alan Carr at all, but Peter himself.
I reply that I am here, yes, and he says he’ll be here soon. And, boy, did he mean it. Not 20 seconds later, a blond person comes through the door. I don’t look up and acknowledge him – that would just be too easy for him, and he is a little late, after all – so instead I actually turn my back on him and face the bar, leaning on it over-casually and messing about on my phone.
A voice behind me says my name. I turn around, tilting my head up, expecting to be looking up at an angle and into the baby blues of a six-foot blond. All I see is empty space. I adjust my gaze downward and there is his face. He is certainly blond, the eyes, yep, they are blue, but 6’ tall he is not. And I mean really not. He’s as tall as me. I wonder what else he can so blatantly lie about. I’m not kept in the dark for long.

Momentarily stunned by the fact that he really thought I wouldn’t notice his reduced stature, I wheel round to order him a drink. It’s not that I’m disappointed, he’s quite good-looking, but why say you are six feet tall when you’re not? What is his excuse? “Oh I left my other, longer legs at home”?! I get him his beer and we decide to go out on the pub’s roof terrace. I step aside to let him walk ahead. He sashays on through the pub and goes outside. It’s like watching Naomi Campbell swagger down the catwalk at Paris Fashion Week. I see.

I trudge behind him, feeling ungainly. He selects a table and sits down at it very gracefully, full of purpose, like a ballerina. He considers me as if looking into the face of a child with learning difficulties, the line between compassion and disappointment being crossed a million times and back again by his huge, darting eyes. We talk, as is customary, about our jobs. He goes first. He has worked on some fairly high-profile TV shows, not as a producer as he suggested in our initial chats – he’s actually a production assistant. I suppose he thinks I won’t know what they do, so he can big it up – he’s wrong. I don’t care what people do for a living, truly. As long as they like it and earn money from it, then it’s cool. But to hear young Peter talk (well, I say ‘young’; he may also have lied about his age), you’d think he singlehandedly kept his TV shows going. He is, he says, about to enter a dry spell when it comes to work, but I don’t think he needs to worry – with his powers of storytelling he could soon talk his way into another high-flying position, I’m sure.

He talks on. And on. And on. This is partly my fault. I don’t really have anything to say to him, as he doesn’t seem that interested. Plus, he’s camp as Christmas, yet said he wasn’t on his profile, and this irritates me. Not that he’s camp, I don’t give a shit about that, but that he felt he had to put that on his profile in an effort to differentiate himself from camp (and thus, in his eyes, less attractive) gay men, as it is quite clearly bullshit. I toy with the idea of bringing up the whole concept of ‘straight-acting’ and what it means to him, but realise I don’t want to have a highly-charged date on a roof terrace on a hot evening. In fact, I don’t want to be here at all.

Out of nowhere, he asks my age. I don’t reveal this on the phone dating app profile for various reasons, which I begin to explain. He again asks me how old I am. I begin to tell him, but as I do, he goes in for a guess; I’ve no idea why. He’s four years out, erring on the junior side. Man, is he going to be disappointed when I slam down the actual age. I tell him I’m 35. He visibly blanches, quickly reco0vers and says “Well, you don ‘t look it at all. As I, er, said, um, before”. He doesn’t hide his disappointment now, but he doesn’t really need to. He has totally unravelled in front of my eyes and his attractiveness has diminished to the point of fiction, like his height and straight-acting demeanour. I don’t think he’s a bad person – in fact, a couple of things he said about friends and family made me very briefly think he might be a catch for someone – but he is utterly ill-at-ease in his own skin. So uncomfortable is he with his body and soul’s natural state that he covers for them, tries to make them something they’re not. He’s got a lot of growing up to do, I fear, and I am definitely not the right person to be his guardian while he does it.

We leave and walk some of the way home together. I regret this, as he starts to act as if I am trying to get him to take me home. He very pointedly says that he has to get up early in the morning, and that he is going to go a shortcut way to his house. I roll my eyes inwardly and say “Goodnight then”.
He leans toward me as if to shake my hand but I’m already bounding off, pausing only to offer him a jaunty wave before I stride on into the darkness.

Post-date rating: 4.5/10
Date in one sentence: I interrupt the busy schedule of a man with big issues who couldn’t quite measure up.

The vision of beauty

Guy no: 46
Stats: 26, 6’2”, brown/brown, Devon
Where: Clapham Junction, Sw11
When: Summer 2011
Pre-date rating: 8/10

There is no ego boost greater than being contacted by someone very good-looking. I know that beauty is both only skin deep and in the eye of the beholder, and you can call me a shallow old sucker, but you can’t beat a winning smile and a pair of bright, sparkling eyes.

He first contacts me after he sees I’ve looked at his profile. I had only looked in awe, not daring to click ‘Like’, but he gets in touch and tells me the usual openers about liking my profile, and we chat for a few days. He’s astoundingly hot and intelligent, the kind of guy that would have overbearing mothers salivating and speeding off to M&S to choose their two-piece for your wedding, which would take place in summer in a country house. Before we can ever get that far, however, we have to arrange a date and I am not keen to ask him out, so fearful am I of the inevitable rejection. Congratulations, I think, you’re a 15-year-old burbling schoolgirl. This can only end badly.

The drunken hack

Guy no: 21
Stats: 37, 5’8”, light brown/green, Hertfordshire
Where: Soho, W1
When: Summer 2010
Pre-date rating: 8/10

Just like objects in the rear view mirror can appear closer than they are, photos on an internet dating profile can look much more flattering than their real-world counterpart. The hack comes into my life during a late-night browsing session. Having been an old hand on the site for some time, the faces become so familiar than you can quite happily – or not, as the case may be – speed-scroll through over 100 faces before seeing anybody new.

But there he is, smiling widely in a checked shirt with clean, shiny hair and sparkling eyes. Reminding myself that I’m shopping for a date not a Labrador, I send him a quick message telling him the usual introductory guff: I like your profile, you seem fun, hope you had a nice weekend and if you like my profile too, get in touch. I don’t normally do this. So finely-tuned is my inferiority complex that I’ve only ever made the first move – or click – a handful of times.

Dating 101: How the internet makes liars of us all

Putting yourself ‘out there’ on an online dating site is a little like climbing into a shop window and begging people to peruse you. Most love-seeking sites have an engine which matches you and any potential suitors – I call them suitors as it’s about as romantic or fairy-tale as this experience gets – based on the 1,001 questions you have answered on signing up. Don’t like smokers, railway enthusiasts or people who read a lot? No problem! The website’s magic matchmaking elves will ensure you never see them in your search results, their profiles hidden from view like the ugly stepchild in the cellar.

What this does mean is that regular users of the site will get wise to this, and may start to manipulate the data to make sure they get more eyes on their profile. I know, it sounds dreadfully dishonest doesn’t it?