Oddity
Oh I do so hope you get one of these. They are fantastic for sheer entertainment value. I can’t tell you exactly what form the oddity will take; as the name suggests, they are odd. I was once lucky enough to receive an absolute beauty. The message was so bizarre that I broke my usual rule of never replying to a message unless I was actually interested in the guy. Here’s an idea of how the conversation between me and the Oddity went:
Oddity:
Hello Lucy.
You are a vision of perfection. I like brunettes. Tall, statuesque, imposing. Like you.
I am unique in a sea of mediocrity. I lust after linguistic precision and prize intelligence and critical brilliance above all other qualities. I have read Troilus and Cressida maybe 25 times. I am not sexually faithful, but I am honest.
I am certain that I am the deepest, most fascinating individual you’ll ever meet.
And I rent a cramped, untidy flat in town. I am unemployed as a choice, as I refuse to cooperate with a corrupt economy built on slave labour.
When we meet, I will insist on wrestling you to a wall and kissing you passionately within the first minute. Perhaps that’s a little intense for you.
But then, perhaps it isn’t.
Oddity x
Me:
Hi Oddity.
I’m going to be honest and say I’m really not a fan of being touched by people I don’t know. I’m extremely choosy about who gets to kiss me, so I really don’t think that’d be my thing. Sexual faithfulness is vital for me, so I really don’t think we match, but good luck in your search.
Lucy.
Oddity:
Hello Lucy.
I’ve only ever had magnificent and truly mind-blowing experiences whenever I’ve allowed members of the opposite sex to touch me. When I contemplate being touched or kissed by the most repulsive woman I can imagine, the worst feeling I can think of is a slight sense of disgust. But even then, I’d feel her personality through her kiss and so I would gain great pleasure from that experience. A kiss brings you ever closer to the essence of humanity. It’s a shame you are so closed minded that you would want to limit the truly unbridled joy you could get from that kind of encounter.
I would never give up my lust for blondes and redheads, even for the perfect brunette like yourself. It’s a shame you are so sexually inhibited and possessive, as I thought I detected a hint of intelligence in your profile. I may be a slut, but I’m no cad. Compared to me, the entire male sex are deceivers and fakes.
I will leave you to consider this and I do hope you are tempted by my carrot. The best carrot I can imagine. I could do with cuddles, company and passion. You would gain from my unfathomable honesty and critical insight.
Oddity x
Um. Ok. Needless to say, I was not enticed by the Oddity’s ‘carrot.’
***
Chapter 3: The 10 rules of dating. Ignore them at your peril!
- Safety First
- Do NOT get emotionally involved too quickly (and definitely not before you’ve actually met!)
- People WILL disappear, act odd and lie. It’s not you, it’s them.
- Never trust a canceller.
- The most important person is YOU.
- Make them work – don’t steer the ship (there’s a whole chapter dedicated to this one).
- Don’t give your power away.
- If you’re not feeling it, let them down nicely.
- Be wary of future-talk too early.
- Dating should be fun. If it’s not, walk away.
Rule Number 1 – Safety First
Now I don’t think online dating is intrinsically any more risky than the old-fashioned method of meeting someone in a bar. But, it does make sense to bear a few personal safety rules in mind. Do not give away too many personal details (this has the added benefit of protecting you emotionally as well) and always meet in a public place. Don’t let them pick you up on a first date, or reveal your address. It’s a good idea to let someone know where you are and to arrange to check in with them when you get home. Always have a fully charged phone with you. This is also necessary so that you can update your friends from the loo about how your date is progressing.
If you friend someone on Facebook and chat to them online, make sure the settings on your phone don’t reveal your exact location. One of my friends told me that when I messaged them on my phone, they could see where I was! Luckily they were a friend and not a stalker type, but that could be risky.
For a number of reasons, it’s advisable not to go home with someone on a first date, or to invite them to your home. Wait till you trust them. Your home is your personal sanctuary. Instantly dismiss anyone who suggests coming round to yours with a bottle on a first date. At best, they’re only after one thing. At worst, you are inviting an unknown into your home who could be anyone. Be careful! Any decent guy would never suggest this.
Rule Number 2 –Do NOT get emotionally involved too quickly
This is a painful lesson that I learned from my encounter with Mr Smooth. I cringe to think of it now, but as you are my friends, I guess I’ll share my experience. Just don’t tell anyone, ok?
Mr Smooth was a very good looking man, with an enchanting command of the English language. After the usual barrage of ‘Hi Hun’ and the incomprehensible messages from Text Speak Types, Mr Smooth’s perfectly articulate opening message was a revelation. He had not only read my profile in detail and referenced it in his message, he had some lovely compliments about my profile pictures and how beautiful I was.
I admit it, I was flattered by the attentions of Mr Smooth, the silver-tongued charmer.
Within just a few messages, Mr Smooth had procured my phone number and a promise of a first date. Every day he would text beautifully composed messages. He suggested I should be more open with him and asked me lots of personal questions, forging a ‘bond’ between us and causing me to forget that we’d never actually met and didn’t even know each other! Mr Smooth had me almost seeing how some woman could be so seduced by an online fantasy that they’d up sticks and move to be with a man they’d never met. I did say almost mind, I’m not that much of a loon.
I forgot the second rule of dating. It is definitely too early to become emotionally attached if you’ve never met. (Haven’t you seen Catfish? The hunky 30 year old you’re chatting to is quite possibly a chain-smoking 60 year old in Union Jack boxer shorts, sitting half naked on his sofa, scratching his belly, surrounded by a collection of stuffed cats. Or something.)
However, when I did eventually meet Mr Smooth, he met my expectations. He was gorgeous, clever and yes, smooth. He was hopelessly romantic (his words!), witty and charming. By the way, if someone describes themselves as a ‘hopeless romantic’ avoid them at all costs. More often than not, they’re just hopeless.
Mr Smooth was free and easy with the compliments. For him, compliments were like breathing. This is sort of how our first date (in a trendy city centre bar) went:
Mr Smooth – (In Breath): ‘You’re so pretty.’
This was accompanied by intense staring eyes, which later progressed to kissy-kissy faces. If you’re not familiar with a kissy-kissy face, it is when you purse your lips and kiss the air, while gazing at the object of your desire. This is usually done repeatedly. Yuk!
Me: ‘Thank you’ (simper, blush)
Mr Smooth (Out breath): ‘You have beautiful eyes. They’re incredibly enticing.’
Me: ‘Ooh thank you Mr Smooth, you’re very kind.’
Mr Smooth: ‘We’re so much fun. Everyone else is boring.’
Me: Oh yes, Mr Smooth, we are aren’t we?’
Now what I failed to realise at this point was that Mr Smooth was using a none-too-subtle psychological trick to manipulate me. He was creating a team which consisted of ‘me’ and ‘him.’ ‘We’ were ‘fun.’ I forgot that there was no ‘we.’ I had, let’s repeat this once more, only just met Mr Smooth.
Mr Smooth: ‘Let’s not sleep together for a few dates. I will try and break you. Don’t let me. Let’s do it right.’
Seriously. That is what Mr Smooth actually said. On a first date! ‘I will try and break you’ is not a normal thing to say. Now, just think about this for a minute. What Mr Smooth was actually suggesting here was that a) I was so beautiful he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from seducing me -and b) That as a lady of honour it was up to me to maintain my purity and refuse his advances until such a time as he deemed it ‘proper’ for me to accept them. Erm, hello? Have I gone to bed and woken up in the 17th Century? Also, Mr Smooth, I’ve had three children. I think we can ditch the whole chastity thing now, y’know?
It is also not appropriate to discuss sex on a first date. Any man who does evidently has sex on his mind, even if, like Mr Smooth here, he pretends that he wants to wait. Incidentally, any man who says they want to wait for it to be special is almost certainly a right plonker. What I should have said at this point was, ‘Erm…Mr Smooth, we’ve only just met!’
Now rather than seeing Mr Smooth for the prize idiot he clearly was, I well and truly emotionally invested in this fantasy he’d created. In my mind, I decided that clever, handsome Mr Smooth was the man for me. He was evidently besotted with me, what with his kissy-kissy faces and staring eyes and so it must be love at first sight.
There was simply no other explanation.
At the end of that spectacular first date, Mr Smooth kissed me passionately (after telling me what an amazing kisser he was) and of course, it was a great kiss. I’d have expected nothing less than a polished performance from Mr Smooth. He then stared at me, as if he couldn’t tear his eyes away from my radiant beauty, or maybe he was trying to hypnotise me. In fact I think the latter is closer to the truth. Perhaps he did hypnotise me. That’s the only possible explanation for what I did next, right?
What did I do next? I did what any self-respecting modern woman would do. I posted on an internet forum about the amazing man I’d just met, declaring dramatically that it was love at first sight and that I would be completely and utterly heartbroken if it didn’t work. I had, let me remind you yet again, had the grand total of ONE date with Mr Smooth.
I turned into a walking cliché. I spent days mooning about the house, listening to love songs. My favourite song was (OMG the shame) Savage Garden’s ‘I knew I loved you before I met you.’ I decided that this song applied uniquely to Mr Smooth and me and it would be played at our wedding, after Mr Smooth introduced it with a heart-warming speech about how he’d fallen in love with me before we’d even met in real life. My internet forum friends were all agog with my tale of instant love, although some very wisely advised me not to rush in. I knew better, of course. I could barely sleep, or eat. This was it.
DO NOT DO THIS. I’ll be blunt, this type of behaviour verges on lunacy. For the record, I was not in love with Mr Smooth. I did fall in love with Mr Geeky, the man I met after Mr Smooth and I got my heart well and truly broken. But more on that later…
So how did this tale of first date love end? After date 2, Mr Smooth became very distant and stopped replying to text messages. He was in the process of moving house, so I figured that he was just busy. I’d get the occasional text which was just enough to keep me hooked. Then, out of the blue, I got a Facebook message in my inbox from Mr Smooth. It went something like this:
‘Hey honey,
I’ve had something on my mind. Don’t panic…yet! We get on amazingly well. I really like you (I do) I want to sleep with you and I would like to discuss this now before it is too late and we get all emotionally attached. Can this actually work between us? We live quite far away from each other and we both have children, so we can’t move. I don’t know if I could see it working between us long term?
I don’t want to be the guy who sleeps with you first and then has this conversation with you, so I wanted to get it out in the open now. You’re an amazing kisser and I want to sleep with you. I don’t want either of us to get hurt though. We live 40 minutes away from each other and I’m not the kind of guy who can see someone just once a week for months. If I like someone, I want- to be with them all the time.
I’m being very serious here. Can this work? Genuinely? Honestly?
You’re lovely. Beautiful. But I don’t know if this can work? Have a think x’
Seriously – what was there to think about? Mr Smooth made it clear that he wanted to ‘sleep with me,’ how many times did he mention that in his message?! But it was also evident that he didn’t see us working long term. His reasons may well have been sensible and genuine. However, I got myself unnecessarily hurt, because I’d allowed myself to become emotionally involved far too soon. Now Mr Smooth did, generously, send me the parting offer of one night of passion. Tempting as the offer was…I declined. I’m not a one night kinda girl. I received a cringeworthy reply along the lines of:
‘It’s ok, beautiful. I understand. Incredible sex sounds very passionate and enticing, but unless it leads to a relationship it can leave you feeling cheap and used. You’re a gorgeous girl, Lucy. Stunning, clever, fun, lovely figure, good job. You have the most enticing eyes and when you gaze up at me with them, they’re so wonderfully sexual and captivating. I hope you have a happy life and don’t settle for less than you deserve, honey. By the way, I would have given you the best night of your life ;-) xx’
Yuk! My skin crawls, just reading that back. Needless to say, Mr Smooth taught me a valuable lesson about always holding back and not getting emotionally involved during the very early stages of dating.