Going to the chapel and they're gonna get married.....

Facebook, what a wonderful invention. Not just for catfishing but for finding out about your ex-boyfriends lives!

On Sunday I came across a status update of a friend of my ex (my ex and I no longer being facebook buddies) congratulating him on his engagement.

I should explain this is not the ex who left me heartbroken and who was kind of the reason for this blog. This is the boyfriend before him with whom I lived with for four years. He was 20 I was 21 and we played house rather well at first.

The relationship was ended by me because I was finding it too difficult and stressful, we argued a lot. We were living at my mother’s at the time and as mummy single pointed out years later, she hadn’t realised how spiteful he could be.

I played my part too. I was miserable, I had dreamt up what living together would be like and I grew frustrated when it wasn’t. I don’t lose my temper easily but when I did I blew my top, and then the blowing of the top became a regular thing.

So in the end I told him I thought we would be better off apart, I couldn’t actually see a future for us at that point.

Obviously now, older and hopefully wiser, I realise that we were simply too young to know what we wanted in life, and love and that living with a man is not all it is cracked up to be. I moved swiftly on to my next boyfriend (the heartbreaker) which I know hurt my ex.

He started dating too, and although none of those lasted he met someone who he has now been with for a number of years. I only know this because of the snippets of news I hear from mutual friends.

I was jealous at first, of the women he was dating, not because I wanted to be back with him but because he was in the first flushes with these women and doing things that in four years, he never did for me.

I’m not sure whether he was rubbing my nose in it or not but after we broke up we had to go to the bank to close our bank account. He was telling me about the girl who he had been seeing who he thought was just using him. He took her to the theatre he said, one of those deals with a dinner and a hotel room, but she didn’t seem to appreciate it.

Standing right in front of him was a girl who, for years, would have been happy for him simply to bring home an unexpected bunch of flowers or plan a day out, but he never did. He stopped dating me and started simply existing with me instead. No matter what I did he didn’t take the hint that a little romance might be required.

So now he is to be wed and I am happy for him, don’t get me wrong this is not some bitter account why it should have been me! But it does feel, well, a little weird.

Here I am embracing my singledom and seeking new and exciting opportunities, whether dating related or not and my ex is getting married.

Possibly because I remember him as the young man I was dating, I often forget the fact that he is now 27, but it is weird to think that this person who shared my home, my life, my bed, is now getting married to someone.

We had talked of marriage ourselves, in a rather dreamy way. One day when opening the post box at our house a huge cream envelope fell out and I opened it, thinking it would be junk mail. It was a wedding brochure of a venue in Essex.

I waited for my ex to get home and asked him if there was anything he had forgotten to ask me?! His explanation for the wedding brochure, before thinking about getting down on one knee, was that he had wanted to know how much weddings cost. He was always very gently teased by my family for his tightness with money, and we never had much to be fair, but I did find it odd that the costs were the first thing on his mind.

Of course I, at the tender age of 24 and being a romantic dreamer, immediately started looking into the costs of other things, how could we do a wedding on a tight budget, how cheaply could a dress be bought, yes I confess I even tried a couple on.

Yet no engagement was forthcoming and for the next two years I remained un asked. The initial flutter of excitement died down and I began to forget about the brochure. It was ridiculous really, we didn’t have a house or the deposit to get a mortgage and whilst we were not at each other’s throats all the time, we were not what I would now, in hindsight, call a happy couple.

When I broke it off I saw him a couple of weeks later, us both having lost about a stone in weight, both looking terrible, he wanting answers, and he asked me outright “would it have been different if I had proposed?”

I felt like a complete bitch and pulled in two directions as to how to answer that, when we had been together there was no question in my mind that we would be together forever and be married at some point, over the years I had swallowed any doubts I had over our relationship, never confessing them to anyone, and I had naively thought that this was what being in a relationship was about, sacrifice.

And it is to an extent, but not your happiness, never your happiness.

“Yes” I said in response to his question “It would have been different, it would have made breaking up so much worse”

I was trying to be honest with him but I don’t think anything I could have said would have made him feel better at the time.

When I found out he had seen a Dr for the anxiety he was suffering with in the months after our breakup I was devastated, I wanted to call him and tell him to come back and we would work it out, but I didn’t because it wasn’t the right thing for either of us but my heart broke for him.

Over the years I had lost sight of the fact that I meant anything to him, I didn’t feel like I did mean anything, I felt like a pet he kept, a pet who made dinners and washed shirts but clearly he had be blind sighted by my decision to end our relationship.

So now he is getting married to someone who, from what I have heard through friends, is rather lovely and I am happy for him. He deserves a good life with someone who loves him. Not that I didn’t but I just didn’t love him in the right way to make a happy long term relationship work.

Where does this leave me? It has only strengthen my resolve that I will date, but not be in a relationship until it is 100% right. I don’t mean never having an argument or disagreeing, but the foundations have to be strong, that’s what I am looking for.

Having said that it has made me think about the future, I don’t know if I am unique in that I tend to have a tendency to not envisage a future for myself, all by myself (Bridget Jones) Rather I find myself envisaging a life with someone, with a couple of kids, a family and a house of my own.

The problem with this is that in doing so I am not envisaging what could well happen, that I don’t meet someone, I buy my own place - alone, I travel; I don’t have kids anytime soon. In focusing on the former am I simply coasting through life until these things, the man, the house, the superhuman sperm that will fertilise me instantly, fall into my lap? (not literally in the case of the sperm because sperm in the lap is no use to anyone)

I’ve been feeling for a long time that I have not been doing all I could with my life and this may just well have proven it. I might not be getting married but what other exciting things could I be doing, if I had the guts?

Until next time
Love
SG
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Catfish

At The Crack of Dawn

The other night I watched Dawn Porter’s “How to Find Love Online” with avid interest. As an online dater (I’m still back and forth with it) I was curious to see what conclusions the show would report.

You can catch the show online here: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/4od/catchup

Now firstly, I adore Dawn Porter’s reporting style, every program she makes I find interesting and engaging and I just damn-well-girl-crush love-her!

Enough of that and onto the parts of the program which, for me, stood out the most (some of this is ground I have covered before so apologies if you have read the similar blog posts)  

Shop till you drop.

Relationship physiologist Susan Quilliam who features in the program touched upon the subject of the “shopping list mentality” of finding the perfect partner. This is something I mentioned in an earlier blog post.

Some people think that finding love is about finding the person who embodies the fictional mate they have in their heads, who encompasses all the attributes they have decided they would like in a partner. Blue eyes, tall, handsome, good with children, plays tennis, loves Bovril but hates marmite.

People with this mentality can be very inflexible and therefore are whittling down the people they will go on a date with to a select few, if any.

As I said in my earlier blogs I don’t tend to filter the men online by eye/hair colour or any of the other options made available to you on places like Match.com because I wonder if any of that stuff does really matter.

It’s important to have deal breakers and those should be sensible, like if you really couldn’t date someone with children for example, but how many times have you heard a married person describe their spouse as “not my usual type” - because I have, more than once.

How to you know true love won’t come in the shape of a short, balding lawyer as with Charlotte in SATC? You don’t, so don’t discount the less than perfect matches.

At least meet the guy first, he might do something trivial which puts you off but don't simply go on the info in a profile to discount someone. Go on dates and have a bit of fun, even if he does bath with his cat like the loopy lawyer date I had :-(

Is honesty even a policy anymore?

1/3 of the people who set up their profiles in aid of Dawn’s show were not entirely honest about themselves in their profile. Shocker!

I was surprised that this was so low to be honest as I have yet to attend a date where I didn’t find something that the man had been dishonest about. 

The things people lied about most were - their jobs, weight, and age. Height didn’t feature in that list which surprised me as it is the thing I have almost always men online tend to exaggerate.

Lying about physical attributes is pointless because you’ll be sussed out straight away, unless you wear heels gents, and very long trousers to cover them.

(Please don’t try that and take me to court when you fall over, and you will fall over)

Lying about your job might take longer for your date to discover but by then, if you’re getting on well and things progress, she is likely to be unimpressed if you have lied.

I am ready for my close-up

Half the people in Dawn’s show used a photo over a year old, 1/10 men used a photo 5 to 10 years old. One memorable girl admitted in her video diary that her photo was 3 years old and a few stone ago.

It’s not that I don’t understand why people do this, you look at a photo of yourself and you think “hey, looking good” but if you were looking good in 1996 it’s probably not one to use.

When updating my profile (and I do this regularly if I have a haircut or some kind of major doughnut binge) I tend to go through my most recent photos on Facebook and select some from this year that I like, from the last 3 months is best.

Dawn also went to a photo-shoot (and she look hawt!) revealing that it has become increasingly popular for people to use professional photographers for their online profiles. Frankly I wouldn’t know anything about this, who has the money for that? Well some people obviously but not this girl. I spend my money on pink wine.

Look, but don’t leap

¼ of the daters in the program didn’t make the first move when online dating; they browsed and waited for someone to make contact with them. The mathematician featured in the show worked out that you would have to send over 700 messages to have a (I forget the exact figure) 0.00something % chance of meeting someone and having a relationship.

Depressing isn’t it? But if you don’t send any messages at all then obviously you are reducing that to nothing. Similarly if you stayed in your house for six months and didn’t go out the chance of you meeting someone is nothing, it’s simple really. You get out what you put in. You won’t get responses to every email, or even half, but realistically if you dating in this medium you have to make the effort, especially ladies.

Speak to my agent

A very savvy business woman featured in the show runs an agency which can be hired to date online for you and respond to messages as if they were you, with your input. It’s expensive and to my mind unnecessary. However there is a market for everything so good luck to the woman who runs this, she’ll probably make millions and could buy a boyfriend if she wanted. My only concern would be where this stops?

Would you be happy if you discovered the person you had been dating let their secretary do all the running for him, and all sweeping gestures had actually been organised by, well, erm... Mavis? 

Relationships are not a job to be outsourced surely? If you’re too busy to get chatting and arrange your dates how the hell are you ever going to go on the date itself?

Scam, Scam he’s our man

The show also featured a woman who has been the victim of a scam. An online con artist left her £80,000 out of pocket. Did he rob her of all her jewellery under the ruse of a date? Did he hack her PC and get her bank details? No, this poor lady handed cash over to him willingly. I felt so sorry for this woman, even though giving money to someone you have never met is insane, she clearly fell for the charm of a man she thought she knew, well haven’t we all done that whether offline or on?  

The show itself is a good insight, taking you step by step through the world of internet dating; I can’t wait for part two.  

Dawn – I loves ya!

In dating news: I have been texting a guy who I met online and we have provisionally booked a date, however I have a sneaking suspicion he falls into the scammer/married bastard category, but its ok, sister_single and I have a plan…blog to follow.  

Love

SG

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