I spent Sunday trawling the listings in my pyjamas, while eating leftover Chinese takeaway. It’s easy to become obsessive about the online dating search. It’s like the kind of feverishness that can grab you when you’ve sold one house and can’t find another. It becomes obsessive. Eventually, inevitably, you begin to reconsider places that you put in the No pile. I find myself scrolling through the hundreds of faces on screen, all of them saying (at least theoretically) “Talk to me – I’m here, I’m free, I’m looking for someone to love and it might be you.”
But maybe not this one: “I like my independence but I’d also like a certain kind of female company on my days off.” Or this one: “Living the dream working in a call centre and need something to come home to other than existential despair,” though he gets a comradely pat on the shoulder.
In online dating there is such a thing as a “kind lie”. It arrives in response to an unwanted approach, and it goes like this: “I’ve just begun seeing someone and am only here checking my messages but thank you, I was flattered, and good luck.”
I’ve begun using the kind lie myself. Sometimes it’s the only response possible. One man, one who closely resembled a fruitbat, sent me a detailed physical description of the woman he wants, right down to her fingernails (short, but shaped, and painted with clear gloss). He wrote to ask if I’d consider dyeing my hair red, and wanted to know if I was even-tempered. “The woman I’m looking for will make me smile continually when we’re together and will ensure that I miss her when we’re apart,” he wrote.
I tried softening the truth. “I’m flattered but sorry, I don’t think we’d be compatible; I wish you luck.” Ordinarily I wish people luck, though I didn’t to the bloke who wrote to assure me that being the bit on the side to a sexless union (his) would prove glorious and liberating. I got his picture back up and stabbed him in the heart with a chopstick.
Here was a nice looking man, based 12 miles away. I read through his page. Oh yes! Tick tick tick! Then came to this: “I have no objection to helping in the kitchen at weekends, but detest dinner parties and draw the line at home-baking.” (Okeydoke. Well, have fun, won’t you, drawing your line and being single for ever.)
I heard from a man who described himself as intellectual. “I’m widely and well-read, and can be relied on not to make embarrassing remarks in art galleries.” In a way he was saying the right thing, but my reaction was nonetheless to press the big red button and eliminate him. I may have pushed it twice, really hard.
Among the sea of Man Vanilla in the online dating world of self-description – “I’m down to earth, like DIY and watching rugby, like DVDs and a bottle of wine, a drive in the country on a Sunday” – the occasional brave, foolhardy man of strong individual flavour leaps out from the page.
“I’m looking for someone who has slept with fewer than six men. Apologies if this seems harsh, but I need someone I can feel morally confident about.” Sometimes it’s OK to ignore people.
Anyway, I’m very perky. I joined a new site yesterday and came across someone who’s 56, tall and broad-shouldered, and an academic of sorts. He has kind eyes and a nice mouth, a silvery patina and a look of benign friendliness. He’s slightly bedraggled, unmaterialistic, disorganised, clever. I had an immediate feeling, an intuition.
His profile made me laugh because it was so guileless and rubbish. I wrote him a brief message, a hello, and got a hello back this morning. “Hello to you, too,” he wrote. “You look very interesting. I see we have things in common. We probably have mutual friends. What a pity we’re 100 miles apart. But let’s talk some more. As it happens I’m going to be in your neck of the woods in two weeks. Lunch?”
I’ve just had a thrilling idea. He wasn’t really going to be in my neighbourhood. He made that bit up, because he’s had the same intuition.
