This chronicle is inspired by a story my friend told mine. Also a serial dater, also pretty unlucky with them.
I’d got to the point where apps had become the screensaver of my life. Any spare minute pumped into them. One of the things that is not discussed enough is how much work dating takes. Who has the time to be dating multiple people at once? The artificial nature of keeping up to date with multiple different conversation threads all at differing levels of intimacy. Chatting, checking, maintaining, swiping, thinking of funny and witty responses to every message. I am strongly of the opinion that it is only possible to maintain this level of commitment for a few weeks, couple of months at best. Or at least that’s all I’m capable of. But this was before, in my first flush. I’d recently joined the apps and was having fun actively dating multiple people. Before I’d become jaded to the world of online dating.
I was on my way home from work when I matched with her. We exchanged a few flirty messages and then she asked to meet that evening. Due to the previously mentioned ‘first flush’, this seemed like a great idea. Get home, shower, get ready then straight on a train back to London Bridge all by 10pm! The night was (not) young and London being the city that actually goes to sleep pretty early, pretty much everything was closed. We managed to find somewhere to have a drink just before chucking out time. It went alright and not wanting to cut the night short we decided to go for a walk.
We started meandering around the streets of London. Chatting and generally getting on ok. That was until the talk turned to exs and my date had quite a lot to say. Turns out, she was not at all happily single and instead pretty dead set on getting her ex back, despite a lack of enthusiasm on said ex’s part. She told me that she had misstepped dramatically in the relationship and she bore the sole responsibility for the demise of it.
It transpired that these efforts had led her to creating a précis on the relationship. I say précis, it was a 36 page document outlining her wrongdoings. That she sent to him. If you were mistaken at any point, yes, this was a first date I was on, not a counseling session that I was giving. I’ve never before encountered such an academic response to heartbreak. I’m yet to see the ‘win partner back’ montage in the third act of a romcom be our hero furiously making excel spreadsheets and compiling a pamphlet but I’m sure the limits of the genre are yet to be reached.
Alas, faint heart never won fair lady, and likewise the 36 page document did not win this stranger's ex man. This is why she was walking around with me on a crisp London evening. She was staying at a hotel for the night, in the city for work and against all odds she invited me round. I politely declined and went on my way. Now the story lives on, as the answer to one of my Hinge prompts. ‘Weirdest date you’ve ever been on’ - ‘One girl once told me how she made a 36 page document to get back with her ex’.. It gets a pretty good response and has actually been the conversation starter on quite a few dates. And so, ‘when we die our bodies become the grass. And the antelope eat the grass.’ This Lion King analogy is pretty taut but I guess what I’m getting at is this bad date is the dead lion and it has been the seedling of new dates?