The Dating Site Fiasco … a memory

I’ve been reading Matt’s story, Broken, on his blog and his foray into dating sites etc reminded me of the one time I was brave enough to get out there and try the dating site thing for myself. This was the post I put up on my original blog immediately on my return from said one time date. Never done it since…

Wow! What a Disaster! I’ve had one of those days! It all started with a stupid move on my part, I went on a dating site. I’m feeling a bit fed up with myself and my own company and wanted to see if there was just somebody I could spend some quality time with, have a laugh, go out with, enjoy some stuff, y’know?

Well, I have been talking to a man called David for the better part of the week online. We seemed to be getting along great, he wasn’t heavily flirting, just enough to keep my interest, he appeared to be intelligent and could converse easily with me on a number of different subjects and he sent me a very nice black and white photo of himself so I knew what he looked like. He looked normal.

I was a little nervous to say the least, when he invited me to a lunch date, first meeting, kind of thing but I decided to go. The time and date were set for 1pm at a place just down the road from me which was great, I didn’t have far to travel. He was coming from 30 miles away so even that seemed like he was quite caring.

Oh dear, it started really badly, he was late, by 15 minutes. I gave that a pass because of the distance he had travelled and to be fair, the roads are all undergoing their usual pre-season upgrades so we have road works everywhere. When he got out of the car I realised his photograph had either been heavily photoshopped or it was from a good few years earlier because the man stood in front of me calling himself David, was not the man in the photograph. He had obviously lied on his profile too, which we all expect them to do, why they do it I have no idea because they are obviously going to be caught out FFS! But they do it. He said in his profile he was 5ft 10 and of average build. Now, I don’t know what average means to him but to me, it means he might have a little bit of extra cuddly stuff around the middle but not heavily overweight. I’m fine with that, I prefer some meat on my man, besides, people who live in glass houses and all that, I’m curvier than I used to be too, I have long since resigned myself to the fact that my shape changed when I passed 40 and is arguing with me constantly about the idea of changing back. Regardless, I am curvy but proportionately so, David was the personification of not average build. He was positively round, and not only that he was 5ft 5 at the very most which made him look even rounder.

The weather was appallingly bad, lashing rain down, howling winds, hailstones, and I just wanted to get inside and get a warm drink and something to eat and get out of this damned weather. So, I turned and walked into the restaurant and chose a table while he followed and disappeared into the toilets for 5 minutes. I kid you not, most people take 2 minutes to go pee this guy was 5 minutes and going into 6! What the hell was he doing in there?

I was just about to throw the towel in and walk out when he reappeared. He looked at the table position I had chosen and asked if we could move to a quieter less drafty table. ‘I feel the cold’ he whined. Now, at this point, every other self-respecting woman would have said oh F*@K off, but I didn’t. The writer in me was becoming fascinated with this odd little man and all his quirky behaviour. None of it could be defined as weird at this point but I was intrigued because more twitches and ticks were becoming apparent with every minute that passed. I was making copious mental notes, he had serial killer written all over him except the real him wasn’t brave enough to have an argument much less murder someone. I felt perfectly safe.

We moved tables, the waitress came and brought the menus. He tried to order for both of us, I gave him a very stern raised eyebrow, (I actually managed to pull a single eyebrow raise off) and David backed down and mumbled just one of the steak, please. I placed my own order and watched as he realised I had ordered the steak too. He was miffed at my behaviour, he said I had been childish in the extreme to refuse to allow him to order for me. I quietly pointed out he didn’t know me well enough to know what I was going to eat, he wasn’t anywhere close to being someone I trust enough to order on my behalf, and hey, I’m a big girl now I can damn well order my own food thank you. It’s an equal opportunities society, or so they say. As we waited for the meal I asked him why he was 15 minutes late and I truly expected him to say, traffic, road works, etc. He said, ‘I stopped for 15 minutes for a teacake and the bathroom and I’m always late, you better get used to it.’

A teacake?? he was 15 minutes late and had kept me waiting intentionally, because he wanted a fucking teacake? Not to mention the ‘you better get used to it’ comment. I was instantly fuming and I was about to stand up and leave when my meal arrived. I was starving and decided I couldn’t waste the food. I set about tucking in while he picked and pecked at his food and cut his steak up into the tiniest pieces of meat I’ve ever seen. I wondered why he hadn’t ordered minced meat. It would have suited him. He had begun talking non-stop about signs that we were compatible, about how the stars had aligned especially for us, how romantic it was to see a huge mosaic on the wall of the restaurant, apparently this indicated to him we were being blessed by the mosaic gods as a good fit. I nearly choked on my meal. For those of you who may not know, I am a mosaic artist in my spare five minutes.

Then he started rubbing the tip of his nose as he was speaking to me, he mumbled incoherently a lot of the time and I tuned him out because he was droning. Thankfully, he left the table 7 times to go to the bathroom for five-minute breaks during the excruciatingly long hour we were there, possibly to do something nasty, who knows? So I only spent 25 minutes in his actual company.

I decided to try and rescue the conversation. I brought up the subject we had been discussing online, and began talking about atheism vs agnostic and he literally fell off the end of the conversation. I asked him what the problem was and why he wouldn’t answer me and he said really stuffily, ‘I don’t believe this is a conversation for a first date.’ My rejoinder was succinct, ‘this is not a first date, it is a meeting, the first date theory went out of the window when you ate a fucking teacake instead of getting here on time. I’m passing the time now until the weather breaks a little so I can actually walk back to my car without fear of drowning, now talk.’

He then confessed that he had googled all of his responses while we had been talking online, and that he didn’t really know much about any of the subjects we were discussing. He followed that confession up with words that actually chilled me to the bone, in a high pitched whiny voice he spat out, ‘I wish I had brought Dewi now!’ I waited a whole second before I asked, ‘Who is Dewi?’ and he replied with a really strange look in his eyes, ‘he’s my alter ego.’ I went stone cold.

But, I am a warrior so I was fine, I laughed in his face and said, ‘you wouldn’t want to meet my alter ego, he’s called Bartholomew Smailes and he is a serial killer.’ I thought he was going to burst into tears. What a complete fuckwit! I got back to my car without drowning in the rain, I made sure he didn’t follow me too, I went the circuitous way home and drove for a little while before I finally arrived back at mine. My son laughed his head off when I told him I had his previous text on ready and waiting as an excuse to leave because he needed my assistance. So that was the first time I have been out on a ‘date’ in many years and I think it’s safe to say, it was an unmitigated disaster and I don’t think I will be doing the dating sites ever again!

This is the one and only time I was ever brave enough to put myself through the dating site fiasco, it’s a minefield! Why do people lie about who they are and what they look like? I don’t get it. Why do they lie about their knowledge base? Surely it’s better to be honest and say, I don’t know enough about the subject to talk about it? Or even suggest a different subject they are knowledgeable on? Bottom line, dating sites in the UK are full of liars and strange people who have alter egos called Dewi and I for one am very happy to stay the hell away from them!