My Tinderella story...

This story begins with a new phone application called Tinder. I thought at first that the app was very "straight" oriented when my housemates showed it to me but, I still opened an account to try it. I believe that you always need to be open to exploring new ways of finding love but, I didn't really enjoy the way of swiping profiles right and left. Choosing a love partner should not be based on a first look impression so, after a few right and left swaps and got bored and disenchanted.

A few days later, while I was struggling with a complicated statistical analysis for work, I got a notification from the app on my phone that I had received a message from a girl called Natasha. Sexy name I thought so, I opened her message:

- Hello Beautiful...

I like receiving compliments from an online strangers, but I replied with my "ready-made" usual online dating answer that aims to move the conversation to the offline face-to-face territory:

- Do you live in Brighton? Do you want to go for coffee sometime?

She answered that she did live in Brighton and that she rather skip the coffee and invited me to her house straight away...

I was a bit shocked but turned on at the same time.... to much intellectual work that morning and I needed a break...  But... Going into a stranger house in the middle of the day? It was only 12 and I probably should be thinking about getting some lunch.

She insisted:

- I've got an hour to kill, I think that you should stop questioning yourself and come and have an adventure. It will make a hell of a story... (exact message... but with some punctuation and grammar corrected)

WOW!!!.... That was direct! Is she a psycho....??? I should close the app, delete her conversation and block her right now... But... if I started writing this post is because I didn't...

She sends me a third message:

- We are young. We will die one day. I want to have interesting stories in mine...

Hell yeah! She is right. I was actually having an existentialist crisis that week (or maybe that month.... or maybe I been having it this whole year.....???) and I was feeling adventurous so, I accepted her invitation.

Google maps indicated that her house was only 12 minutes away. I got ready and made my way.

But... What I am doing??? I am going crazy???? Going into a stranger's house in the middle of the day when I have a complicated statistical analysis to finish.... and I also have to do my groceries... and do my laundry... and..... when I realized, I was ringing her doorbell.

She opened a sateen rope and she was already in her underwear. She was holding two glasses of a sparkling alcoholic beverage... Oh WOW!!! I was not expecting that when I woke up this morning...

Well, I have to be honest here and say that despite the exciting situation, the environment was not as exotic and luxurious as you might be imagining right now... The rope was likely to be from H&M. The glasses were plastic cheap glasses from a £1 shop and, the sparkling thing did not even qualified to be called wine...  But... What the hell... She was a very sexy stranger in her underwear... and she was inviting me in...

I took the glass and downed it pretty fast and then.... well, there was not much talking after that... (I leave the following hour open to your imagination...)

The pillow talk started with her telling me that she was waiting for a friend to come with a van to help her move to another house on the other side of town. She said that she had a pretty busy day ahead of packing and moving. I suddenly realized that the entire house was packed in boxes and only the bed seem to have been left untouched by the moving operation.

Well, I had my statistical analysis waiting for me at home, and my food shopping.... and, my laundry... and, my house chores... So, I cut short the pillow talk and made the first move to dress again.

For whatever strange reason, when I was at her place the thought of asking her if she was going to the gym kept prompting into my head. However, I never made the question as I didn't want to sound like a stalker trying to find out her weekly routines.

Before I left, she told me that she studied at the same university and department that I am currently working... and that she liked my Chemical Romance which was playing on the radio.... (as opposed to the Music-Nazi girl that declared her deepest hate for them on our first and only date).

We exchanged phone numbers, but we didn't contact each other again. However, how small is Brighton that I bumped into her that following Tuesday. Of course, she was at my usual body balance Tuesday class. I guess that my unconscious mind recognized her from the gym and kept prompting the question of whether she was going to the gym into my mind as a conversational cue or some sort of strange mind connection.

Now, I bump into her from time to time at the gym but we barely talk. For all I know she might have a boyfriend (since it says is bi in her Tinder profile....) or a girlfriend.... or she just wanted to experiment... or she might just invite strangers into an empty house every week... All I know is that at least I collected a very interesting experience... However, it would never have happened without the influence of another online date that I met before her (a story that I had actually not been able to write yet... but it will come soon).

Fuck Tinder, I'm single.

This was the story of my Tinderella... I had it once so, I don't think that I will ever go to a stranger's house again in the middle of the day. I've been there, I've done that and, I don't need a T-shirt to remember the experience!


Overall, it was an exciting experience, but the learning was that it is easy to find sex from a dating application where you swipe right and left based on looks but finding romance is a bit more difficult... and I want romance... Can Tinder deliver romance?

My coming out story...

In my last post, I took a stroll down memory lane and recalled my first online date. In this post, I would like to share my very long coming out story... 

I usually like to hear other people's coming out stories. They tend to have the ingredients of self-empowerment and pride that make a good story. However, not everyone has one, some people grew up in an environment in where they didn't need to come out as gays or lesbians... Hopefully, in the future, coming out will be a curious anecdote mentioned in sociology and history books, but for now, the society has not fully accepted same-sex love. Some coming out stories are really painful, but they all found the happy ending that standing up with courage and willingness to live truthfully to yourself and being who you already are brings.

Picture taken in an Art Gallery in L.A. September 2014.

My coming out story has two parts.... first I had to accept who I was and then, I had to lose the fear of what other people would think of me for being who I was. Both parts were a struggle with my own self and both parts of the story are closely connected.

The first part of my coming out story, discovering who I was, happened between age of 16 to about 21. When I look back, everything makes sense now, I was gay but I didn't know what gay was: "The dots only connect looking backwards, not looking forward..." (Steve Jobs, 'How to live before I die')... 

I was in denial of my sexuality because I thought that being gay was being a fat short-hair butchy woman. The society told me that gay was being an outlier runaway and I didn't see myself reflected in that stereotype.

I didn't know many gay people... the only lesbian that I knew was a walking stereotype. This is like the chicken and the egg.... Do lesbians create the stereotype or is the stereotype who creates them?. 

Slowly, I started to understand that a lesbian perhaps was not defined by her clothes and hair style, but by her love for another woman. Then, I started to allow myself to contemplate the possibility that I was maybe experiencing feelings for some women.... However, I tended to block those thoughts in my mind.... I was not supposed to be gay, I was supposed to be normal. 

Now looking back, I can see how I might have had some feelings for women in the past, but didn't really put them into context.... I blocked them and I didn't allow them to grow....

My final Aha-moment happened in my year abroad. I met a girl for whom I was starting to developed those feelings..... It was one of those strange connections that I was not able to label before, but this time it was more intense. Perhaps because I was far from home, or perhaps because I was also slightly older than before and ready to acknowledge my feelings... 

One day, after a trip to the supermarket, I saw her in an intimate situation with a guy, he was whispering in her ear in the corridor of our student accommodation and I was walking by....  Suddenly, I started to feel very bad and I rushed into my room, I closed the door and collapsed on the floor by the intensity of the emotion with all of the bags from the supermarket in my hands... that was my aha-moment. 

It was not just that I was jealous, that I was, it was more about the confirmation that I was gay and had romantic feelings for another woman... (by the way it tuned out that she was not interested in that guy at all....). This was a confirmation more than a revelation, I was in love and it was a girl.... I was gay!.... and now what?

The second part, telling other people, was actually harder. I was afraid of  being disconnected, of being rejected and being labelled as the media stereotype of a lesbian woman... 

I saw my sexuality as a weakness, as something to be a shame of and I was not ready to tell the world. When I saw Brené Brown TedTalk on 'the power of vulnerability', I identified myself with it. She defined shame as "the fear of disconnection... it is something about me, that if other people see I won't be worthy of connection." I could see how for me, being gay was something shameful, something to be afraid of... I was a shame of a part of myself and scared of being rejected.... 

Also, since I labelled myself as gay but I was still in the closet, I started to notice that my friendships were not growing and my connection with my family was getting weaker. This was because, as Brené explains, "In other for connection to happen, we need to allow ourselves to be seen". By not disclosing my sexuality to other people, I was not able to make real connections. By omitting myself, I was creating meaningless moments and that was hurting me and undermining my self-esteem. 

That feeling of isolation is reflected in what my friend calls the 'sad eyes' of closeted people. My friend said that if you look at pictures from before he came out, he was always looking small, fearful, shy and unsecured, he had 'sad eyes'. 

I needed to start slowly to come out to my friends, but it seemed that it was never the right time.... Facing death is how I finally overcame my fear of rejection and I stopped caring about what other people might think of me.

In my year abroad in Canada, I had a moment when all turned white, I was suddenly embracing a peaceful feeling and there was only one thought in my mind: 

"This is it...".

I was hit by a car in a rainy day in the corner of Nicholas Street and MacKenzie King Bridge in Ottawa... Luckily, it wasn't it.... but I had a head concussion and was taken in an ambulance to the nearest Hospital. 

When I was release from the emergency room, in where they kept me lying down with my full back and neck immobilised by the stretcher for hours, I was given a leaflet that it said something like: "You have had a severe head concussion, please don't fall sleep and be monitored as in the next 24h you can die.... "

I had a whole day to process that I could faint and die due to the head concussion or perhaps I might not wake up the next morning..... 

I thought about my life, how I was living it and what it was missing... in this case, love, real connections and honesty were missing in my life. That day, I understood that only YOU live YOUR life, and what others might think, at the end it doesn't matter. You need to collect moments of happiness without worrying about other people's judgements... 

The next morning when I woke up, I thought that I was given a second chance and so I decided to start living my life differently. The first thing to do was coming out of the closet. Luckily, I was 4,000 miles away from home, away from my friends and family, from all of the ties with the society where I grew up. I was in a country where no one knew me... and where being judge didn't matter. 

Picture taken from my room in Ottawa (2006-2007)

One night, after I recovered from my head concussion, my dizziness and some sleepless nights after my accident, I went to a Halloween Party and I met a Spanish guy. He was dressed as a zombie M&M with an adapted costume that he bought at the dollar shop at the Rideau Shopping Center and had decorated it with some fake blood. 

He was funny, I thought that he was gay and that perhaps, I could talked to him about my sexuality. Few days after, I bumped into him in the hall of the Student Residence, he was smoking a cigarette outside and I invited him up for lunch. We talked about the experience of being away, my accident and we made plans to go to a house party together later that week. 

When we met up for buying beer at the liquor store that following night, I decided that carrying 24 bottles of Molson Canadian was the right time to come out. I needed to talk to someone about my feelings and since it seem to never be the right time, I just jumped into it, so I asked him:

"You are gay, right?" I attributed the condition of being gay to my companion first. Classic psychological mechanism of dissociation with the condition until the other party confirms on its part for the fear of displaying their own sexuality first and being perhaps socially rejected.

He smiled at me and nodded

"I think that I'm gay too...." I said. That was the first time that I used the word gay referring to myself out loud.

He smiled again and said:

"You think but, you don't know?"

He had a point. I had not kiss a girl in my life and, of course, I had no previous experience of any kind of intimate contact with the female gender.... It was then when I realised that I needed not just to acknowledge my label in front of other people, I needed to act on it... I needed to explore my sexuality. Being in a foreign country was going to help... 

That night, I also told to a group of people that were friends with the zombie M&M that I was gay. It turned out that one of them was also gay, and another one was bisexual. They were completely OK with me being gay, and for the first time in a while I was connecting with people, I was being myself and it felt good.

The learning from my conversation with the gay zombie M&M was that I need to explore my sexuality.... and in a pool full of international open-minded students in their early twenties, there were a lot of opportunities... 

House parties, sports events and lots of gatherings organized by the University..... However, the girl that I had feelings for was gone... She only stayed for a semester in Canada. I send her an email saying that I liked her after accepting her Facebook friendship request and finding out that she was also interested in women.

She answered back saying that she also liked me but that it was too late.... she has back in Europe and carrying on with her life... fair enough.... you need to take the opportunities when they come along.... and now it was too late.... I was a bit heart broken, but it was my fault, so I accepted my part and moved on....  

One night a lesbian looking girl approached me in a party.  She was actually a friend of the girl I liked before, but she was not my type.....She was short and very intimidating, you could smell that she was gay a mile away due to her tough way of walking around campus and her masculine body language. However, she had an intense deep purple-violet-blue eyes that could easily catch someone eye..... 

She kept on approaching me in parties and one night, I was drunk and I decided that well..., she was not going to be the love of my life, but she was nice and funny and.... available..... So on a drunken night out she became my first girl experiment. 

It wasn't bad, but I just didn't have feelings for her...  This experience confused me more than bringing any clarity about my sexuality.... It was not the intense experience that I was waiting for.... It was more like the experiences that I had in the past with guys....

Therefore, I thought that perhaps, I was not gay after all... I wanted to not to be gay so much.... I could see now how my mind was already trying to justifying my experience: You tried with a girl and didn't really feel anything different that with guys.... therefore, I'm not gay after all.... so maybe I should go back to guys and my life will be easier..... 

A week later from that first girl-experiment night, I was in a party again. I had a few cocktails and got a bit drunk..... My temporal alcoholism probably was due to the fact that I was having a bad month: the girl that I liked said that she liked me too, but she it was too late now.... I was feeling like an idiot for not acting on my feelings at the right time.... then, I tried to explore my sexuality with a girl but didn't go as expected.... so, I was very confused and anxious about my sexuality and love life in general.... 

I started dancing with this French boy. He was cute and tall, with lovely hair and nerdy glasses, a bit like the French version of a mix between Clark Kent and Harry Potter..... 

The night ended up in my room, I needed to see if I wasn't gay after all.... But what were the odds that it turned out that the French guy was in the completely same situation. He was also gay and was trying to see if he definitely didn't like women at all.... as you can imagine the night was not very promising... 

After he left my room, I decided that ending up with a gay guy was perhaps a confirmation sign that I was gay... from all of the available boys at the party, I chose the closeted gay... also, having feelings for a girl before was definitely a sign that I shouldn't ignore.... just because my experiment with a girl didn't work out, it didn't mean that I was not going to develop feelings for another girl in the future.... 

At the end of the day the 'feeling it or not' it is a matter of having feelings for the person, and I have to confess that I did not have feelings for my first girl experiment... I guess we all made mistakes... The moral of the story this time was that I needed to experiment with a girl that I had actual feelings for and stop messing around....

For a while, I was doing my thing without getting involved with anyone.... I started to go swimming.... and then, when I was doing my thing... without any plan I met a French girl.... 

We bummed into each other at house parties and at the poll quite a lot... She was very nice and had a nice conversation. We always ended up the swimming session chatting at the sauna.... or we were in a house party we would talked for a very long time.... she had the gay vibe and few of my friends confirmed it too.... 
I wanted to make a move.... Once I tried to shift the conversation to the gay zone, but she brought up her boyfriend... So, finally, I decided that perhaps, she was not gay and she was just friendly and that I was not going to make a move and ruin a nice friendship....

However, in my last night in Canada, she knocked on my door at about 4 am, I was still packing.... she had been wandering around my building since we said goodbye at the bar around midnight. She looked at me and hug me.... it was her way of telling me that she also had feelings for me.... 

At that moment.... I understood how the girl from the first semester felt when I send her the email telling her that I loved her.... it was too late... It was too late to see where this could have gone.... we were both coming back to Europe and we both had lives back home... 

We said goodbye and pretended to keep in touch for a while.... Thanks to Facebook, I know that she is now married..... to a GIRL!!!! I am very happy that she finally came out of the closet and left her boyfriend....

The lesson from this event was that we always regret what it didn't happen, and one more time, once the opportunity is gone.... it is gone...!!!

My year abroad was over and coming back home was going to be another story.... I had to face the people that I grew up with and tell them that I was now gay....  Well, I was gay before, but I was now ready to BE gay. This was going to be tough, so I started slowly with my school friends... Most of them were very understanding, however, they asked me the typical questions that we all get when we come out.... 

I remember that one of my friends said to me: 

"How can you be gay if you are way more feminine that I am?"  

To what I answered:

"Sexuality is not a matter of femininity or masculinity... gender identity and the conformity with the traditional gender roles in society is different from being gay or straight".

After given few speeches similar to the one quoted above among my friends, I told a few of my university friends too... But I don't think I told all of them. Sexual orientation among early-twenties university students tend to be often a topic of conversation so, I knew that any gay gossip would spread quickly. With some people I just acted as if it was assumed that I was gay and didn't do an official statement. 

Since then, I've been telling people when I meet them only if the occasion comes up, but I usually try not to make a big deal out of it... Brighton is actually a great place to live, most people is gay or gay friendly and no one judges you...

Regarding my family, I didn't tell my parents straight away. I was waiting to have a stable relationship to introduce it as something normal, but unfortunately, I didn't have too much luck in love during my first years of being gay. So, decided to put myself a deadline to come up to my parents: My 25th birthday!

Every Sunday before my deadline, when I was driving to my parents' house for lunch, I found myself going through my coming out plan in my head.... thinking that "today is the day, I'm going to finally tell them"... But whenever I opened the door and started to chat with them parents, it never seem to be the right time, it was never the right conversation nor the right moment...

One Sunday afternoon, when I was about to leave, I told my mum. 

She was sitting in front of her computer and I said that I was gay as if I was telling her that I was planing to have pasta for dinner.... without making any kind of speech or changing my voice.... as it was something very normal and did not deserve a special moment.... 

She lifted her gaze and said:

"Does this mean that you are not going to have children?"

She was worried more about not having grandsons than my actual partner.... I replied that one thing didn't mean the other and left...

I gave her a whole week to process and the Sunday after we had a lovely conversation over tea. I ended up crying but she was very supportive. I didn't tell my dad directly, but I know that my mum did that for me. 

My parents tell each other this kind of stuff, and he seems supportive. We watch movies whenever I go to visit and he lately keep insisting on watching gay theme movies. I guess that it is his way of saying that it is OK. 

At the end of the day, love for children is unconditional and if they love you, they will love you no matter what.

Finally, after my year in  Canada, and due to the fact the I didn't know that many gay people in my home town, I turned to the online dating world... so, here we go back to my previous post: "My first online date". 

I have had some off-line dating experiences too and I have being out on the scene, usually with the zombie M&M that I met in Canada.... and sometimes with other gay men too.... it wasn't until recently that I started to have lesbians friends... so the online world has been a big part of my dating life, possibly due to my insecurities in approaching girls out of a gay context... Maybe when I run out of online dating stories I will start with my off-line ones... but for the moment, I still have a bunch of stories on my pocket yet to be told... and the ones that are happening now...

Apologize for the long post...  but coming out was a long process for me...

My first online date...

First are always special... first words... first day at school.... first love.... first kiss..... first time...... first broken heart... first... online profile.... and first online date....  So this is the story of my first date with someone from the cyber-space....

I was so scared.... meeting someone online.... what kind of pervert uses internet to meet people? That was January 2008,... yes, I opened my profile as a part of my new years resolution of 'finding love'.... so precisely, on the 2nd of January 2008, I created an account on GaydarGirls... In 2008 I was 22 and I was so naive....

I thought that it was going to be the year of love.... How wouldn't I believe in love when No One from Alicia Keys was on the top charts? (one of the best songs about love ever written).... I started to chat with few girls, and soon discovered that the website was highly uncomfortable to chat: limited number of messages that you can send and, limited number of profiles that you can visit... Thank God that mobile applications have solved that out.... but well, it was 2008 and there was not such a thing as a smart phone yet....

She was definitely not my type: blond and blue eyes. I tend to like Mediterranean looking people and even though she was from the South, she was looking very Germanic.... I only accepted to meet her because we seem to had a friend in common, more of an acquaintance for me.... and actually for her too as this friend in common was the new girlfriend of her ex-girlfriend... anyway.... I was 22, highly inexperience in dating girls and recently out of the dark closet.... I still had some issues accepting my sexuality and I needed to explore a bit more the field....

We decided to meet up in town, I was so nervous, thinking that I was not going to recognize her from the pictures, or that it was going to be a fake profile...... but she arrived.... She was very pretty.... we went for a drink in a very cheap gay bar and had few Heinekens there...

I think that we did go to few more places after that... but my memory is a bit blurred.... the only moment that I remember after that is when we took the night bus.... we went to the back of the bus and started to make out.....

OMG! what I was doing??? Making out with a girl in a public transport??? What if someone saw me???...... I was still on that phase of coming out... anyway, the alcohol helped me to..... not give a f*** about the rest of the world and enjoyed my date....

She was a brilliant kisser and had a very interesting conversation. She was an art student, passionate about art and humanities.... and I was 22 and looking for an adventure....

The date ended up in a bus stop as I had to catch another night bus home.... I don't remember the details, but we agreed to meet up again... and so we did.... we went to an art exhibition, and for ethnic food, and we also went for drinks a few times... and we had sex with 'The origin of love' from Hedwig and the Angry Inch on the background... (my very best favorite movie of all times....) I was still too scared to fully enjoyed it but she made it easy and guided me a bit in the art... although, I had needed few more like her to gain confidence in my moves.... I owned her a great deal of self-esteem in my fully out lesbian persona....

As you might guess... it didn't work out.... I received a Scholarship to study at the University of Sussex in Brighton and left.... and well... it was too new to even consider anything further.... so it died.... but I still remember it with a smile... we are still friends on Facebook, although we don't interact much, I still like to think that we are friends....

I wish her the best... I think that she got a full time girlfriend and is working well and I'm very happy for her as she deserves to find love! As for me.... well.... I'm still in the search on the cyber-space....

As everyone that I've met, she taught me something... and I don't think that I would be fully out and happy with my sexuality without her help while I was going through my 'teen' lesbian days.... so for all of this,

 THANK YOU!!! You were my first online date and as you can see from this blog.... not the last!!!

Love is not about finding someone to fix you....

This story, as all of the others, starts with an online message on OkCupid. I have to say that since they had the block on Firefox, and therefore, they were on the news and all over Facebook, I've noticed an increase in the number of profiles on the site.

I guess that the free publicity that they got has also been good for my online quest on finding love, as just that week I got several messages from newbies on the site.

One of the girls that messaged me was Kat: a 28 years-old bisexual that, as everyone else in the online world, was looking for love. Initially, I thought that she was not my type, but I'm open to give a chance to everyone since love is unpredictable and unexpected...

It took us a while to actually meet up. I been having a very busy month and she also had exams, but we finally agree on meeting up for coffee on the North Lanes.

We went to a coffee place near Komedia, she offered to go to the bar and order for both of us and so I asked her to bring me a herbal tea. It took her a good long 20 minutes to come back from the bar, but she finally sat down and the date started. She was tall, not too tall, but taller than me, dye bleach blonde, blue eyes and plain dressing style.

She was wearing a two decades old purple snickers that reminded me to those I had when I was 8 (how cute...). She seem not to be counting calories these days as she ordered a tall ice-latte with cream on top, actually, probably she has not been counting calories over the last decade... but I don't mind love-handles....

 We talked about sports, I recently bought a new bike and I've been cycling across Sussex, so I was telling her about my latest cycling trip. She seem to be very interested, she told me that when she first moved to Brighton she was a member of a gym and she wanted to go back to exercise again.

She also told me that she played music before, and she wanted to play music again. She also told me that she was a smoker, but she wanted to quit..... I could see that she was talking too much about her ideal self, the person she wanted to become... and too little of her actual self, the person she actually was....

According to Ayala Malach, "Why we choose the lovers we choose", we fall in love with someone who can see us for who we want to be, who can see the best version of ourselves... however, I think that trying to find someone who can fix us is not the objective....

How many times have my housemate told me that she will quit smoking once she gets a boyfriend?..... well.... you should quit smoking for yourself, exercise for yourself and explore your creative side for yourself....

 Love is not about finding someone to fix you.... You might fall in love with someone that sees you under a nice light, but you need to become who you want to be for yourself, don't expect that a magic prince/princess is going to come and solve everything that is wrong in your life....

The date ended up at the beach with very little conversation. I decided to leave, make an excuse, we were not really feeling it and I didn't wanted to force it, so I said that I had to go somewhere else.... she told me that she will call me.... but again we both knew that it was not going to happen.... oh... well.... one more OkCupid disaster I guess....

Other's people success stories - Monika & Jo

After all my failures, I feel that I needed to talk about other people's success stories to keep my faith up on the online dating world. So, here we go...


In the early summer of 2011, I received a message from a girl who was new in town. She wanted to meet people and send a very generic message. I answered as I liked the idea of meeting several girls at once, you double your chances....

She invited me to a lesbian dinner in a Mexican restaurant with other lesbians that she had met online. I arrived early and saw a lesbian at the bar. How did I know that it was a lesbian? Well, her short boyish hair was given away her sexual tendencies, and her clothes too....

I introduced my self and waited for the rest of the group. We were finally about 6, all lesbians, all internationals (it was almost the UN there... a girl from Switzerland, a girl from Colombia, an a couple of girls from the UK...)

One of the British girls, Jo was the one that invited me. She seemed to know everyone and acted a bit like the host of the night... She was pretty and very enthusiastic. We had dinner and then went for a drink after. Everyone was very nice, but unfortunately no one was my type.

We decided to meet up again. In our next meeting, the Colombian girl, Monika, and Jo, started to make out, I did not see that coming.... Monika was around 38-39 and Jo was 10 years younger and had definitely not the same dressing style... but well... whatever floats your boat, right?

We kept in touch for a little while and I saw the relationship growing.... they went from dating to moving in together, to start up a business together and to.... marriage! They got married this week and I am very happy for them.... their success make me think about the limitations that we put in ourselves when it comes to choose our ideal partner....

I tend to look for girls my age, or 5 years up or down... I call it my 'born on the 80's rule', as I was born in 1985, therefore everyone born within my decade is potentially datable and on my online profiles I limit the age to that....

Should I open my search limitations? What is the limit in age difference? is there even such a thing as a limit in age difference when it comes to love?

The Music-Nazi girl with the French name

This story begins as many others with a message on OkCupid. We exchange a couple of messages and she asked me for my Facebook.

I usually don't like to give my FB to random people on the Internet. It's not a privacy issue, it's just that I don't like to have people on my Facebook that I don't know or that I met only once because then I feel bad when I delete them on my annual FB spring-cleaning (I actually never have done this, but I like the joke ....).

I guess that Facebook these days has become the place to do a bit of research and background checks to make sure that the person we are talking to is real and is not a serial killer.

According to my Chinese housemate, there is a word in Chinese that describes the online background search and the translation is something similar to "Human MEAT search". Let's be honest..., we all have snooped on someone's profile before, either to check their relationship status, their sexual preference or their pictures.

When I added her on Facebook, I saw that my ex-housemate was among her friends. Could you guess how did they meet?... Through OkCupid, of course... Brighton is a small place... and the dating pool is limited.

Back to the story, we decided to meet at the White Rabbit. She send me a message saying that she was going to be a bit late and that I should order her a pint.

A pint? Should I get a pint too? I was feeling adventurous and I asked for a Krononnberg top... Let's see where the night takes us...

She arrived and of course, she didn't look like her pictures at all... but she was still nice. The conversation didn't flow much at the beginning. On top of the first date awkwardness, the couple in front of us were passionately making out creating a very uncomfortable atmosphere. Also, the music from the open mic was quite loud preventing us from speaking more than a few words in every communication attempt. The poor early-twenties singer with a guitar on the stage became the target of her music-with-instruments rage.

She told me that she was a Music-Nazi (her words, not mine) and then she asked me about my taste... after that statement it was difficult to confess that my totally gay camp playlists include Disney soundtracks and Broadway musicals so, I gave her a vague answer:

"I like everything really..." I said

"But... you must have a favourite type. What is your favourite band?" She asked.

I decided to show my rocky side, perhaps because she was wearing a leather jacket (was that a prime? excuse my psychological reference...) so, I answered:

"Well... I'm listening to My Chemical Romance a lot these days...."

Her face made a funny expression.

"My Chemical Romance is SHIT!!!! She said (exact words).

EXCUSE ME..... WHAT???? If you go on a date, the first rule is to be polite, and even if you don't like their music, don't tell them that is S***T in their face. I decided to take her comment as a dark humour joke and moved on.

She only liked electronic music and found it completely horrifying that any music with real instruments... The start of the date at that point turned from not very promising to a let's finish my drink soon and leave. But it got worst...

"How do you feel about drugs?" She asked me in these exact words.

What kind of person ask that on a first date?

Well... actually, once a girl asked me if I had any kind of illegal addiction on a first date so it might be an addiction routine check for some people...

Anyway, she was being very serious and I was a bit shocked. and didn't know how to answer that, so again I gave her a vague answer:

"Well... I don't know... I mean... I don't usually do drugs, but I don't judge people who do it..." These words gave her the excuse to rapidly add:

"Good, I DO drugs... My life is all about drugs" Well, these were not actually her exact words, but she said that she couldn't wait for the weekend to get absolutely fucked up.

At that point, she had finished her pint while mine was still almost untouched... She pointed that out and said that she was a fast drinker and she went to the bar to get another. I guess that she realised then that I was not the party buddy that she was looking for in the cyberspace. We both felt a lack of connection... So, I needed to finish my pint in order to end the date.

I finally manned up and drank my pint... Gosh! I was already a bit tipsy.... but not enough to prolong the uncomfortable talk. We decided to go and we walked in the same direction. When we got to the corner of my street she said:

"Well..., I'll call you!. I owe you a drink...."

I like when they take responsibility for the next call, or in that case for not making it.

Anyway, I guess that this was another failure in my quest for finding love in the online pool of Brighton... but I like to be positive and think that statistically speaking, I have one less date to go before finding the right date... However, I'm starting to feel that online dating might not be the way to find love...

 Should I concentrate on the offline world?

Picture taken in Vegas (2014) that reflects how I felt after my date with the Music-Nazi girl

Unnamed frog part IV - Too COOL for School

This is a story about an average first date followed by a very bad second date....

We contacted each other at the beginning of the summer. I think that we did it through OkCupid... but I'm not sure now....

We met at the Fortune of War a legendary pub in the Brighton seafront. I arrived earlier and sat outside, she arrived 2 minutes after and went straight to the bar. I saw her when she passed by, but as every time I'm meeting someone from the Internet, I wasn't sure that it was her....

She texted me from the bar, and I confirmed that I was outside, then she finally approached me. She ordered a Koppaberg, which for me is a drink that limit itself to one only drink, as the first drink is amazing if is chilled, but the second one becomes unbearable as you get fed up of its sweetness... anyway, I ordered one too, mirroring my date's drinking choice and accepting that the date will be limited to one drink then.

She was not the most pretty girl I have ever seen, but she was cheerful and nice. Tall, brown long hair, round hazelnut eyes, few tattoos on her arms, but nothing too butchy, and main stream clothing style with a hint of surfer and hip-hop from the 90's. We talked about trips and adventures, a very common topic on a first date....

She told me that she recently came back from spending some time in 'Cali' (apparently cool people call California 'Cali', but you won't be able to call it Cali if you haven't been there and got integrated with the cool kids...) She called California 'Cali' (no comments....). We had a good conversation about trips, university, self-development and Brighton... However, as expected, after the first Koppaberg, the date was over, so we decided to say goodbye and walked in different ways...

She texted me within the next 5 minutes to tell me that it was a pleasure to meet me and that she would like to see me again. I thought it was very cute to receive a message right after the date, and although I wasn't sure that we had a lot of stuff in common, I accepted the invitation to meet up again.

She invited me out on a Saturday night with her mates, we  were going to meet up in R-Bar. However, when I was living my house she texted me telling me that her mates were a bit drunk and that it will probably take her still 15 minutes to get there... Despite of her text, I decided to make my way to the bar anyway. After all, I was already ready to go out and waiting at home makes me sleepy and increases the chances of deciding to cancel and I was not too convince on the first place about her....

As I had time, I went to the cash point to get some cash (very optimistic from my side), I didn't know if we were going clubbing after and the night was young... By the time I arrived to the bar (15 minutes later than the projected time), I received another text from her. 

She was still at her mate's house but she was calling a taxi now, so it will be only 15 minutes more... I decided to grab a drink and wait at the bar, and then wait a bit more, and then wait a little bit more again.... when I was about to leave, she texted me again saying, sorry, sorry, sorry, we are on the cab, we will be there in 5 minutes.....

I am usually a time nazi,  I value my time a lot, a someone making me wait really annoys me, but I decided to be a bit more tolerant and wait, I understand that when people are drunk, it is difficult to moved them to a bar and it might not have been her fault...

She finally arrived, but in a state of drunkenness that did not corresponded with the time of the night... after all it was only 22 pm, but she wasn't able to talk properly already,... However, that did not stopped her from sniffing popper every 2 minutes and looking at me as if I was a party popper....

I do go out and have fun.... I do like to dance and enjoy the night, but if I'm meeting someone, I try to stay sober enough to be able to maintain a bit of conversation... on top of that, she ignored me for most of the time that I was on the bar, and I ended up talking with her friend, who had recently had a baby, but was free for the night looking to get shit face and party hard (everyone has different priorities in life I guess....)...

At some point, her friend split a drink on my coat and when I went to pick it up, she (unnamed frog nº4) said:

- Are you leaving? I would understand if you are....

I wasn't leaving, I was just picking my coat from where the drink was spilled.... after all she arrived only about 20 minutes ago.... but.... actually... she gave me an opportunity to scape and I took it....
- I said, well, yeah, I think that I'm going to leave now...

She did not put any resistance and let me leave.... she made an attempt to apologize by texting me the day after, but what starts with the wrong foot... its difficult to change... so that was the end....

The learning of this story.... ? I'm not really sure, I guess that it is just one more unnamed frog to the blog.... I feel that every time that I make the effort to meet someone and doesn't work I lose a bit of my faith in finding love, but without keep on trying, you won't find it... will you? Should I stop trying?

A date with me...

I believe that life is a continuous battle with oneself... If you are not able to find something in life, is not because is not out there, but because you are too blind, too narcissistic, too uptight, too... YOURSELF to find it...

I believe that we are the only one who is stopping us from finding what we want and therefore, a self-check might be needed if you are not obtaining the desired results... so here I go...

I feel that I am over-judging all my dates from a self-centred, narcissistic point of view... So, I would like to try to imagine how would it be to go on a date with me from their point of view..... Maybe they are not the frogs.... but I am... I wish I could collect first-hand feedback from them.... but I guess that even if I could, people are too polite anyway to say what they think...

I will try my best to find all my flaws... and maybe after this exercise, I will be more empathetic with my dates' experience and I would be able to understand them a bit better... Is it me the problem and reason that I am still single....?

The ME Story...

I guess that the first physical characteristic that you might notice is my height... or lack of it... I am 5'3 (160cm) and I never considered myself a small person until recently I one of my dates pointed it out ... (thanks for undermining my self-confidence there... I wonder why we didn't work out... but that's another story that I will write soon...)... I have also been told on several occasions that I have big eyes...

I always love this comment because big doesn't mean pretty... but yeah, I have big dark eyes.... and I have also been told that they have the power to penetrate into someone's soul... just like a superhero (obviously the person that made this comment had me in high regard...)... but sometimes I do feel that it is true as if I have ever felt a connection with someone it was always by looking deep into their eyes and feeling a bit of a tingling in my heart....  but I guess that this is universal for everyone that has ever find him/herself into someone's eyes...

Apart from my eyes, people also tend to complement my hair, it used to be light brown with a hint of reddish under the sun, but these days are looking darker and duller (I guess that I haven't found the right combination of hair products for this humid and cloudy weather yet...)...

I think that they made these comments about my big (not pretty) eyes and hair in the same way that people talk about the weather, as a distraction mechanism to ignore the elephant in the room.... in this case, my Jewish-like nose...

Someone told my dad that originally my family name came from Israel and I think that my nose proves this theory... some people do have a thing for this type of nose... a guy once was fascinated by my nose and asked me if he could bite it (I love to chat up lines of straight drunk guys on clubs....) also, several Chinese friends told me that in Asia people go through plastic surgery to get this type of nasal bridge... On the contrary, here in Europe, we go through surgery to get rid of it... I guess that beauty norms change among different cultures... (Should I move to China...?)

By the way, I guess that at this point of the blog, you have also realised that I tend to 'exaggerate' a bit my comments... I don't call it exaggerating, but just having a very fictional-oriented way to describe events.

I tend to caricature reality in an attempt to make it more interesting and happy, so whenever I say that someone was freakingly tall, like the Polish-looking accountant in my story, I mean that they were very tall.... I've also been told by a reader that knows me in real life that my nose doesn't strike as much as I say.... but I like to create a parallel universe in my mind a bit like Tim Burton's universe in Big Fish...


In terms of personality... well, I think that I change among situations and company, so if I am very nervous because I like my date I probably will talk more than I should and will interrupt the conversation more than I should...., something that according to the infinite number of self-improvement books that I have read, is the worst thing that you can do...

I guess that unconsciously I want to give a good impression by commenting on things, making jokes, etc. but it ends up having the opposite effect... So, here we have one problem I need to keep working on Shutting myself up and practising active listening...

I also tend to pre-judge people but hate when people do that to me... so these days I'm also working on that... every one of us has so many layers and complex personalities so, forming an image about someone's personality from one small piece of information is not a good practice...

How many times have I been surprised by people that I thought fell into a category but suddenly discovered a whole new side of them...? and how many times I have received a comment from a date about me (such as... you are this way or you have this kind of personality....) and I thought that the person has very narrowed minded as they judged me without knowing me...?

I guess its just human behaviour, we like to classify people in our minds, to create shortcuts to understand the world around us when actually people are dynamic and have a lot of different layers and sides that we miss to perceive because we are too busy imposing our own simplified version of reality into their personality...

Another thing that my dates probably have noticed is that I don't know how to put a poker face, I am quite the opposite, you might be able to read my thoughts through the combination of my muscle movements from my face, just like Paul Ekman does in its book Unmasking the Face...  and sometimes my expressions and my real feelings get mixed up giving the wrong message (for example, my face maybe saying 'no' when my mind still processing the situation but still haven't decided on the answer).


I do smile a lot, and that is always good... people have told me before, that I give a good vibe because I smile a lot.... even during spin classes... (is it weird that I smile during exercise...?)

I also like to compliment people from the bottom of my heart, so I tend to make complements about whatever I think is nice... but I don't know how to react when they make a compliment about me... and I probably put my "confusion face".... or I say something completely unrelated or change the subject, for example, if I receive a compliment about my clothes:

       - Nice shirt...
 I will always tend to answer with the price I paid for the item (Why do I do that...?), so my answer will be something like:

       - Thanks, I bought it at half price in that shop on the corner of.... and when I saw it I thought to myself.... but then.....

Too long... I should have just smiled and said thanks..., but I don't know how to take a compliment.... especially if it comes from a pretty girl...

Furthermore, even if I am super good at reading situations and external behaviour when it comes to signs of someone liking me or not... I am a mess...

I overthink people's signs to the point that they lose their meaning and I get very confused... so if you ever go on a date with me and like me... you need to be explicit and say: I LIKE YOU because I become socially retarded whenever I am around someone I find attractive...

I guess I might not be the best date that someone can ever have... I never buy flowers or chocolates as I always overthink how the other person might react... and possibly I overthink too many situations to the point that I lose a lot of opportunities.....

Also, despite the fact that I seem to be very confident in my everyday life, I am super shy when it comes to externalising my feelings, and I know that if you don't put yourself out there, you won't ever find if the other person feels the same way... but I either not say anything or if I do... I do it in a very awkward and retarded way...

I guess that when it comes to love and feelings I am a complete idiot....

Self-portrait taken in Brussels (January 2012)

So... I guess that after all, a good part of my spinsterhood is due to me... and not to the amazing and beautiful women that I have met online... "It's not you... it is me...." (....if I got a penny every time I heard this.... or I have said it....).... but this time it might actually be true...

Unnamed frogs part III - an uncomfortable date at the seafront

Last spring (around May 2013) on a perfect sunny day I went for a drink at the seafront with Unnamed Frog Number 3. We went to Brighton Music Hall, one of my favorite places at the seafront as they always have live music and performances.

We briefly exchanged few messages through Gaydargirls and decided to meet up. Not having any expectations when metting up someone from the online world helps to avoid dissapointment and in this case, it was needed.

The first impression was.... not the best to start with. She was at least 10 years older than her profile pictures... Having honest and up to date pictures helps to create a close-to-reality image of the other person and I have to confess that in this case I was expecting someone younger... 

I knew she was older than me, which it isn't a problem, but by hiding herself, she started the date by creating a feeling of deception when we met....  As "the mathemathics of love" TED Talk recomend, "Displaying on your online profile whatever it is that makes you different... would work to your advantage!" I think that perhaps the date would have started in a more possitive note if I would have seen an uptodate picture of her.


We ordered drinks and I decided to have a glass of wine. Mental note for the future: "Never order wine in a beer bar....". So, I was not able to drink it tasted very soury...

On top of the off wine and picture-reality setback, the conversations just didn't flow... sometimes there is not chemistry, sometimes you are just not receptive to meet new people and some other times the situation isn't appropriate.... this time, the three factors met up and the date was just not right...

We were able to maintain small talk for about 30 minutes, but after a prolonged unconfortable sillence, I think that we both realize that it wasn't going so well and put in place an scape plan.... She was meeting some friends near by and I had to work.... (yeah.... right...)....  and I had to finished some work... (which in my case was true...)

We didn't contact each other again.... that's how it seems to work these days on the online world... you can pretend that the meeting never happen.... However, after few dates like this... you start to lose faith in love....

But at the end of the day, if you don't put yourself out there.... then it is very unlikely to meet anyone... so you need to keep trying without perishing in the attempt, not die trying...
 
How many dates do you have to go to before meeting somoeone?

 

 A beautiful sunset at the Brighton Beach

Unnamed frogs part II - The Polish-looking tall accountant

I feel bad about not remembering the name of some of the girls with whom I shared a coffee with, but it was about a year ago and I am a completely disaster with names.... specially with guys names... I never ever remember my friends’ boyfriends names... I guess because they are straight males and I am not particularly interested in them so my brain saves the space for something more useful to remember.... Anyway... I will call this girl the Polish-looking tall accountant....

The Polish-looking tall accountant Story

So, about a year ago I got a message from the Polish-looking extra-tall accountant, not sure through which website, but we ended up exchanging numbers and messaging each other through WhatsApp... I rather met the person in real life soon after you both like each other than investing a lot of time in exchanging a ridiculous amount of texts before knowing if there is feeling or not... so I asked her for coffee... in the meantime, she kept on texting me every 5 seconds with not very relevant information.... I played the game for a bit since we were meeting for coffee in two days and she said that she was bored traveling on a train... but then the day after she started the same game again, she send me a ridiculous amount of messages without very relevant information... so from the beginning I could see that she was a bit needy and possibly a bit intense.... but she was hot... and maybe it was her first time doing the online dating thing and she didn't know the rules... so, I decided not to prejudge her and I met her for coffee....

We met at a coffee place near my house. It took me a while to know who she was as she didn't look like her pictures at all... and it was not due an intensive amount of Photoshop or filters from Instagram, it was just that she happened to choose, maybe strategically, pictures that didn't look like her.... She was still very good looking, but very different from her pictures.... two things that I noticed just from the beginning: 1) she was ridiculously tall, I am 5'3 (160cm), so I know about my height limitations and accept that more than half of the population of women are taller than me, but she was at least 6'5 (2 meters)... I confess that I prefer girls my size... but I also think that height should not be an issue as it is a physical characteristic and therefore, it is genetic and not within a person's choice or affects their character..... but 2) She did not put any effort on her appearance despite of having the beauty and body of a top model... She was wearing a T-Shit with bobbles that had not even seen better days as had the color and pattern of my grandma's living room curtains... a pair of shorts that might have seen better days, but they were on the verge of not even qualify for a charity donation... and her hair.... I know that some people's hair tend to be oilier, but the beauty industry has developed an extensive and affordable range of products to prevent that.... I want to say at this point that I am not a superficial person, but you never get a second chance for a first impression and she didn't make an effort for the evening. I think that you can tell a lot about a person’s mindset by their presentation, for a start, if they don't take care of themselves you can deduce that they might be lazy (as washing your hair from time to time is not that hard work...), or they might not have control and autonomy over their life... so, by her appearance, I deduced that she was perhaps depressed....

I surprisingly discovered that she wasn't Polish or had any Middle East relatives... I don't know how I got that idea in my mind.... anyway... She was an accountant but she was currently in between jobs (ahhhhh.... maybe that's why she was depressed...)... she was also having a very hard time with coming out (something else that might confirmed the depression hypothesis). I tend to empathize with people that had a hard time coming out since I myself did not came out with rainbows and unicorns.... so I listened to her... and after 30 minutes I definitely diagnosed depression + some possible other insecurities that made her seem very needy... I am not anyone's princess in a white horse that will rescue them from their misery... I believe that of course you need to support your friends and family through tough times, but I don't think that it is a good idea to start dating a stranger that is clearly not in their best moment of their life... unless you like to play that game... If you haven't read it or hear about, there is a very good book called: "Games People Play" where Eric Berne explains his theory of communication and interaction and how couples play games. I don't remember all of them but I could imagine that the 'I am sad and lonely and in need for lots of attention and cuddles' player and the 'I like to rescue lost puppies' player look for each other and create a game ....these games usually fulfil both player's psychological needs but they create a very toxic relationship....

We didn't message each other after that coffee, it was clear that we both realized that there was not chemistry and that we were in different places and times in our lives... I hope that she has overcome all her problems, found a job, got a girlfriend and she is happy now... after all she was very very pretty and seem to be kind-hearted, despite of the fact that she only talked about her-self during coffee...

Anyway, this time the frog did not turned into a princess but I still have hope that someday will....