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 … Continue Reading

Despite my best efforts, I have not yet lined up any more dates other than my last.

And by ‘best efforts’, I mean ‘I invited men who I thought were even marginally interesting to go out with me’. That number is not high, but it’s more than zero and is a huge departure from my normal process where I won’t meet anyone until I genuinely and absolutely think there is real potential. Dating immersion, yo!

When I suggested a meeting to one, he balked and it turns out that the app I’m using showed me as being closer to … Continue Reading

Trying to date takes up all of my writerly energy (not even dating, just trying to date).

I’m not sure why that is really.

It’s not like I’m spending hours a day thinking up witty replies to stellar messages. Most of the emails that land in my inbox are about the same level of lame one liner as I’ve already mentioned in this post. I’m not even bothering to reply to those.

I did indeed ask my last vanilla date if he wanted to have a kissing date:

“Thanks so much for coming to meet me. Who knew a … Continue Reading

His introductory email was thoughtful and articulate. He’d not only read my profile, but he had also looked through my many Q&A responses and his note referenced both.

He was 6’2, a little younger than me, no photos.

I suggested we meet after a few exchanges. This must be a new record for me. My new strategy: ‘Dating immersion’. I didn’t ask for a photo. To be honest, I forgot.

He was nervous he said (I do love it when they say that out loud, I do), and half an hour before our date he texted that he was going … Continue Reading