Dating for grown-ups (the wrong way)
I’ve just finished dating my dad.
R and I met in Putney. Our first date was good and we got on well – he was interesting, engaged and keen. God, he was keen, he kept trying to snog my face off in public – cute if he’s 14 and on a park bench after school, not so cute as a grown man in the middle of a crowded pub (‘Get a room!!’ some spotty teenager cracked). He was so keen he invited himself along to a wedding I was attending in a month’s time. Having only spent a couple of hours with him, I was in two minds between ‘stalker’ and ‘extremely proactive’ (this, my favourite trait, seeming in generally short supply amongst men) and, ever the optimist, plumped for the latter. He also seemed to be interested in some of the hippy dippy stuff I was into, paid for dinner and sent me a lovely text the next morning saying he couldn’t wait to see me again and asking when I was free the following week. Big brownies.
R was a nice chap. And tall. He was ‘together’ and could plan. He had his own four bedroom house and a good job. He was divorced but he seemed to have handled it well and didn’t seem bitter about the fact she had had an affair with a chap she met on an online chatroom and ran off with half his cash. In fact he seemed remarkably calm about it. He also had two kids under ten which he saw every other weekend – ok, not ideal, but it couldn’t be helped. I ignored my mates who snorted at ‘baggage’ and just got on with it. I like kids. Well, I assume I do – I kept coming up with ideas for things for him to do with them, instead of just playing football in the park. At the wedding he was very polite and chatted with everyone even though my mates were obviously rather more ‘alternative’ than his. At 40, he was also older than me, which was a novelty and made me feel like I was very grown up with a proper boyfriend instead of running around on random drunken escapades with 26 year olds.
Can you see what’s missing yet?
Physically, he didn’t do it for me, but as I thought he was a ‘good catch’ and the first date had gone really well, I overlooked that. Looks aren’t everything, right? And he wasn’t unattractive, just not my type. I was also keen to prove my mates wrong in their granite (and misguided) perception that I only date people under 28 who looked like they’d stepped out of a Burberry ad. That I found myself avoiding looking at his Facebook pictures because they actually turned me off him was something I conveniently overlooked. I thought that he would grow on me, and he did somewhat, in the way that people do when you get to know them and their personality animates their face.
OK, so he didn’t send me random texts / emails or call just because he wanted to speak to me or tell me that he was looking forward to seeing me. He was a busy man! I have to say I missed them, but he was a company director with two kids and didn’t have time for these trifles, I assumed. When we were together he was attentive enough. I have to say I did start feeling rather mis-sold by the first date as his pro-activity seemed to wane and he had a curious inability to ask questions of other people, but he would call regularly once or twice a week.
It’s true – he didn’t make me laugh and sometimes I felt about twelve. My mate Alison once told me that if it ever happened that I actually got married and grew old with someone we would be fortunate that it would never get to that stage when you see couples in a café drinking tea and gazing over each other’s shoulders in bored silence. This is apparently because I would be too busy talking to myself and laughing at my own jokes that I wouldn’t give a monkeys that my other old timer had conked it half an hour ago from a coronary. Sometimes I would tease him – nothing mean, just banter – and he would visibly bridle.
It didn’t have anything to do with age, looks, his kids or anything like that. I had decided to go out with R because it had seemed a Good Thing To Do. The warning signs were there from the beginning and I had completely ignored my instincts and ploughed on ahead regardless. Damnit, there was no chemistry at all.
And so it finished, a bit like a firework that has misfired and ended up as a rather half hearted show. I was sad – it’s always going to be hard when you start entwining your life and plans with someone else – and there was nothing massively wrong with us, it just wasn’t right. Underneath the sadness was a sigh of relief. He will probably end up with someone neatly organised who shops at Next and has weekly manicures. I’ll probably end up with Perez Hilton or Stig of the Dump. But this week’s lesson, kids, is that chemistry is paramount: good enough isn’t good enough.
AnnaR
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