Date 60

"I know I'm unloveable, you don't have to tell me."

Another dating site and another disappointing dating experience. I'd been debating for a while whether to go back onto Guardian Soulmates, however, I put it off for a bit after their catastrophic relaunch and revamp in April 2011 (more of this in the next entry). Whilst reading an e-petition calling for the reinstatement of the old Soulmates site, there were a lot of people commenting on how good The Love Lab was and how lots of Soulmates members had left to join said dating site in protest. It also used the same company who used to run the old Soulmates site and had the same layout and searching facilities; plus it was free to join for the first month, so I took them up on their offer out of curiosity.

After joining I have to say that I was shocked as to how few members there actually were who had recently active profiles. All the talk of it being a sanctuary full of disheartened Soulmates was just a blatant lie. In my month there I didn't message one person. However, one woman messaged me, and she really stood out from the rest, plus she was very keen to meet up.

She was a Mancunian and told me that she'd be wearing a leopard print scarf so that I'd recognise her, but that's where the parallels with Bet Lynch ended. I was instantly attracted to her as she was very pretty, funny and we shared the same taste in music, films, books, tv etc. so the conversation easily flowed. After a few drinks she said she had to go as she needed to get up early for work the next day, which was fair enough as it was a school night, and she said she would have stayed longer as she had really enjoyed the conversation.

I e-mailed her a couple of days later to see if she fancied hooking up again, but, alas, I was met with a response that I hadn't quite anticipated. In her reply she said that while we shared a lot in common she'd prefer not to, and from her point of view that even if we did meet up it would only be as friends, but she then went on to categorically state that she had enough friends already. So, I think that was a 'no' then.

I have to say that I think that was a bit harsh, as while she was being honest, a polite no thank you would have been enough. I did think about replying to her and asking if she could e-mail me again, but make it a bit more condescending, but instead I just deleted my profile as my free subscription was just about to finish anyway.

Despite this being the 60th woman that I'd met since I started internet dating, rejection is always hard to take and I was really quite down about this for a day, as in terms of first impressions, I was quite taken by her. And although, from my point of view, we'd got on well; she really didn't like me at all! I'm not naive enough to think that every person I meet will want to see me again, but I felt that she was unnecessarily blunt and it made me question what was so bad about me for her to really dislike me. I've learnt after going on so many dates to not take these things to heart, as the whole thing is completely random and I mostly take it with a pinch of salt, but sometimes it's difficult not to, until you put it all into perspective...

Date 59

"I've seen you smile, but I've never really heard you laugh."

After another brief hiatus from dating, I decided to give OkCupid another go. And, boy, is it difficult to get a reply on there, let alone a date, which is highlighted by the fact that I've only met two women off it after being sporadically on it for a year (technically, it should have been more as at least two girls agreed to meet me for drinks but never replied when I tried to arrange them).

As I'd alluded to in an earlier post, being on a free site doesn't mean that you're going to go on loads of dates, as, on paper, OKCupid is full of intelligent and like-minded people supposedly looking to meet others. However, being a free site does often mean that there are going to be lots of members and this results in predominantly women being bombarded with messages (including a lot from socially inept freaks). Another reason could be that with a pay site, members are possibly more likely to go on dates to get their money's worth, which I think is backed up by the high number of dates I've been on through pay sites compared to the low number on free sites. Having said all that, though, this could all be bollocks as maybe people are just becoming more choosy, super fussy, up their own arses or just plain rude.

To the date itself. We'd been e-mailing for a good few months, and, although her constant overuse of the acronym 'LOL' was a bit annoying (a real pet hate of mine, which, surely should be a punishable offence), she seemed nice. Anyway, she asked if I'd like to meet for a drink and as she fancied coming to London, she travelled up from Brighton to see me. We had a very pleasant afternoon and evening drinking along the South Bank, and although we were still in text contact the following week and she did ask if I wanted to meet up again but things just fizzled out and we never did. I also wasn't overly enamoured by her assertion that I was the spitting image of Coronation Street's Steve McDonald. I've since asked a number of friends and they assure me that this isn't the case. At all. No, sir. Really, I don't. Look, I don't resemble him in any shape or form whatsoever.

UPDATE: 2014

Upon moving to Brighton in early 2014, she actually made contact with me through OKCupid again. We met up for drinks and it was nice to see her. But, there was something odd about her though that I just couldn't put my finger on and we never saw each other again.

Date 58

"I wanna go home, I don't wanna stay."

Perhaps the most well known free dating website is plentyoffish.com, although plentyofchavs.com would be a more apt title.

I decided to create a profile for it, but it soon became very obvious that a date was going to be hard to come by. It reminded me a bit of match.com, although not as cultured or high brow, and a good idea for a search filter would be to have the ability to eliminate anyone who was illiterate, could only write in text speak and solely watched Sex and the City and Disney films.

As it turned out, the few lost souls that I did send messages to either didn't reply or deleted them without reading.

Rather unexpectedly, someone actually sent me a message and we e-mailed for a while then decided to meet for a drink. We hooked up the night after I'd had my first rendezvous with date 57, so I was a bit hungover still. She was a nice enough person, but just didn't really have anything to say, and so I probably over-compensated for the awkward silences by waffling on. This probably led her to believe that I was an ego-maniac, who loved the sound of my own voice, but I didn't really know what else to do as she was just staring at me and saying very little, whilst stealing my cigarettes. We still had 3 or 4 drinks but in the end I called it a night, so maybe her being 8 years younger than me was too big an age gap as she was very dismissive of my music and film tastes and quite patronising in general, which irked me a bit. However, she did amuse me with her middle class Kent accent consistently lapsing into a Lily Allen/Kate Nash-like mockney dialect.

This was my final date of 2010 and I, not long after, deleted my profile.