Date 34

"Pretty girls make graves."

I was absolutely enchanted by this date from the first moment I met her. We met for lunch and drinks at a pub in Richmond and spent the whole afternoon and early evening drinking lots of red wine, and at one point I spilt some over both of us, which was such a terrible waste and also said a lot for my inebriated state. She was one of the funniest people I've ever met and a typical straight talking Yorkshire lass. As a bonus she was one of the most beautiful people I've ever laid eyes on.

We had a really great time together and as she'd worked most of her life in the music industry, I was fascinated by all the anecdotes that she regaled me with including one in which she'd been given a kettle by James Brown and she still used it.

Things had gone well and she agreed to another date a week or so later in Wimbledon. We had another fun evening and she suggested for our next date that we could go to an exhibition at the British Museum that she was desperate to see and she'd make me dinner afterwards. Although, I felt things were going well I still was apprehensive as I'd been here before. And I was proved right.

I received a one line e-mail from her the next day saying she just wanted to be friends. I can't emphasise enough how extremely disappointed I was but I was not at all surprised. I replied to her after thinking about it and said I'd be happy to be friends as I appreciated her honesty. I never heard from her again or got to see the Godfather of Soul's kettle.

Date 33

"Hand in glove."

Not that much to say about this Middlesbrough woman apart from the fact that she gave me the most amazing put-down line. We shared a couple of pleasant drinks and she was a Smiths and Pixies fan, which is always a positive way to get on my good side, and she had a cracking sense of humour. One thing that did alarm me slightly was the fact that I couldn't take my eyes off her enormous hands. They were huge. They were 'man hands.' Sean Hughes was actually sitting near us, so he must have noticed them too. When we were saying goodbye at the station she said she'd call me, and when she hadn't after a few days I dropped her a text and asked if she'd be up for date number two. And then came the moment of pure comedy gold. She said: 'There will be no second date because I'm looking for Mr. Right.'

Date 32

"I don't owe you anything."

The first date with this Manchester City supporting woman technically ended up with her not turning up. She cancelled our first couple of dates due to various reasons then we eventually agreed to meet at a coffee bar locally on a Saturday morning as she was going to see Metallica in the evening. I'd heard nothing the night before, but bizarrely my internet connection went at around midnight. Normally before I go on a date I check my e-mails in case they cancel and she of course had previous. However, because my wifi still wasn't working the next morning I was unable to do so. I had given her my mobile number though (she hadn't given me hers), so I assumed she'd contact me by phone or text.

Anyway, I got to said date location bang on time. There was still no sign of her half an hour later. When it had got to her being an hour late I knew something was up. I then rang up a friend and got them to log onto my Soulmates profile and there was a message from her sent the previous night at about 1am cancelling on me. I was pretty livid, but by the same token if my internet hadn't gone then I would have got the message, however, to cancel at such short notice was ridiculous and the fact that she didn't contact me on my mobile was just thoughtless.

I decided to give her another chance though, and we met up for a drink at a local pub eventually. It was a very pleasant evening and she was good company, and as I saw her onto the bus she shouted out that she'd e-mail me.

I hadn't heard from her for a few days so mailed her instead and she agreed to a second date. She then cancelled on me another 2 or 3 times (as had become the norm) but we met up for lunch one Saturday afternoon and it was pretty good fun. As I waited with her at the bus stop I asked her about the possibility of a third date and she said 'yes' and told me to ring her in the week. I did so and it went straight to voice-mail so I texted her instead. She took a week to reply and said she was busy.

I then waited another week to get in contact and she replied with 'actually, I've decided I'm not ready to be dating, so can we be friends?' I never responded.

Date 31

"And when I fell on the floor I drank more."

Another date and another Geordie lass.

We'd had a lot of contact beforehand via e-mail and our first date was really good fun. She asked me at the end of the night if I wanted to go to see her best friend sing at a gig the next night and I accepted her invitation.

The second date was a bit weird as I didn't really get to talk to her much as all her friends were there and as I'd only met her the previous night I felt a bit uncomfortable because of the fact that I barely knew her, yet was hanging out with her nearest and dearest. The alarm bells then started to ring on the train home as she bombarded me with a mountain of texts telling me how much she missed me.

We didn't see each other again for a week or so but during the intervening period I was feeling increasingly suffocated by her. Her texts, phone calls and e-mails became relentless. It got to the stage where she was actually texting me every 5 minutes, and if I didn't reply to one within a few minutes she'd just keep on sending them regardless.

The third date also involved going to see her best friend gigging again, which wasn't ideal, but we had a meal and drinks beforehand, and it had got to stage where I thought that I should tell her to slow down a bit as I felt she was coming on too strong, considering we'd only been on two dates. Although, I did have a frank chat with her, the rest of the evening didn't quite go to plan, and this is best summed up with this excerpt from an e-mail I sent to one of my friends:

"I had a chat with her last night and told her that the incessant texting was making me uncomfortable and I also told her that things were going a bit too fast and that at this early stage I didn't want to make promises to her that I couldn't keep. Then I got absolutely hammered, fell over, was in no fit state to get home on my own and ended up sleeping with her..."

That is essentially what happened and the whole evening was a bit of a blur. I was very drunk, which is extremely rare for me as I really can hold my alcohol very well, and at one stage I can remember her pushing me onto one of the sofas at the gig venue. She then proceeded to straddle me and she pinned my arms down so that I couldn't move and started kissing me but I can't remember for how long. I imagine that any on-lookers who spied us must have shared my fear.

I obviously felt really bad the next morning and a bit regretful, but sometimes these things happen and I was a bit appalled by my behaviour.

We'd agreed to meet up again to go to the cinema, but a few days before this I just felt that I had to speak to her as I just knew that things weren't going to work out for us as I knew that she really liked me but I just wasn't feeling the same towards her. In the end I rang her up and told her what I felt and that I just wanted to be friends, and to give her enormous credit, she acted in a very mature manner and took it in a very adult way. She also appreciated my honesty.

We then hooked up a few days later and went to the flicks to see The Damned United and had a meal afterwards. Things were a bit awkward at first but as the evening progressed we got on well. I also felt so guilty that I paid for the cinema tickets and the meal. We haven't seen each other since, however, I know that I made the right decision.

Date 30

"Oh, I'm too tired. I'm so very tired."

Another strange girl. We'd actually talked a lot by e-mail during the initial stages of when I had first started seeing date 28. We seemed to have a lot in common particularly in terms of films and she seemed lovely. She asked me out for a date and I really wanted to meet her but as things were going well with 28 I thought long and hard and I had to politely decline her request and I explained to her the reason and she was fine about it. In retrospect this was a bad move but as I'm a very honest person and a man of principles I thought I was doing the right thing.

After things had ended with 28 I thought that I had nothing to lose so I got back in contact with this lady and explained the situation (without going into detail) and that if she still wanted to then we could meet up. To my surprise she actually said 'yes.'

All in all it was quite a disappointing date. Just as I was on my way to meet her she texted me to tell me she was going to be late. I wasn't too pleased as I live out in the sticks and she hadn't given me any notice. I was actually drawing some money out from a cash machine at the time and such was my annoyance that I walked off without my £40, which was obviously not there when I went back to retrieve it a few minutes later after realising my absent-mindedness. Luckily, I'd remembered to bring a book this time but unluckily she was about one and a half hours late. I thought we got on quite well but after a couple of drinks she said she was really tired, which actually wasn't surprising as it was near the end of the evening as she'd arrived so late.

I asked her there and then if she wanted another date and she said she was going to be honest with me and she said that she had another date the following night but she'd e-mail me the next week anyway. I knew from that moment that I wouldn't see her again but I thought she could at least have given me another chance as she'd arrived so late. I realise I messed her around to an extent after initially turning her down but that wasn't my fault and in my mind I was being loyal to 28.

Anyway, she e-mailed me the following week and said she'd had a lovely evening and wished that we'd met as friends as she thought we'd have been great mates, but she said that she thought I probably wasn't looking for any new friends as I was on a dating website and I probably had enough already. I replied to say I'd be really happy to be mates and I never heard from her.

This was a real shame as I thought that she was lovely. She'd also waxed lyrically in her initial e-mails about the fact that her favourite party game was Smiths charades, but unfortunately I never got to ask her about it, which was disappointing too.

Date 29

"Nowhere fast."

My first date after bitch 28. Although I wasn't in the mood for dating I'd reasoned that it would take my mind off things. As it happened it was a very swift date that lasted a couple of drinks with this woman who was originally from Bolton. She was quite funny so I texted her afterwards about a second one and she said 'yes,' but in a week's time. So I texted her back a week later about it and she simply said 'I'd rather not.'

Date 28

"Last night I dreamt that somebody loved me."

My first date of 2009 and things couldn't have got off to a better start.

She made contact with me first and before we actually met we'd had a huge amount of communication between each other by e-mail and text. As it turned out I asked her out for a drink on Christmas Eve and she was overjoyed, and so was I. Because of the Christmas/New Year interruption we eventually met up on the 2nd of January and it turned out to be the most perfect first date I'd ever had.

I knew as soon as I saw her that I fancied her and to say that there was a spark between us was an understatement. It was a purely magical evening and to cap things off she asked me back to hers, which in terms of first dates has never happened to me before or since. We also drank a huge amount and by my reckoning we started at 6pm and finished at 4am (without any food), which is no mean feat. The next morning we had to get up reasonably early as she was visiting her parents in Kent and we both had horrendous hangovers, which was to be expected. So, we both went our separate ways.

She texted me on the way home and sent me a beautiful message about how wonderful the previous evening had been and how we had to see each other again as soon as possible. I then got another text from her later on in the day asking if I wanted to go back to hers that night. I was actually in bed nursing THE hangover from Hell, and I was also coming down with a cold, so I was feeling doubly awful. Thus, I had to decline, but if I'd had any energy left then I would have been over like a shot.

We then met up again a couple of days later as she'd invited me round for dinner and she made me the most amazing meal I've ever tasted. She was an astonishingly talented cook and I also bought her flowers too, which she was overjoyed with and I have to add that I've never felt compelled to do this for anyone else. We had another sublime evening which ended with us dancing (a rarity for me as I never, ever dance) around her lounge with her flatmate until 4am, absolutely hammered on red wine on a school night.

I then saw her a day later and she cooked for me again and we drank and drank and things were going much better than I ever could have believed they would. This went on for just over a month where we'd see each other every other day and I was happier than I'd ever been in my life, which really is no understatement.

One evening we were due to go and see Slumdog Millionaire but when we got to the cinema there was such a big queue that we decided to just go back to hers and indulge in her favourite pursuit of drinking lots of red wine late into the night. I was still at the stage where I would get butterflies in my stomach when I saw her and we, again, had another lovely night where she made it clear that we were now in a proper relationship and bizarrely spoke about our future a lot and even mentioned babies (weird, I know) and then the next day we kissed good-bye at the station and went our separate ways as had become the norm. This, dear reader, was the last time that I ever saw or spoke to her.

This was a Thursday morning and everything had seemed normal. She was going away on the Friday morning to Vienna for a weekend away with her flatmate but she'd be back on the Sunday so I told her to give me a ring when she got back, which she said she would. She then texted me during the day and told me to organise something for us for when she got back that didn't involve alcohol as she quipped that she wanted me to see her sober for once! I duly went away and pulled in a big favour from one of my best friends and acquired two tickets to see her beloved Arsenal play.

Sunday came and this had been the most time we'd not had any contact between each other. I didn't hear anything from her but wasn't too concerned as I thought maybe she'd got back late or something. The next day I hadn't heard anything from her but just assumed she was busy at work. Then I checked my Facebook in the afternoon and she'd managed to put a mountain of photos up from her weekend away. I still hadn't heard anything by the evening so sent her a text. She took an age to reply and sent back a bizarre response saying she was feeling a bit weird but she was out in Wimbledon (more than likely on a date) and would contact me the next day. The next day I didn't hear anything either and so I rang her that night. It went straight to voicemail so I left a message just asking her how she was and how her trip had been etc.

The next day came and still nothing. It got to the afternoon and I thought things were getting ridiculous so I mailed her telling her that I'd got us tickets to see Arsenal and was she free on that date. Then a couple of hours later she sent back a reply telling me it was over.

She sent me the most patronising and insensitive e-mail I've ever received. The gist of it was that she didn't think it was going to work between us but she said she didn't know why. It was all over the place and she even admitted that it was very cowardly of her to jettison me by e-mail, but it still didn't stop her! She also told me how sweet it was of me to get her Arsenal tickets and that I should go anyway to see a team that I didn't support. She signed off by saying 'take care and I really do mean that as I think that you're lovely. P.S. I'll send you back your Twin Peaks DVD' (I've never been able to watch it since). So, in other words 'run along now, silly boy.'

I was completely devastated as I just hadn't seen it coming. I replied that night to her with tears streaming down my face. I kept the response very structured and wrote it in what I'd term as 'controlled emotion,' as I needed answers. She never replied to it.

I sent her a very brief message a few days later after hearing nothing, telling her that we needed to talk about things. I received a very terse and short reply saying that she'd ring me at the weekend. She never did.

I was by this time in complete shock and I'd stopped eating completely and I couldn't stop crying. My whole world had come crashing down but I didn't contact her. Other aspects of my life hadn't been going great and this tiny glimpse of happiness I'd experienced probably magnified the hurt I was feeling as the rug had well and truly been pulled from beneath me in the most abrupt manner possible. A month had passed of tears, little food and no contact so I e-mailed her a very casual request asking her for my DVD back. She replied the next day, apologising, and that she'd send it back. True to her word I received it from her the next day and she enclosed a bizarre typed letter just saying thanks for lending me the DVD (I hadn't lent it to her as we'd been watching it together when I was over at hers) and a few other banal things. It was very impersonal as if she was writing to a stranger, and she never once asked how I was. I replied to it that evening by e-mail and kept things very light as I didn't want to let on how much she had affected me and asked her a few things such as how her job was going etc. Suffice to say; I never got a response.

The next few months were much the same in that I was eating very little and losing weight fast. I was still inconsolable and my nadir came when I broke down in Waitrose of all places; I just couldn't come to terms with it all and I never got any answers as to what had happened (and I never will). In the end and a good 5 months later I snapped out of it and began to live my life again. I think some people reading this will think this was an overreaction on my part but I'd never felt this low after a relationship break-up and probably never will. I didn't foresee it at all and my body just shut down. There were no signs that anything was wrong and everything had always been on her terms and she was the one who'd always text and e-mail me a million times a day and not the other way around and she was very intense. I adored her and she knew it, plus this was a 34 year old woman not a teenage girl. I really beat myself up about it as I thought I'd done something wrong, but, as one person said to me it said a lot more about her than it did about me.

In hindsight I should have known better than to have started anything with a red wine swilling Tallulah Bankhead (the original femme fatale and her ultimate obsession and heroine) wannabe, but you live and learn. It's now been a long time since it happened and although I'm to all intents and purposes over her; I still feel very hurt and think of her longingly in my weaker moments. It's also changed me as a person as where previously I used to be an open book, I'm now the absolute antithesis in that I've become very guarded.

"Girlfriend in a coma."

Bizarrely in the May of 2009, completely out of the blue, my beloved Newcastle United were relegated from the Premier League (not a great year for me). The first text I received offering condolences was from her. I'd long deleted her number from my phone but I recognised it and all it said was 'sorry.' She was of course referring to my team's demise and not the pain she'd put me through. I was a bit tipsy and so shocked to hear from her that on the way home on the train I replied and we got into a bit of banter about the football. I then texted her again a week or so later and asked her if she fancied coffee. She replied instantly within a few seconds and said 'yes' although not for a couple of weeks as she was busy. I ,therefore, waited patiently and contacted her again to arrange things. She never did get back to me...