Date 4 - X

Welcome to date 4 of 26!

Guy Profile

Name: X
Age: 22/23
Height: Unknown
Occupation: Unknown

How I came to know X
A male friend of mine spoke to a few of his friends about my challenge and asked them if any of them would be interested in going on a date with me and one of them said yes and in fact from what I was told he was very interested because it’s not often that you get feedback after going on a date.

My friend sent me X’s number and asked me to call him. I didn’t for a while because I was busy but I eventually did. When I called him the conversation was awkward and brief. X said he was getting ready to go out and he’ll call me the next day. A week later I still hadn’t heard from him, so I got back in touch with my friend and asked him if X was still interested in going on a date with me. The next morning I saw a missed call from X. He had called me at 23:45, the night before. When I saw the time that he called I have to say I wasn’t impressed. I didn’t know him well enough for him to call me at that time. In fact I don’t even know the basic things about him that people tend to know after meeting someone for the first time.

Even though I was disappointed I thought I’d give him the benefit of the doubt and I called him that morning and unsurprisingly the phone rang and went to voicemail. I sent him a text message that evening and asked him if he was still interested in going on the date and called for the second time that day and again I was greeted by the voicemail. At this point I had given up on him. He sent me a message the next day apologising for missing my calls and mentioned that he’ll get through to me later to arrange a suitable time for us to go on the date. I replied and highlighted the times that I would be available but also made it clear that I could make myself available on a different day and time if needs be.

Since then I have not heard from him and I really do not wish to anymore. At first when my friend sent me his number I was quite interested in going on a date with X because I thought it was rather strange for a guy to agree to go on a date with me after being told of my challenge, especially as we didn’t know each other. When I found out his reason for wanting to do it I actually felt quite happy that I could help him out by giving feedback on my blog site. It reminded me of some of the reasons why I started blogging in the first place and I was quite chuffed because I didn’t expect to be in a position to help people out so early on.

Thoughts of X

Honestly, I’m happy that X showed his true colours from the start because I would have been upset if we had made plans to meet and he didn’t turn up. It happened to me once before and I just couldn’t understand why it happened because it was a second date with a guy that I had previously been on a date with and our first date went very well. Even on the day that this guy didn’t show up I was in communication with him whilst I was waiting for him and he said he was on his way, so when the play that we were both meant to be watching finished I was very confused as to why this guy didn’t show up. Even till today I’m still confused. I gave him several chances to explain himself, by the time I realised I wasn’t going to get one I just had to leave him in the past.

Even though I’ve been late to the 3 previous dates, I just couldn’t let somebody down by not showing up, especially if I know that they are waiting for me. I just couldn’t do it. I think it’s one of the most disrespectful things that you can do to anybody. If I don’t want to see someone, I wouldn’t make plans to see them. I think the time spent making plans is already a waste of my time if I don’t want to see the person.

Back to my thoughts of X, based on everything I’ve said above; X is definitely not suitable for me. I can’t deal with liars, pretenders and indecisive people irritate me. He may have a somewhat justifiable reason for behaving the way he did but the way I see it making false promises in any circumstance, most especially one where you do not have to is not plausible. If I ever meet him in person there’s a high chance that I will have less respect for him than any other stranger. Even if I meet him and he ticked a lot of my other boxes I know I will not be attracted to him for sure because of how he has behaved.

General thoughts/comments

I want to say thank you to all of my dedicated readers. To date I have more page views than I thought I would have. I appreciate the comments on this site and those I get in person. And to my friend who said going on a date with me whilst I’m doing this challenge is basically going on a dead end date, that’s not true. If I go on a date with a guy and I find out that I’m attracted to him I will make sure it progresses into something special if the guy feels the same way about me. I know I may come across as cold and as if my standard is too high but the truth of the matter is I can’t fall too easily for guys if I’m going on 26 dates in the year; it will make it very hard for me to continue this challenge.

As some of you may know I will be 23 in a couple of months. When I stop to take in the fact that I’m still single and I look around me at the type of guys that are still available and the ones that are taken I get slightly worried because occasionally when I meet someone and I think: he is definitely my type, 9/10 times the guy is taken or if he is not taken I later on find out that he is actually not my type. My mum and the rest of my family think it’s quite a serious issue that I’m still single and my mum would like me to get married this year. I don’t think she has considered how unrealistic that wish is but in my mummy’s eyes nothing is unattainable for her eldest daughter.

Thank you for reading date 4 of 26, if I have left anything out or if there’s anything that you’d like to know please leave me a comment below.

Thanks for reading My dating year – Date 4

Date 3 - Ricardo

Welcome to date 3 of 26

Guy Profile
Name: Ricardo
Age: 22/23
Height: 5.10/5.11
Occupation: Sales Assistant
Location of date: Browns, West India Quay, London
Date: 03/02/2012

How I met Ricardo

I asked a friend of mine to introduce me to a single friend of hers and Ricardo happened to be the guy that was single and interested in me after seeing my picture.

Communication duration before talks of date

Ricardo and I communicated with one another sporadically for about a month and even less the week before I went on date 2.  I suggested we go for a drink to make up for not being very responsive for a period of time.

Trying to communicate with more than one guy at a time is not easy at all. Luckily because of Blackberry messenger (bbm) I haven’t mistakenly called anyone by the wrong name so far and because I’m still at the beginning of this challenge I don’t have a lot of names to remember.

Pre-date thoughts of Ricardo

Most of my communication with Ricardo was through bbm so I didn’t really know what his voice was like for a while. He seemed cool. At the start I made an effort to keep his interest but because I had other things to do in my life and John to communicate with I made less effort after about 2 weeks. As I didn’t speak to him on the phone until a week before our date it was quite difficult for me to get a clear sense of what he is like as a person.  I did however get the impression that he was getting quite irritated by me at one point because he tried to engage with me on bbm a few times and I didn’t respond or I just gave a few words answers  so eventually he just stopped making an effort.

If I was in Ricardo’s shoes and a guy didn’t make an effort to communicate with me I would either think that the guy is not into me and try to leave him alone like Ricardo did or I would really question why he was not making much of an effort to try to get to know me and probably approach him to find out why. As I had not met Ricardo I think my inconsistent effort in getting to know him is understandable but I felt bad before I met him because he seemed like such a nice person that didn’t deserve to be played with.

Pre-date arrangement

Ricardo chose Browns at West India Quay because he likes the restaurant. We arranged to meet outside of Canary Wharf underground station at 8pm because that’s where he initially thought the restaurant was.

The Date

As usual the guy was on time and I was late. I just want to say even though it seems like I have a habit of turning up late to dates, I’m really not like that. It usually takes me 20-30 minutes to get to Canary Wharf from my house. What I usually do is walk to my nearest underground station and within a few minutes on the tube I’m there. On the day of the date I decided to get a bus to my local underground station. Unluckily for me 20 minutes later I was still waiting for the bus when Ricardo called to tell me he was at Canary Wharf station. I felt so bad when I had to tell him that I was still near my house. I could tell from his voice that he was slightly pissed by it but he was very nice about it and said he could wait for me or we could meet at West India Quay. I asked him to wait there for me because I’m not very good at finding places and I knew that if he didn’t wait there for me I would be even later trying to find the restaurant.

When I got off the phone with him I waited for another 5 minutes and the bus still did not arrive. The thought of having to walk to the station after waiting so long in the cold almost brought tears to my eyes.  I had to swallow the pain and just walk to the station because I just could not risk waiting another 20 minutes for the bus when I knew Ricardo was waiting for me.

As I walked towards Ricardo at about 20:30 all I could do was smile and say sorry over and over again. I could tell from the look on his face that because I seemed genuinely sorry, which I was any negative feeling that he had because of my lateness went away immediately. 

He was surprisingly taller and cuter than I thought he would be. I already knew from our telephone conversation that he didn’t have a deep voice so that wasn’t a shock. Even though he had jeans on he was dressed better than Ray and John. I can’t remember what type of foot wear he had on but it wasn’t trainers. I would definitely remember if it was. The shirt he had on was good enough for a date.

Me pretending to play the piano at Browns

We got on with each other right away; it felt as though we had known each other for some time. Ricardo had a - what you see is what you get - vibe about him; which I liked. He really came across as genuine and he was really lovely in so many ways. We spoke about a lot of things; we didn’t have any silent moment.  We discovered that we knew a lot of the same people and have also both failed our driving test several times so far. I really enjoyed his company and I could tell that he enjoyed mine too. He even gave me a hand massage, which was out of this world. Ricardo has skills when it comes to hand massage. I was so amazed by his techniques and the fact that he wasn’t shy to give me a hand massage. Some guys shy away from such things because they think it will reduce their masculinity. Male readers -the massage alone gave him extra points in my book. If you give a massage as good as Ricardo and a girl chooses not to like you for that reason alone there’s something terribly wrong with the girl and you should run a mile from her.

Me pretending to sing whilst pretending to play the piano

I really had a nice time with Ricardo and I would gladly say yes to hanging out with him. I just can’t see myself in a relationship with him because he is not quite where I would like my potential partner to be. He is still very happy living at home with mummy and daddy and I just don’t think he has developed some of the qualities that I’d like in my man. I would love to be friends with him if he is happy to be my friend and I can honestly say date 3 was definitely the best date so far.

Like always readers if there’s anything that you think I’ve left out or that you are wondering please leave me a comment below and I will reply as soon as I can.

Thanks for reading My dating year – Date 3