Dating thread 145: new year new adventures

[Notcoolmum]

apparentlyacatch I’m sorry to be such a mum but please don’t invite men round to your house in the first date. You are putting yourself in a v vulnerable position. These men are strangers and you know nothing more about them than what they have chosen to tell you.

He now knows where you live, what possessions you have, seen pictures of your kids, your car, where you put your keys etc.

So 3rd date tonight with Mr S and we are totally DTD! Excited and nervous!!

Or I know his FB so could message on there but he isn’t my friend and it looks stalky?

What if he says no? I’ll feel like a knob.

A man pretty much doesn't turn down sex with a woman knocking on his door to get it

rich that's a tricky one.
I've been married twice (second hubby ran off to an Eastern European to meet some bird) Had my third child with another man( who had an affair with someone on fb) . For some reason I picked tossers but still go on dates. I have my shit together financially but emotionally I look like I have,but I know i'm quite insecure. I can get a date and have had quite a few but i'm scared of being hurt again. I find I get quite anxious when I start seeing someone,not that they can tell,i'm not a big texter and i'm easy going. I suppose I push people away. As much as I try to 'get out there and find the one',i doubt now,for me,that will happen for a while. Hence why i'm going to do brave things for me( currently googling London shows :) ) So the lady you were seeing,no one knows what that person feels like deep down and how emotionally ready she is. It is shit that we have all got to an age where we perhaps carry alot of emotional baggage

leather it doesn't sound to me like you should see him, so let me (politely if I can) tell you to stop being a knob and move on, as you intended?

@user1466783975 I'm really sorry to hear about your past and can understand why you might keep people at arms length after that. I'm glad you're doing the working on yourself thing. I know after my ex last year I was in no position to be dating anyone hence taking a few months off and getting therapy. After being that hurt I just couldn't do a similar thing myself to someone else. A big problem of mine though is that I am a people pleaser and empath so I seem to draw those who are unstable and with emotional problems to me which isn't good for what I'm looking for.

I do think this last one may have thought she was ready but something triggered, she did comment when drunk one time that her ex really hurt her - sounds like he possibly cheated but who knows. Maybe she still needs to work through it.

My tonight date is so keen that we are meeting earlier than planned. And she just called and we chatted on the phone for a bit too (I don't do phones, this is a big deal ).

Obligatory toilet update to follow... 😬

It's fine rich,thanks though, the tossers ex's were more than four years ago and I've met great people on OLD since. I don't actually regret any of my past,infact I have fond memories,just the trust issue needs work!

beyond,have a great time and let us know :)

Hope it goes well @BeyondShattered.

I think many of us go (or went) into OLD not sure what we were looking for, and with plenty of emotional baggage. And it’s only through chatting with and meeting people that you can really figure out what you are looking for. In my case, I was just trying and seeing. But I met someone and I realised that I wanted him. I didn’t know I wanted a ‘proper’ relationship until I found someone I wanted to have one with. I was pretty sure that I was just looking to meet people, have some fun and just not be in the house on my own.

@Leatherandsilk you asked about blokes opinions on first date sex. Personally I think the opinion of somebody with those kind of double standards is not worth paying any attention to. Do what feels right to you at the time so you're happy with yourself and it's a bonus if that weeds out the tossers that disappear because you did or didn't.

Rich the problem is perhaps they don’t know, as you just described me. I don’t know what I’m looking for, right now I’d say dates and fun, but would I want to restrict it to just that if the “one” came along? I went out with someone for 3 months and it was only when he started pushing on wanting to meet the kids (move in in future!) that I thought “holy fuck no”.

Absolutely this. I went into OLD only with the intention of meeting some new people. Whether that lead to friendship/ random dating/ fun or a relationship didn't concern me at the time it was just about getting outside of my social circle and meeting new faces. As it happened I did meet someone who made me want to be in a proper relationship again. While we're taking things slowly, I could see myself living with him later down the line and yes the plan is for him to meet the kids at some point. He's definitely a holy fuck yes for me, but if you'd asked me when I first started OLD if that's what I wanted, I'd have definitely said no

Quick “not a serial killer” update!!

Well, I guess that's a positive Beyond!

Regarding the emotionally unavailable women thing (hold your hats, rant approaching!)

Although the media loves to push the idea of desperate women who are perpetually in danger of losing out on the possibility of a decent man to father their children/ save them from a lonely old age, evidence tends to suggest that women are far better at managing on their own than men. Women are better at cultivating friendship networks, for example.

Now, we're probably all familiar with that famous research that tells us that the happiest demographic is married men, and the unhappiest married women?! That's because contemporary marriage and family life is still set up to facilitate men, at the expense of womens' happiness.

Frequently, what I see is that men are far, far keener to get back into a domestic setup with a woman, because there's more in it for them. My ex was desperate to move in with me, and out of his bachelor pad (that felt all grim and unwelcoming because he never bothered to make it nice).Unfortunately for him, he let the red flags show a bit early, and I never let him. But never mind, now he's found somebody new with a lovely house, which he's promptly moved into, and she gives him lots of help with the DC every other weekend. Nice work if you can get it, huh?!

But....why would I EVER want somebody to move in with me?! So I could wait on them?!?! Despite all the banging on about equality, women still all do the heavy lifting in a relationship, so sorry, it's just not worth my while.

A nice, steady long distance liasion where we see each other every 1- 2 weeks would be my ideal, I think.

In other news, about a week ago one of my irons said he was going off Bumble, and suggested we meet. I said "Fine, I'm child free this coming weekend with nothing on", gave him my number, and then......nothing, till right now. Sorry, he's been busy, am I up for meeting up next weekend (no, got the kids) or the one after (a bit busy, and the one slot I have I want to keep free for Mr Urbanite, in the desperate hope he comes through)?

Hmmm....don't know whether to give him the brush off, or alternatively see if he can make one of my free midweek evenings, as long as he's happy to do most of the travelling (he lives about 60 miles away)? He did offer to come to me, to make up for not being in touch.

rich and leather - I want to date and have fun but ultimately looking for a relationship. It's good to have time to reflect and I am learning so much about myself from OLD. I now know that I was only with MrWow (9 months) because the sex was so good. I got restless in his company, couldn't relax. He was fairly fresh out of a long relationship and had barriers up. I'd avoid that scenario again. It's so hard, when there doesn't seem to be much choice, to purposefully ignore red flags. None of us come without baggage and I'm certainly not perfect so how can I expect someone else to be!
It used to be a stigma if you did OLD but now it's 'How come you are still here?' Oh the shame!

stubborn - Hmm, awkward. He's probably been seeing someone else and it didn't work out so I wouldn't bend over backwards to accomodate him. However, to keep a prime slot free for someone who might not come through?

@stubbornstains I guess that's true for many relationships although I was with my exH for 14 years and he was definitely the domestic goddess out of the 2 of us 😂
I'd live with the right man, but I'd make sure he knew the score beforehand

Stubborn hear hear to all of that! Every time I hear of some poor sucker of a middle-aged woman take on some loser male - as has happened to both my XH and my DB in the last few months, at some considerable cost to various DC in the equations, though not mine thank the lord - I move further and further away from the idea of a living together type relationship ever again. I really hope things continue for me and Mr Mad, but one whiff of ‘moving in’ or ‘partnership’ and I’ll be off like a shot. I’ll never be half of something again, just the whole me.

Yes I don't understand some men that want to move in within 4/6 months.
I often thought it was mainly the females pushing this.
But turns out it's the guys being happy to move in quickly esp if they can't cook or clean very well.
I have a relative that jumped into a serious relationship within a couple of months and now they are buying a house together.
He apparently wants to live with her 6 days a week. And goes back to his so called digs once a week to get whatever I guess.
Oh and turns out he hasn't been single long when they met... previously living with a partner.
I'm like well if.you wanna cook and clean.
She did day she wasn't doing his washing. but I suspect that will change once they share a house or now even.

Yes, unique my DB managed 5 months from the day my darling SIL died. I’m fucking livid with him. His poor DC. He’s perfectly able to look after himself, he just can’t be alone. So disrespectful

It just shocks me that people want to live together so soon.
Often one doesn't have their own home or is back with parents.
Needy? Lonely? Insecure?
These people never had a life outside of their pair. Were they just born.

tooold yes, that was my immediate assumption, too (and probably the right one).

Yeah, I'm annoying myself with this Mr Urbanite thing. I've been chatting to him for 6 weeks, and it's not so much breadcrumbing as, er....sandwiching?! We're exchanging essays every 1- 2 days. He's said he's up for meeting up, but there's always something...well, nothing wrong with being busy I suppose, plus he lives 150 miles away. I just want to be able to meet him ASAP, to see if there's something there, because online he sounds great. And the prospect of meeting him is stopping me from focussing on anybody else. This is just the position I didn't want to get into!

Loved up..
Or just happy to find another one.

My iron made a joke a couple of times about me washing or ironing his shirts. I shut it down pronto with a line about how I've resigned my previous post as WIFE Washing Ironing Fucking Etc and wasn't about to resume it -even though I actively like ironing-

Concur completely 're men and women particularly later into the 40s the attraction of having someone living with me is non existent.

Stubborn do NOT hold a slot for him! I spoke to MrSaudi for nearly 3 months, shared essays with each other, I had reams of pictures of him with his daughter, videos etc. Come the time to meet...too busy, wouldn’t be back for another 3 months. Then saw him back on Match and called it.

Clearly lonely and just wanted a voice on the line. Don’t fall for it!