Online Dating/Dating

My love live is in a pretty sad state.

I am fairly sure that I am not in a fit state to even attempt a relationship right now, but the lack of options is still disappointing. A single date at this point would be pretty nice.

After some random chat with a few girls fizzled out, and after an abnormal number of the usual 'straight' girls and a few couples, I decided to deactivate my two online dating profiles, tinder and POF.

I came to the realisation that I am probably more likely to meet someone in the 'real world', which is actually really unlikely. 

I'm more likely to find a unicorn.

After this hit me, I figured I should just give up for a while.

Speed-Dating Update

So a couple of hours after posting yesterday, I received a text message from the cafe where we had gone speed-dating;

Excellent idea. I responded that my friend and I had actually been discussing the idea ourselves, and that I definitely would be interested.

I told Rachel that she will have to come along when they do hold one; think she'll be the one getting drunk next time.

Speed Dating

The idea of speed-dating comes up every now and then. After being single for a while everyone starts thinking of ways to get 'back in the game' and someone will always mention speed-dating with a giggle and we'll all laugh it off.

Last week I was walking through the Old Town when I saw a board outside a cafe that advertised speed-dating the following Friday.

A friend and I discussed it, had a laugh, then just left it at that. At some point during the week, what started as a laugh, became a plan; we added a colleague, rang the cafe and booked ourselves in for the event.

None of us had been before, so had no clue what to expect from the evening.

I also couldn't decide how I was going to go about the evening; I was about to have a serious of short dates with guys. Do I tell them I'm gay?

I decided that I would just go with it, everyone is up for a chat, if it comes up, it comes up, I didn't want to accidentally lead anyone on, but I didn't want to distance myself either.

I'm a naturally shy person, so I needed to go into this with some liquid courage. Not having a lot on money to waste, I did a work-time, lunch-time dash to buy some cheap booze from town, which was a great idea.

A less great idea was drinking most of it, plus the frozen cocktail already in my freezer, in such a short space of time. By the time I arrived at the venue, I was actually reasonably drunk.

Luckily for me, I am not an obvious, slurry, messy drunk, so it wasn't overly noticeable. It did give me that little boost that makes me extra chatty, which helped me through the evening.

The evening started with us getting our name-labels and sheet of paper for us to write the guys names down and what we thought of them. While waiting for everyone to turn up, we drank in the garden and mingled with each other a little bit.

The it was time to go inside and get the evening started.

I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. A few of the guys were super nice, and people I'd actually like to go drinking with. Not that that was the point of the evening.

In the end I think I only told a couple of the guys that I was gay, and here as support to a friend, and also to try something new. None of them had a bad response to it, but one of them made a couple of comments that I didn't think were particularly nice to make to someone you have just met. He said something about me fancying all the girls there, and then another thing about people 'thinking/knowing' they're gay if they have never slept with a member of the opposite sex.

Eye-roll. Face-palm. Head-desk.

Obvious answers to those comments, but he was my last date of the evening and I brushed it off, eager to get to my friends, and he clearly wasn't interested in me anyway, and wanted to go find his mate.

So the final bell went, we filled in the rest of our sheets and got ourselves another drink and went back to the patio.

I actually wish I had taken a photo of my piece of paper; I had filled it all in nicely, but indicated that I didn't wish to date anyone (obviously) so at the bottom I wrote that I was gay, but had a lovely evening anyway, and drew a little smiley face.

By this point, everyone seemed to be getting on well and enjoying themselves, so plans were made to go to a bar a short walk away. This is where the evening started sliding downhill a little bit. The bar was very loud, so it was hard to have conversations with anyone, and as more alcohol was added, a couple of people might have started grating on each other.

One of the girls I went with had left a little earlier, so me and my other friend decided to go and get a curry as neither of us had eaten all day, something I needed, still being somewhat drunk.

The cafe that hosted the evening shut fairly early, which is why we went to another bar, I think for future events they should maybe stay open a little later, because I think everyone was happier and more comfortable having a drink on their patio instead of yelling over loud music.

It is something I would do again. We were talking with one of the girls who ran the event and their plans going forward, they are going to alternate months with different age ranges, which is a great idea. I should have suggested they run a LGBT themed speed-dating event, I'm not sure how popular and successful it would be around here, but I would go to one.

I think I might email them and see what they think.

One other thought I had, the vain, ego-boosting part of me wants to know if anyone put me down as a match, sadly, I'm not going to be able to find out.

tinder

Sometime last week a good friend of mine, who is also someone I work with, and another work colleague got right into tinder.

Listening to them on the office was fairly amusing;

'No. No. No. Yes. No. Why's he got a girl in his pic? No. No. Headless, but he's got a nice bod. No. Yes. No. No. OMG I swiped the wrong way, how do I go back?!'

They suggested that I get in on it as well, which I ignored. From what I can tell, tinder is an app mainly aimed at one night stands designed for the heterosexual world. That was the reason I had ignored it for so long. I had no place there.

Dating apps for gay woman don't seem to exist. There is Her, but I've not really gotten along with it, and it doesn't work in the same way that tinder or Grindr does.

So on Friday night, just after enjoying a vegetable biryani, my mate convinced me to download tinder. So I sat there setting it up on my phone while we waited for the bill.

I started swiping a long, a couple left, a couple right, and in under a minute, to the amazement of my friend, and myself, I got a match.

I got home and in under an hour I managed 15 matches and had a couple of conversations on the go. I felt bad for misjudging tinder. I hadn't been expecting that many gay girls to be using it. Had I been wrong all along?

Not quiet. The girls I have been chatting too are queer ladies (phew!), and my matches seem to be a mix of gay and bi girls.

The problem with tinder, for me, is that a lot of the woman on my screen are straight woman looking for men. I suppose in a way it's not much of a big deal, if I swipe right for yes on a straight woman, the only way we are going to match is if she does the same for me, which isn't going to happen. So it is fairly harmless. But it does mean that a lot of my 'browsing' as it were, is probably a waste of time.

The other glaring issue is that despite selecting 'only woman', I still get a load of men being shown, who I obviously have no interest in.

Where my straight friends quickly make a decision to swipe whatever way they do, which is why they also keep swiping the wrong way, I have to go into peoples bios to look for clues. Some girls declare that they are gay or bi. Others don't, so I scroll through their pictures to help make my mind up.

If tinder could iron out these little bugs, it would be really good, until someone comes up with something better for the LGBT crowd.