Earlier in the year I received a message from Sandra (of course not her real name). She was not living in Brighton yet but she was planning to move down in the spring and therefore, she messaged me to meet some new people before her arrival (I suppose that other girls on the site too).
I thought that she look quite nice in her pictures so, I answered her message a week or so later since I don't check my messages on dating sites often. It took her a couple of weeks to answer back and then, it took me another while to answer her back again.....
We exchanged messages for a long while, however, I prefer to meet up with the person soon rather than later because I think that meeting someone in real life is the only way to see if there is chemistry or not between two people and exchanging an endless amount of messages without knowing the person makes the situation more uncomfortable if, once you meet, there is no chemistry.
Finally, she was visiting Brighton one weekend and so, she asked me to go for a coffee. It took me a few days to see the message but finally, I accepted her invitation hoping that she would answer me back in time as I send my confirmation the day before her proposed date for the meeting.
However, she has yet to reply back confirming the place and time for the date. I don't blame her as I myself don't check my inbox every day, but if I'm expecting someone's confirmation, I would try... In any case, her first round of moving stuff down and packing took her longer than expected and she could not have made it to the coffee date anyway... I'm not sure if it was an excuse or not, but I confess that in a way, I felt bad about my late reply and hence, somehow responsible for the failed attempt to meet up... She apologized for not having replied in time and asked me for a second chance.
It took us a while to find a suitable time again since she was not living in Brighton and I was quite busy at the time. Finally, we agreed on a date and, this time, we exchanged phone numbers so we could both make sure that we would receive each other's messages on time.
The date came and we met up at the train station, it took me a while to recognize her as her hair was very different from her pictures. She told me that she had an appointment with the hairdresser in the morning and I, really hoped she did not go through all that effort just for the date. One thing is not putting any effort at all into your appearance on a first date like "my save the closeted lesbians' project" date or the "Polish-looking tall accountant" and another is to make TOO much of an effort... She looked nice but somehow different from her pictures... I guess that no one looks in real life as in their profile pictures...
Anyway, we walked down from the station to the seafront, we grabbed a drink and sat on the beach. She was very nice but somehow overly enthusiastic. It went to the point that I started to count in my head the number of times that she was saying "WOW" and "AMAZING" ("WOW-AMAZING!" combined scored double....) When the count rapidly passed double digits I decided to stop... What was I doing? I was judging her without even knowing her... For all I know she might be just a bit nervous and has not realized that she is repeating the same filler phase compulsively... I can also be socially awkward sometimes, particularly on a first date with a pretty girl, so, I decided to concentrate my focus on her and not on her annoyingly repetitive reaction to my words...... So, I asked about her.
She told me that she had a bad time coming out since her family was not very supportive, however, her little brother was also gay. It is funny that it is not the first time that I meet a gay or a lesbian that has also had another gay sibling. There is currently genetic research that is investigating this phenomenon since it seems to be more common than we think and it makes sense.
I believe that we are born this way, whether is genetics or the influence of hormones during pregnancy or a combination of both. Homosexuality is definitely not a mental illness, has nothing to do with having any kind of sexual trauma in your childhood or having a controlling mother. Developing feelings for another person from the same sex is how some of us are wired and denying those feeling to conform with the straight-oriented society is unnatural and cause a lot of inner pain to the individual.
Anyway, back to the date... After about two hours of talking about homosexuality, career changes and Brighton in general, the date came to an end. I had my housemate's Birthday party to attend and she had plans for the night with some friends so, we walked up to the clock tower and took different paths.
The first date was nice, although we didn't run out of conversation I think that we didn't particularly "Click".... But, what does "Click" mean? Online dating is a very strange way to meet up with people as in real life you tend to meet people gradually, but in the online world everything happens on dates and there seems to be quite a lot of pressure on them...
So, my evaluation of the date when as follows: She was very nice, very pretty, a little bit over-enthusiastic but a nice company overall... We didn't "click" immediately, but considering the awkwardness of internet dating in the first place, we had a smooth date and so I decided that if she wanted to meet up again, I will accept her invitation...
She messaged me for a second date I accepted.
However, it seems that since she was having a lot of problems in finding a place to live in Brighton and I was very busy., it was quite impossible to find a suitable time.... we arranged a date but she ended up cancelling because of a last minute "thing" that happened whit the relative with whom she was staying in Worthing... We re-scheduled again but for some other reason that I forgot we cancelled again...
Finally, we scheduled another date and, due to the fact that the day before I had another online date that went considerably better than the date with her, I was not "over-enthusiastic" about going on another date with Sandra...
She send me a message to confirm the date saying: "Do you have time to meet up or we can rearrange?" implying that she also wanted to reschedule and was not over-enthusiastic about meeting me either, so I replied that I had my housemates' graduation party, which was true and so, we agreed to re-arrange another date, that never happened at the end as I think that we both got tired of the endless exchange of messages to find a suitable time to meet up.
I recently read an article about dating and the FUCK YES/ FUCK NO rule that essentially said that if you are dating someone that is not completely excited about dating you, the most likely outcome will be to end up in a game-playing relationship with a lot of drama... in this case, we both seem to want a second date but perhaps just because the first one was "nice" but we both felt that it wasn't AMAZING, so, I think that in a way, it was better to leave it there... I hope that she has found love in Brighton and has solved all of her housing issues.
Picture taken in Brighton Beach (2014)
PS: Does love a first sight really exist or should I have tried to go on a second date with the WOW-AMAZING girl?
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