The Gab of the Gift

If I’ll remember 2024 for anything, it’ll be feeling tired ALL THE TIME. (Dad, if you’re reading this, I know you’ll be rolling your eyes and sending me a WhatsApp to say that I’m ‘always tired’. Maybe just accept this opening statement, stop reading, and go chill out on the beach for a while.) You see, I hit dating HARD in 2024.

Maybe it’s what I thought I should be doing. Maybe I needed to feel something. Maybe I was relieving myself of boredom. Maybe it was all just to give my mum friends a person to ‘live through’ at 2am as they rocked their little ones back to sleep (made lighter by the drunken voicenotes I sent as I fell through the front door after another date with ‘Physio Man’).

But is it what I should’ve been doing? Did I feel anything? Was I entertained?

Was the year of many dates worth it, can it be classed as a success?

Depends on what we mean by that, I suppose.

Nice men

On the one hand, I dated a lot of nice men. And before you slam me for reducing some men to just ‘nice’, think about what the word represents. It’s someone kind, thoughtful, and caring. Someone who’s not going to turn around and tell you they’re judging you for ordering a pint (true story), or worse, tell you they’re reaaaaally into you before disappearing without a trace (a classic). Too often, we assume ‘nice’ guys are boring – I admit I did, too. But then two of them turned that assumption on its head for me in 2024. (Not at the same time, I hasten to add.)

I’d call dating nice men worth it – if anything, it shows I’m growing (therapy speak, not literal speak). I hadn’t known peace could actually exist whilst dating until I spent time with these two guys. I’m so used to pursuing the distant, avoidant man (who I reaaaaally want to fancy me back), that dating people who reaaaaally fancied me back was quite the change.

But. (You’ll know by now there’s always a ‘but’.) Being the ‘nice’ guys I dated is as far as these two chaps made it, through no fault of their own. As ever, with a ‘but’ comes a ‘just’, and there was just something missing, something just didn’t feel right. I wish I could put my finger on it, but I just couldn’t – still can’t.

(If either of you guys happen to stumble upon this, there’s a couple of things I’d just like to say. To the first, I’m still gutted the teriyaki sauce we made together didn’t turn out right – I hope you’ve made a better one since. To the second, thanks spinning me around in that Irish bar until the wee hours – it was the best first date of my life (so far). You both made me understand – finally – why all the mums, older sisters, aunties, grandmas tell us to date the ‘nice’ guys. And that in itself makes it worth it.)

How to leave a walking date

Moving on, and on the other end of the spectrum we have the success of knowing when to leave when a date, relationship, even friendship isn’t serving you anymore. Let’s just say there was one first date of 2024 that comes to mind, and it might’ve been a walk along a canal with an American – sober, both of us. Let’s also just say that he loved the sound of his own voice (I literally got about three words in edgeways, and even they were quickly absorbed by his own) so I started thinking tactics.

How does one politely leave a walking date when there’s only one path, and your only two options are forwards or backwards? (There’s a third, I suppose – jumping into the canal. But it was cold and I wasn’t dressed for open water swimming, so that option quickly became obsolete.)

For context, I wanted to leave after about 15 minutes. I made it to thirty, before matter-of-factly asking if we could loop back on ourselves as I’d not yet had my dinner and I was starving. I’ll leave you to decide how white that lie was. Whether he was a little surprised or not, I’m still not sure – but what I am sure of is it was the right thing to do. Neither of us messaged after that, so I guess the feeling was mutual.

Maybe he was hungry for dinner, too?

Not-so bould-over

Somewhere in the middle of the spectrum we have the dates that didn’t lead to anything, but weren’t a complete waste of time. (This said, I don’t think any date is a waste of time – good, bad, ugly, you get a lesson from them all.)

Take the first date where a guy took me bouldering. It was something I’d never done before but he loved, and when I said I’d be keen to learn, we were off. A couple of years ago, and I’d have really struggled with the thought of being halfway up a wall on a warm Tuesday evening having squashed my bunions into a pair of stupidly small, tight bouldering shoes, but there I was – sweat, sore feet, and all.

But 2024 was the year of giving dating my all, so there I was in a t-shirt that, on reflection, was waaay too thick for my natural deodorant to cope with and induced sweat patches under my arms the size of fried eggs. Yet beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. And behold indeed – everyone in that bouldering centre was sweaty. But every face had a smile on it. And hey, if you can free the sweat glands on a first date, then the second and third are your oyster, right?

(In the end, I chose not to see this guy again – let’s just say we had different approaches to climbing. Though I did enjoy the bouldering…

…so maybe 2025 will be the year for hitting the bouldering wall hard?)

Out with the old

The final success of what turned out to be an unsuccessful year of dating (if you go back the hard and fast result alone) is somewhat personal. I tried – really tried – to consciously not fall back into old dating patterns. Like dating the person I imagined someone to be rather than the person who was standing in front of me. Or being too judgemental, not giving myself enough time to really get to know someone before calling something with potential off because of something not that important.

I dated tall guys (6″7, no less), short guys, muscly guys, lanky guys. Football fans, cricket fans, rugby fans, running fans, gym fans. Americans, Australians, Spaniards (remember the solo holiday I went on?), Brits. Fussy eaters, refined palette-ers, big drinkers, sober curious-ers. Physios, doctors, marketeers, town planners, finance managers. Guys older than me, younger than me, the same age as me, maybe lying to me. Extroverts, introverts, and all those in-between. And I tried to enjoy it all.

But that’s the issue.

I had to try.

The biggest success of my 2024 dating activities is that I realised I didn’t really enjoy it all.

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail

Course, I knew this deep down. And I did enjoy getting dressed up and going out. I enjoyed getting dressed down and staying in. I enjoyed hearing someone’s life story and sharing mine with them. But the enjoyment soon wanes when another Thursday evening rolls around, you’ve had a tough day at work, and all you want to do is snuggle up in your PJs with a takeout pizza and watch a film.

Yet.

You remember you’re 28. You’re not getting any younger. If these days, weeks, years aren’t the time to do it, then when will be? So you do what you do best: you dig deep – really bloody deep.

You ask yourself what you have to lose. (And ignore your rational brain screaming ‘money and sleep’.)

You press ‘play’ on the same pre-date Spotify playlist that’s got you through this moment before. (And each time, you can’t resit belting out ‘the rest is still unwritteeeen!!!’.)

You have the shower of all showers and meticulously lather yourself in the expensive body lotion you got last Christmas (which you’ve subconsciously reserved solely for this type of situation.)

You wrestle the bob you should know how to style by now but still struggle with (it’s been a year) into something that looks like you’ve made an effort. (You’re yet to learn it looks better natural, but the day will come.)

You put on one of three outfits that have become the go-to for first, second, and third dates.

You brush and floss your teeth and then brush them a little more, just in case.

You look at yourself in the mirror, raise your eyebrows, do some sort of smile at your reflection, and exhale the words ‘here we go again’. Next thing, you’re wrestling your brolly up and walking to the bus, trying to avoid a dog poo disaster along the poorly lit path (women’s safety, you what???), and venture out to meet the man.

For one day, he’ll be the man.

The first date dance

You do the dance you’ve well-rehearsed by now – the ‘hellos’ and ‘lovely to meet yous’, the contemplation about what drink to order (even though nine times out of ten you’ll go for a pint), the slightly awkward hover at the bar whilst waiting for your drinks which gradually becomes more relaxed as you find somewhere to sit (or stand). And then you’re in full flow, playing your part in the first date script that us singles can recite off by heart.

You probably stay for a second drink, a third perhaps, and then as the evening winds up, you prepare for one of two eventualities – you’ll see each other again, or you won’t. And whichever way it goes, you get home, shake off your brolly, brush and floss your teeth, take off one of three outfits and put on the PJs you’ve been thinking about all evening, take out the hairstyle that didn’t hold anyway, press ‘play’ on ‘soothing sleep sounds’ because despite your best efforts, you’re yet to shake off the insomnia, and you attempt something that resembles sleep – all as the date replays over and over with the things you said, things you should’ve said, things you certainly shouldn’t have said.

And the next morning, when you wake and have the realisation that actually, it was a ‘good’ date with a ‘nice’ guy but that’s all it was, you let out a sigh. You try not to allow the thoughts of how better you could’ve spent the evening before intrude (something productive, like going for a run). You do let the disappointment in, but you only let it linger for half the time you did last year. Which was half the time of the year before, and so on.

Then you open WhatsApp. Your slightly hungover voice shows glimmers of optimism that your friends have come to expect in your post-date voicenotes, and you tell them what they want to know. What you know will make them laugh, what you know your non-single friends will probably see as living ‘vicariously’, and what your remaining single friends will recognise as part hope, part numb.

The cycle

The cycle was relentless last year – in part, because of the loud narrative that dating is all a ‘numbers game’. That it’s simply the more people you meet and the more times you put yourself out there, the more chance you have of stumbling across the person that makes it all worth it.

Sitting alone on my bed on a Friday evening, and I can tell you that the numbers haven’t turned in my favour – yet. I’m tired, so very tired, and so I’m retiring from dating.

But.

I’m only sitting alone because my housemate is taking a while in the shower – and then we’re heading to the pub. And as any retiree knows, there’s always the option to come out of retirement.

Particularly for the right man drinking the right pint at the (right) pub at the end of my road…