Matt Oakes on the date that stood him up and the outrageous reason why he did it.
So it’s official, dating sucks!
I naively threw myself back into the online dating game a few weeks back thinking, ‘well, how the hell else am I going to meet anyone?’ After the usual guys, who clearly just wanted to get their dick wet, there was one guy who I thought seemed genuinely interested, who lived near by and was up for meeting for a drink.
So, we arranged a time and a place to meet and off I went, feeling a little nervous at meeting someone new and fully expecting myself to be a complete geek throughout the whole evening. You know, dropping glasses, falling off my chair. I arrived at the bar early – which is most unlike me at all – and ordered myself a drink and I waited. And waited. As time went on there was no sign of the guy. Of course I start thinking he’s seen me and done a runner, or preferably of my ego, he’s been hit by a bus.
After a good 45 minutes of waiting I gave up and left. Stupidly, I hadn’t got the guy’s number and don’t have 3G (yes I live in the stone ages) so had to wait till I got home to message his to find out what the hell had actually happened.
I didn’t have to wait long to find out as I found a long drivelling message when I got in telling me he was no longer interested and was cancelling the date (a whole 15 mins before we were due to meet). His reason? He had done a background check on me before meeting me! What the actual hell!?!
Is that the future of dating? Should I be sending guys my medical history and dental records before we meet? Perform a full cavity search before we sit down for a meal?!? Before you think I have some kind of criminal past or I have bodies hidden in the basement, the sole bit of information that he had discovered was that I had had a friendship with a celebrity couple a couple of years ago which people blew out of proportion and twisted.
But this whole thing got me thinking, and not just about how much that cemented my hatred of dating and people’s neediness to couple up every waking moment, but why do we judge people so much on their past?
We all have history. We’ve all done things we are not proud of and things that are amazing and we will never forget. Yet others only seem to want to focus on the bad stuff. They don’t care about the child you saved from a burning building or the millions you donate to charity but they do care that you went to a sex party 14 years ago!
I say stop digging around into people’s personal lives looking for flaws, because you’re gonna find some, and then that will be all you can focus on and anything good that might have come from meeting this new person has all gone down the drain.
My past is my business and I dealt with that particular incident in private and have made numerous attempts to reach out and make amends. Did this guy make any attempt to ask me for my side of the story? No! But why should anyone care? It’s none of anyone’s business.
Lets get back to actually getting to know one another by asking questions. Not reading some gossip online or hearsay from a friend of a friend. It makes me wonder how many relationships/friendships are missed out on purely because someone has made a snap judgment based on what essentially is a pile of crap.
Plus on a side note NEVER be ashamed of your past, the good the bad and the fucked up because it’s what makes you who you are and if people aren’t willing to accept that then they aren’t worth knowing.
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