Mid morning coffee (or ‘bad date ideas’)

I went on another vanilla date. This is (only) my second off a vanilla dating site. I talked about the first already.

In my defence of non-dating, I was caught up with the cougarling soon after that so it was moot.

I invited him out without much preamble in line with my ‘immersive dating’ attempts. He had interesting photos, was a half dozen years older than me, sounded ‘fine’ (‘dating immersion’ dictates that ‘fine’ is good enough to try).

So I turned up for a mid morning coffee meeting and quickly realised that attempting this sort of thing without wine was a bad idea. Not even because alcohol lubricates social interactions (though there is that), but because for me the tactile pleasure of having a cold, crisp glass of wine at hand is enjoyably distracting in a way that coffee is not. In my head coffee is for drinking, wine is for socialising.

He was ‘nice enough’, but after an hour, I was done. I felt… nothing. Like a person engaging in polite chit chat with a stranger, which is exactly what it was.

It was pleasant, but I pretty much gave up on ‘interesting’ when he said something off the cuff that actually revealed a little about his view of the world and I followed that path because ‘finally, something with a bit of substance!’ He got all flustered at where I was leading the conversation, and wanted to talk instead about whether I liked golf (I don’t).

He had a strange and distracting way of moving his mouth: As if his almost-perfect teeth were too big for him. I think maybe they were dentures, and if they were, they were new ones that he wasn’t used to yet. I felt marginally sorry for him, which is obviously about the furthest away from ‘hot-sexy’ as you can possibly imagine.

I abruptly declared that I had to go when I’d lasted as long as I could. Pleasantries on the way out, including him stating the obvious fact that I was really tall as he looked up to me. I put my height in my profile because I know it can be an issue for some men, so it was hardly a surprise. I asked him how tall he was. “6’1, he said. I know I looked sceptical because he SO wasn’t, but it didn’t matter.

In the car park, he asked what I was doing on the Saturday night. Being a crap liar, I told the truth: nothing. He invited me out for dinner. Being crap at politely declining when I’m taken by surprise, I said ‘yes’. Idiotic dating rookie!

Then I kicked myself for the next couple of hours and finally texted him, said I’d had a think about it and apologetically declined his dinner invitation. Ugh. HATE.

He was fine about it: I’m thankful for mature men.

All in all, the entire experience sucked. No doubt it sucked for him also.

I hate to say to myself (but I do) that I probably need a few more really lacklustre dates like this to elevate the ones that actually aren’t so bad. Though maybe that’s akin to trying to teach myself to ‘lower my expectations’ and I know that when I’ve done that in the past, I can end up putting a bunch of energy into something that has NO chance of working out. And that’s just a waste of time for both of us.

So, yeah.

Meh.