Date 3

"For message received, loud and clear."

It was now Autumn 2006, and being the glutton for punishment that I am, I went back to Love at Lycos for one more date.

I'd had a lot of contact with this person beforehand via phone and email so I wasn't nervous at all as we seemed to have developed a good rapport, even though we didn't have much in common. We agreed to meet for our first date at a pub on Oxford Street and I was amazed when she came up to me as she looked absolutely nothing like her profile pictures (I think she'd had them professionally done), and if I'm completely honest, as first shallow impressions go, I was a bit disappointed. I feel a bitch for saying this but she was unrecognisable, and although I'm no George Clooney, my profile photographs are always up to date as what's the point in being deceptive about one's appearance when it's going to be the first thing that someone notices (or in my case didn't notice as I didn't know it was her) when you meet them?

Putting all this aside though, we did actually get on very well and I actually really enjoyed the evening so we mutually agreed to meet for a second date.

Date number 2 started off at the London Aquarium, in which I was mesmerised by their wonderful collection of sharks, and it ended back at her place...

She was originally from Essex and a nurse, and lived with one of her colleagues, which made it all the more surprising as to how much her flat resembled an absolute pig-sty. Being in possession of a Psychology A-Level I think that I'm more than well qualified to theorise that this was them rebelling against their workplace being so sanitised and clean. There were discarded pizza boxes, clothes, underwear, full ash-trays and junk just strewn everywhere and they were both so lazy that instead of tidying up, they just made little walkways amongst the rubbish to navigate through.

Despite this, I did enjoy her company as she was a very fun and caring person and we actually went out for a couple of months, taking in the sights of London Zoo, Camden, Southbank and her bedroom along the way. Then one day, after spending the night at hers, we arranged for our next jaunt to involve taking in the London Dungeons. However, when I tried to contact her later, I was met with a wall of silence, so after a week or so of trying to get hold of her and being ignored, I just took the hint, left it and never saw or heard from her again. I also left the world of internet dating for another year until I discovered Guardian Soulmates...

Date 1

"This Night has Opened my Eyes."

Back in the heady days of 2004 I went on my first internet date EVER! And after this experience I'm actually amazed that I went on any more.

Internet dating was very much in its infancy and far from socially acceptable or the norm that it is today. The site in question which I used for my first jaunt was called Love at Lycos, and it actually no longer exists. It was a free website and in the days before sites like Facebook and MySpace, it was a bit of a pioneer in terms of social networking, as, although it was primarily a dating site, it contained a lot of the same features as the aforementioned sites, such as a 'wall' to leave comments on and picture sharing capabilities.

Now to the person in question. On paper it should have been a match made in heaven, though in reality it was far from it. She was originally from Leeds, a producer on 6music (also very much in its infancy) and a huge Smiths and Morrissey fan. So far, so good, I hear you say. Well, that's what I thought, but before I even met her, there were a few warning signs.

The first time the alarm bells started ringing was when she sent me some pictures of her. We'd been in contact for a week or so and she didn't have a profile picture, so she sent some to my email address one day. Before you think that I was put off by her appearance then you're way off the mark as she was quite attractive, however, as I was at work that day, I didn't get the chance to reply until I got home that evening. By which time, along with the email with her pictures, she'd sent a couple more emails asking me why I hadn't replied instantly and that she'd presumed that I hated them etc.

I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt on this occasion, however, something similar happened a couple of days later. In the job I was in at the time, I worked for a Government department and because of security reasons, it was impossible to get a phone signal inside due to the windows being bomb proof. Consequently, we'd been texting each other when I was outside during my lunch hour, then I went back to my desk and didn't switch on my phone again until I was walking to the tube at home time and awaiting me was a stream of texts demanding to know why I was ignoring her! I decided to be very firm with her and explained the valid reason I had by not replying to her texts, but I was starting to get the distinct feeling that she was a tad insecure... Anyway, I'd already agreed to meet her by this time and thought what the hell.

As this was my first experience of meeting anyone for an internet date, I was extremely nervous in the days leading up to it. I'd also told all my work colleagues about it, but because internet dating was quite a new thing, I'd not told them where I'd 'met' her (and I never did), although they may have guessed as I was very vague about it at the time.

So, the big day arrived and we met at Waterloo station before going to Covent Garden and finding a decent enough pub. The first hour went really well as we just talked about music and we seemed to be getting on well. However, things soon changed when she uttered the now immortal phrase (well, I can still remember it clearly): "I don't want to talk about The Smiths anymore, I want to talk about US!!!!!"

Obviously, I was very much taken aback by this as I'd only met her in the flesh an hour before and she wanted to talk about our 'relationship.' I have to also add at this point that although I can remember quite clearly some of the things she said to me, my memory is a little hazy in terms of the timeline of these utterances as it was nearly 7 years ago.

Some other things I recall her saying to me involved her stating that if we went out then I wouldn't be able to have any close female friends, which would have been a big problem as the majority of my friends are female, and I think it was at this point that she even said to me that she could see that I was a bit shocked and that I could leave if I wanted. As it happened we did leave soon afterwards because she was due at 6music's Steve Lamacq's DJ night, but not before she pushed me up against a wall outside the pub and forcibly snogged my face off.

She then embarked on a trip to Australia for three weeks a few days later and on her return, late one night, she sent me a text asking if she could ring me. I'd been working late that night so had gone to bed when I got home as I was absolutely knackered, and because of this I replied explaining the situation and I asked if we could speak the next night because I was so tired, which I genuinely meant as I was quite prepared to talk to her. However, she texted back saying that she got the message and that I'd never hear from her again. Okay...