Oh, that dangerous internet dating! What if you get killed?!

I went on a date the other day. Overall it wasn’t too bad. I met a bloke after work for a drink. He originally messaged me on a dating app I’d installed on my phone. I don’t know why I installed it to be honest. (Probably cos it was free). I’m not even that fussed about dating right now. He was quite chatty in his messages even though he’s not my cup of tea in the looks department, but I try not to go by that all the time. A great personality can make someone a lot more attractive so occasionally, you’ve gotta give a guy a chance.  (Sometimes though, you just know don’t you?)  So anyway, after consulting with my fb friends and getting their varied opinions, I decided to bite the bullet and give him a chance. He was a little bit shy, lacking in confidence and not very good at eye contact. He bought my drink without hesitation which was a plus.. There were some awkward silences but we managed to keep them mostly at bay. I saw glimpses of his sense of humour, which had veered into ‘inappropriate’ territory when texting but he was fine face to face. I figured it was more down to him trying to be funny via the written word and failing dismally than anything sinister or blatantly rude. We can’t all be grammar gods! If we meet up again though, it won’t be in the romantic sense.

I once got invited out by a fella I met in a pub. Let’s call him Bert. Bert told me to meet him outside this club as there was a reggae night and he wanted to take me for a dance. When I got there he was nowhere to be seen so I texted him.  He replied saying he was already inside and I should go in and find him. It cost me £10 to get in! Ok I thought, not a great start but maybe I’d misunderstood. I’ll find him and he can buy me a drink. Did he heck! I found Bert, drink in hand, dancing with some girl. When I interrupted him after watching for a couple of minutes and asked him if he was gonna buy me a drink, he pointed me in the direction of the bar and proceeded to ignore me for the rest of the night. I bought myself a drink and found a gorgeous young guy to chat to. Later, when Bert realised I’d ditched him in favour of the gorgeous toyboy who was apparently smitten with me, he had the nerve to drag me away from Mr Gorgeous and have a go at me in front of everyone!  Not to worry, Bert left feeling a lot more embarrassed than I did after I gave him a piece of my mind.

                     This has happened to me before—>

I’ve been on a lot of dates in the past 10 years. Some good, some not so much. One guy was on and off for a few years but really, none were long lasting. The majority of blokes I’ve dated have been from the internet. It’s a fabulous way to meet fellas… if you’re not that fussy.  Unfortunately, I am indeed extremely fussy. I talk myself into going on dates with men I’m not attracted to because there might be a slim chance that he turns out to be so much more than I think and because going on dates with men I DO find attractive hasn’t worked out for me. So I say to myself, try something different.  There’s a saying my mum said to me years ago that sticks in my head.

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

Or something like that. Maybe it didn’t stick that well actually. But you get my drift. So, having dated men I fancied and it not working out, I tried dating men I wouldn’t normally go for and unsurprisingly, that hasn’t worked either.

My colleague said to me the other day ‘You can’t judge someone from a picture’. Maybe not, but you can judge whether you find them attractive. That’s how dating sites work. They all show pages and pages of photos, not pages and pages of profiles.  The photo is your first impression. It’s the deciding factor on whether or not you look at their profile. Guys, you need to realise this or you will NEVER get a date! There are FAR too many photos on these sites that resemble a day at a funeral! Smile dammit!  

There’s still a lot of concern about internet dating.. mainly by people who’ve never done it. Some of my friends get worried that I’m gonna get attacked or kidnapped or murdered on a date instigated from a website.  I’ll take this opportunity to put their minds at ease. This is me on the inside when I go on a first date. Ready for anything. 

I have enough common sense to talk to a man a few times to get a feel of his personality before I agree to meet him. I make him come to my hometown where I know every street, every nook, cranny and twitten in town for a quick escape if necessary. Not that I’ve ever needed to use that knowledge in a lifesaving scenario!  I also only meet and have dates in very public, usually busy places. I never get picked up or dropped off at home. There will also be a record of him in my chat history. So, if anything, I’m safer on one of these dates than I am on a date with a fella I met in a pub or anywhere else, that I have zero info on. I know people lie on the sites but people in pubs lie too! Besides all that, I’m a total cynic and rarely take anything they tell me at face value. I’m far from gullible. I’ve chatted with enough men over enough years and listened to enough lies to get an inkling of when they might be dishing out balony. As for those conmen who wheedle their way into women’s lives for the money, I’m skint with no chance of getting a loan so trust me when I tell you I’m not a target! 

The risks are no more or less than a regular date with someone you don’t know. The biggest risk I face when going on a date with some bloke off t’interweb is death by boredom! If I get any more messages that say nothing more than ‘hi’, I’m liable to drown myself in my own sink! 

Wrong Relationships

I wrote this a while ago but wanted to share it here.

I’m generalising here but being a single woman about to hit 40 and also seeing so many of my female friends still single and desperately wishing they weren’t, I wonder where it’s all going wrong. What is happening to the world… to men… to women… that makes finding a good man to have an honest relationship with so near impossible. Fair enough, sometimes relationships just don’t work out because the chemistry isn’t there or whatever. It happens. Those aren’t the ones I’m talking about. It’s the ones that start off dishonest that I’ve got a real bee in my bonnet about right now. There seem to be so many of them. I’ve been on a lot of dates over the past 10 years and met many blokes whose mindset is one of self-gratification and sod anyone else. Here are just two examples of recently failed relationships out of many that I know of.

The first example is of a man who, despite proclaiming love and wanting to settle down, just lost his girlfriend because of all the lies he told early on. He lied about everything when they first met; his married status, his kids, his whole history, even his name! Problem is, she didn’t find out til much later and now that he’s fallen in love with her, it’s too late. More forgotten lies come forth and despite having feelings for him, she just can’t trust him. Why couldn’t he just be honest in the first place? If he didn’t want to be in his marriage, then maybe he should have ended it before starting with someone new. Where’s the solid foundation for a relationship built on lies? It never existed and therefore the relationship got broke. She’s left feeling sad and lonely and he’s left feeling heart-broken and guilty. No-one wins.

The 2nd example is of another man who threw away the chance of having a good, faithful woman to love him, because he couldn’t stay faithful to her… In fact, it turns out he never was. It took her a long time to let him close and he put the effort in for months to get that close. Why?! If he was seeing someone else, why did he bother chasing her for so long until she agreed to that first date? Again, why not end what he was involved in and then pursue her? If he was never looking for love and just wanted some ‘fun’, why not find someone who was just after the same thing? His lies also came back to bite him on the arse. Now she is left broken and confused and feeling like she just wasted years of her life on him. Trust for the next man in her life will be even harder for her to find.

What does this do to the men, to the women, to any children involved with whom they’ve built relationships? What must these kids think about relationships in general? What lessons are they learning from seeing what their parents are doing? How can they trust that the people they form attachments with, will be around in 6 months… a year… .2 years… Why should they bother getting to know them and accept them? Are daughters learning to be mistrustful of men? Are sons learning to treat women with little respect? Are kids losing respect for their own parents because they see them not respecting or valuing themselves enough to walk away the first time they know they’ve been lied to or cheated on or hit or whatever?

Do these men really want relationships? If they do, why on earth can’t they see that they’re just pushing the self destruct button? If they don’t, then why lead these women on? Are they really so selfish that using someone else for their own gratification doesn’t matter to them? Do they not realise that actions have consequences? Where are people’s morals? Where is the empathy and compassion for others?

I know people often tend to get more selfish as they get older, I do myself, but I cannot fathom why these men start relationships with women they know are looking for love, when they already have girlfriends or are married or in some cases even have boyfriends, or maybe don’t want a relationship at all. It’s pretty obvious early on when a woman is looking for more than a quick fling, and there are always plenty of people to have flings with in this day and age, so taking someone who wants more and using them in that manner is, to me, appalling.

I normally try not to be judgmental but damn it, it makes me so angry to see these men using women so casually…. and to see women allowing themselves to get used again and again… so quick to forgive and dish out 2nd, 3rd, 4th chances because anything is better than being single. Guess what girls? THAT ISN’T LOVE! Yes love can hurt sometimes, we all know this, but it’s not supposed to make you miserable!

Women, PLEASE have some dignity! Wake up and realise you’re better off single than to be with someone who doesn’t respect you. People can only treat you badly if you let them. Get rid and they can’t do it anymore. Aren’t you worth even that? How many chances to find the right man are you missing out on whilst you’re busy being ‘in a relationship’ with the wrong one?

Men, have some respect!. Just be honest if you’re not looking for anything serious. Don’t let it get to the point where she falls for you. Imagine it was your sister or your mum that some other man was leading on and disrespecting. It would save so much heartache and bad feeling if people were a bit more honest about their intentions when it comes to relationships. Don’t tell us what you think we want to hear…because I promise you, if you don’t mean it then we really don’t want to hear it. .

Now, I know that there are good men out there so please don’t think I’m tarring all men with the same brush. I’m not. Maybe I’ll even find one for myself one day but it’s not the end of the world if I don’t. I don’t think my expectations are too high so unless I meet a man with similar values to me, I am better off and happier on my own. I hope other women, whether single or in wrong relationships, find enough self-worth to feel the same way.

Kalamity K x