I was going to do another 'year of blogging' review of 2015 to mark the end of the year and the beginning of a new one, but then I thought, hell no. What people really want to read about, and what I really want to talk about, is dating.
The main thing I learned last year is that if he appears to be too good to be true, then he usually is...
This is such a cliché it's almost embarrassing to be writing about it. I had two instances of it last year, both with men in their late thirties.
The first, a man so into me, he wanted to be with me all the time, to have long conversations while gazing at the sky, lying in the park. I knew it was too good to be true but I went for it anyway. He turned out to be a narcissist of the highest order, obsessed with the reflection of himself he saw in me. He kept mentioning babies, knowing that I'm childfree, but his need for a mini version of himself was manifest.
The second was someone I'm still trying to figure out. He played the 'I'm not like other guys' card, which of course means he's exactly like other guys, only about ten times worse. He stunned me temporarily with his good looks and great conversation. He managed to wedge in feminism, tampon tax and abortion rights into the first hour of meeting him. Again 'too good to be true!' ran through my head.
And he was.
He didn't seem to like that I didn't get in touch after the first date and later the following week he told me off for waiting for him to do the asking. "Is that what feminists do?" he teased. We went on to have the obligatory WhatsApp flurry of messaging but the second date never materialised.
I can't help thinking that I was targeted for take-down by a guy posing as a feminist. This is apparently a thing - these guys are called 'macktivists'. I actually enjoyed the date I'd spent with him - and I'd deliberately managed my expectation so that I was happy with the one-off experience. I think my radar was telling me that was how it should end but I allowed myself to be flattered when I eventually heard from him again. Flattered into agreeing to his arrangement to meet up a second time, which of course never materialised. He'd just wanted to be in control, I think.
What a sorry state of affairs.
Everything is built behind smoke and mirrors in the dating world and although I've trained myself not to expect anything, I'm still taken by surprise by the shitty behaviour.
One of my biggest dating deal-breakers is ghosting. The minute I sense that a guy is deliberately not responding to texts or withholding any sign of interest, I'm off. Narcissist guy was a master of it, and even had the temerity to reappear from the shadows with some epic excuse for his silence which always involved some alleged misconception about our arrangements.
'I'm not like other guys' guy switched off his phone for the duration of the day we were supposed to meet for a second date and then blamed it on leaving his phone charger at work and having to buy a new one.
B-bye.
Narcissist guy did something that is another huge dating deal-breaker for me. He turned up drunk to a date. I now think that this is a form of relationship sabotage. He knew I was cooking a meal for him (I never cook!) and he knew I was excited about seeing him. So what better way to put a woman in her place than to a) not mention the leaving do you're going to after work, b) get totalled at it, and c) bring some godawful wine and lie about the 'real' bottle getting stolen while you were asleep on the Tube?
Some men like to be told off for this sort of behaviour so that they can rely on the whole 'I'm just a bad boy' schtick later on. I call it Naughty Boy Syndrome. It's taken me years to realise that they want me to get annoyed with them so that I end, or at least back off from the relationship, meaning they don't have to.
So I don't get annoyed.
I just blog about them. Ha ha...
First published on Wordpress as Dating Deal-Breakers: http://becauseicanblog.com/2015/12/30/dating-deal-breakers/