Vogue magazine has decided that it's embarrassing to have a boyfriend now . I guess that makes me super not embarrassing. The tenth anniversary of my singledom is this year. TEN YEARS. It’s the longest I’ve been single since I was old enough to date. I think I have reached a quiet state of acceptance. There’s not a lid for every pot. There’s not someone out there for everyone. He’s not going to turn up when I least expect it, or I stop looking. Ah the lies we are told. Mostly by coupled people that haven’t been single since you could buy cigs in packets of ten and a pint was £1.50. At least I am at an age where no-one does the sympathetic head tilt n’ nod. Chronically single people will know what this is. The look you get when you say, ‘no you haven’t met anyone. Yes, you went for dinner by yourself. The tilt n’ nod is usually followed by some advice. ‘have you tried dating apps?’ ‘have you tried paid dating apps?’ ‘Have you tried Meet Ups?’ ‘have you tried Speed Dating?’ Fuck off, Sue, I have tried all of that and here we are. Approaching fifty, applying trans-dermal gel before bed and fantasising about Leo Woodall in Vladimir.
The last dates I went on were in 2024. Covid has messed with our perception of time, but the fact that this is is coming up for two years ago is kind of blowing my tiny mind. The scythe’s swing is remorseless, to paraphrase my favorite TV toxic boss.
46 – That’s Not My Name (Spring 2024)
I can’t remember his name. We went for a coffee and then a couple of beers on a wet, cold spring day. He was very nice. So nice I can remember literally nothing about him. On the shortish side, kind face, bald head. I can’t even really remember what we talked about. I do remember I wasn’t feeling it enough for a second date. I think he might have kids and a mum that was a biochemist?
47, 48, 49 (maybe 50?) – Cranberry (Summer 2024)
Cranberry was Irish and he looked it. Red of hair, pale of skin, blue of eye. For some reason I had my distance preferences set to 100+ miles and thus I was messaged by Cranberry, who lived in a Northern town with great train links to London. I don’t want to go too much into these dates, because we went on a few, the last one being a big gig in London and some of the things Cranberry said set off alarm bells in respect of how he handled past rejections. He was younger (dammit, when will I learn? Never as we shall soon see). We were apparently on the same page about not continuing to meet up and I suspect he blocked me on WhatsApp afterwards. In some ways, I found this insulting. As if I was going to message him! But then I did go back and look at my archived chats, and occassionally I’d see a profile photo instead of a blob, and then one time, there he was with a woman, before reverting back to blob status again. So was he blocking me and unblocking me? I shall never know. I deleted the chat and his number the other week as part of a wider mass cull of data from my phone.
Summer 2025, I got a message from a man I previously wrote about. I’d long deleted his number, so I had no idea who it was. I replied saying as much, to which he responded something about missed opportunities. I said, great, but who are you? And he replied again but still would not say who it was. I worked it out, eventually and he asked if I fancied meeting up. No I fucking don’t. You are clearly lonely and going through your phone. These zombie moments have never been about me. It hasn’t taken six years to find work out that they liked me. They are just throwing out the lure and seeing who bites.
Winter 2025.
I let my loneliness and hope get the better of me. All those empty, grey and drizzly winter Sundays make me feel a way. I set up another Hinge account and after a week had a whopping 3 likes, one which was from a married couple looking for a unicorn. This really pissed me off. There are poly apps. Nowhere in my profile does it say I want to fuck a couple.
Three likes. It’s not normal to get such a low like rate when you’re ‘new’ on an app. You should be pushed to the top of the stack. The first week is where you should see the most likes. Rather than assume I was shadow banned, I internalised my lack of success and messaged my friend Lara who’s an old hat at this business and asked, ‘is it because I am old and ugly?’ She’s someone that gets a lot of attention on the apps, but then she has The Allure. I do not have the Allure. She assured me I am not old and ugly, the apps have been dead for a long time. I tried Bumble again. I got a lot more ‘likes’ but no matches. I felt crushed, like I did when I was a kid and picked last for games. I deleted both apps. I contented myself with trying not to stare at my current gym crush. It’s taken me three years to find out his name. Glaciers have moved faster.
There’s this Echobelly song called Great Things that goes: never wanted many things / except the chance to learn / from my mistakes / funny how you never learn/ but know them when they come around again.
And so it was when I met a man who I’ll call Ezra on one January day, and we began a text exchange, I fell into a familiar pattern. I’d respond to dry messages with essays. I’d double text. I’d send pictures of things related to what we had been talking about. We voice-noted; he said, ‘I love your voice’ but then left me on read for two days. One day, I was going to be in his locale. I suggested that we meet for a drink that evening when he finished work. He texted me throughout the day, but was as slippery as as a wet bar of soap in the shower when it came to confirming. He asked if he could ‘let me know later’. He let me know at gone half seven, when I was ready to head home.
The text exchanges dragged on painfully for a couple more weeks, until in Love Island parlance, I pied him. It’s not really a pie if the other party wasn’t really interested in the first place, but I have no tolerance for this kind of flaky pastry fuckery these days. I blamed myself; I had driven the interaction, I had made the first move. He hasn’t replied to the pie, which I both understand and find irritating. I didn’t do it to provoke a reaction, or try and get him to actually arrange a date. I was fed up, but I didn’t want to ghost because I think that’s rude. I would have liked an acknowledgement, though, just a simple, ‘OK, thanks for letting me know’, but nothing. I don’t think his silence is because he’s butt hurt, or that I have bruised his ego. I think it’s because he was never that arsed in the first place, and if anything he’s probably relieved.
When I couldn’t sleep, I’d lie in bed and think about just why I entertained a man like this for over a month. What is it about me? Why must I repeatedly chase what is clearly not for me?
I recently watched a video of Noel Gallagher signing autographs for a group of fans. I don’t know what country it was – somewhere warm and sunny. You could hear this woman off camera, she kept saying, ‘No-elle, No-elle, please, I am pregnant and I will call my baby after you,’ while he ignored her and wordlessly signed autographs for other people before jumping in the last Beamer out of Saigon and zooming off. I felt like that lady. I felt like the kid shouting, ‘Mummy! Look at me! Look at me!’ while hopping on one foot and doing jazz hands. I felt picked last for games again. What is it about me that wanted so desperately to have the attention of this man? Oh man, I thought that I was done with trying to decode texts from a man, but clearly not. This man whose words and actions were so out of sync it was like trying to decode the Zodiac cipher? Except…it wasn’t. I have been here too many times before to fail to notice this pattern, this way that some men will keep you in a virtual waiting room for their own entertainment. It should not concern me as to why this man did this to me. That’s really none of my business. All I should concern myself with is why I indulged it. It’s probably something to do with attachment styles, and long ingrained ideas and hopefullness. However, I am improving. Previously I would have let this kind of nonsense drag on for months, for years.
There’s a theory that some people come into your life for a reason. I think Ezra happened along because for the longest time I had been thinking I would never fancy anyone again. (Gym crush doesn’t count, I just like looking at him). I had been in a ‘men – eww’ mindset for a long time. I mean...I’m sort of back there again now, but hey ho. Alanis said you live, you learn. Oasis said don’t look back in anger. In time, I’ll forget Ezra. He’ll be just like the others I met and can only vaguely remember because I read back on old blog posts and go, ‘oh yeah, that guy! What did he even look like?’ And I’ll walk on, ready for the next.
