The constant thing in my life is the hope. Sometimes I think the hope might run out. It’s the hope that kills you, my friend Sandra likes to tells me.
If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got, also, whether you think you can or you think you can’t – you’re right, said the American industrialist Henry Ford. I hope these statements will spur me on, make me do it, make the change to make my life more streamlined, more hopeful. I have even taken the trouble to write these inspirational quotes on post-it notes, only for them to fall off the fridge just like my plans.
Forever optimistic and hopeful, I have still not found the love of my life. I have swiped, matched and been on first dates, blind dates, double dates and speed dates. I have been caspered (texted for a few weeks then disappears), ghosted (disappears completely), breadcrumbed (over flirty with no substance), paperclipped (ex texts with no intention of meeting) and submarined (someone who ghosted but resurfaces). I have had the same first date chats, worn the same first date outfits and drank the same first date drinks.
About online dating Joan Rivers commented, the odds are good but the goods are odd. Do you still hope you’ll meet someone? Rosa, my daughter asks. I kind of do but I also kind of don’t. What do you mean? When I look at the multitude of men that I swipe, I wonder how it could be possible and the ones I see I don’t want to meet anyway. Jane’s mum met her husband on Bumble. Wow, have you met him? Yes, actually he’s a bit creepy. Right, I want to meet someone naturally, I tell Rosa. But mum apps are natural, my digital native daughter assures me.
Each evening, I force myself to swipe through one hundred. I check out their faces, read their profiles and try to look beyond the toilet in the background, the tanker of beer in hand and the badly tattooed arms. Some even take selfies in their own bed. I have seen bare chested men, one with a realistic looking moose tattooed on his heart, men with large dead fish, smoking pipes, climbing with ropes up snow covered mountains, men with crocodiles, lions, gigantic tortoises and zebras. I even saw a man with his wife who was looking to have an open naturist relationship. I felt like replying: only in the summer.
I came across some information in The Times about dating apps. Match.com is by far the largest site, having over 3 million subscribers in the UK alone, and they say that 1.3 million have met their match using this site. And there’s the hope. I like to talk about hope because I think without it cynical bitterness could take over; hope is the future.
Dating apps have become a vacuous hobby. How can you strike up a text conversation with a stranger in the hope that it will turn into a real relationship? What you need is to be introduced to someone, Sandra says. But none of my friends know any decent single men. What about your mum? My mum? Yes, surely there are second time arounders available, your age. I can’t ask my mum.
I phone my mum. Mum, do you have any friends who have sons who are now divorced, widowed or single? Why? I was hoping you could perhaps set me up on a date. I can hear my mum thinking. Oh, well there’s thingy. Who do you mean? You know, Arlene’s son, thingummybob. You mean Thomas? Yes Thomas, now he is a lovely boy. But mum he’s gay. He is not gay. He is.
I send out a text to my latest match on Bumble. Hi Dylan, we matched on Bumble, tah dah. We sure did, he replies. We text for an hour and he tells me he’s a professor of rheumatology. I ask him if he knows what the future has in store, he says no, and I say osteoarthritis, he sends a laughing emoji. We arrange to chat on the phone the following evening at 7pm.
What did you talk about? Sandra asks. When I called at 7pm, he was asleep and I woke him so he was sleepy and yawning. Not a great start, Sandra replies. The rest of the conversation was about him, his car which apparently is the colour of a green mamba snake, his holidays skiing in Val d’Isere and his status dotted with some whip-smart put downs. Very much not your type, Sandra snorts. He texted three days later to say how much cultural references we have and proceeded to ask if he could stay over on Friday night. Sandra takes a sharp loud intake of breath and tells me to block, report, delete.
I just put these encounters down to experience along with the running dialogue inside my head when I swipe. It goes like this: If only I had a butter lettuce then I could make a crisp salad for dinner, surely that’s a comedy fake nose, I should book a gym class for tomorrow, omg a purple unicorn tattoo on-his-face, why does it take so long to find someone to swipe right on? I’ll just do thirty more, must get my hair highlighted, do all Gen Zers want to get their lips filled? I hope he puts that fish back into the water, I wonder if the lining inside tinned chopped tomatoes gives you cancer.
Just before I switch off my phone the next male profile reads ‘must like swallowing’. The hope begins to wane.