Winter Love – The season for online dating?
Being at a spectacularly loose end one boring afternoon, I found myself idly flicking through the ‘hot or not’ pages of a well-known conventional dating website (the occasional comparison helps to appreciate Toyboy Warehouse just that little bit more, I’ve found).
Each profile has a headline, an opening bait if you will, to lure a prospective partner to take a closer look.
And oh, my heavens. Tabbing through the endless gents on display, certain patterns quickly became apparent. The high number who’d quit at ‘hi’. The ‘if Carlsberg made boyfriends’ crew (side note; do guys believe an advert aimed at men think it’ll have the same draw for women? It’s not quite a woman saying ‘If I were a shoe I’d be a Louboutin’ but, you know…)
But the ones which puzzled me the most were the ones who’d looked at the calendar and proclaimed, with a mixture of shock and awe; ‘Winter’s coming!’
Now perhaps these gents are particularly sensitive to the shifting seasons; Pagans, potentially, who have just celebrated the Autumn Equinox, and who feel a moral obligation to point out the oncoming chill to those of us still feckless enough to gad about without a vest on. But given the number of football shirts and pints held aloft, I’m kinda suspecting not.
No. What I’m reading between the lines is this; the nights are growing longer, it’s becoming colder, and I want someone to eat pizza with whilst otherwise hibernating on the couch for the next six months (yes, six months; I’m being optimistic that the next British winter will be over THAT fast.)
What I’m reading between the lines is this: ‘I want to comfort date someone’.
Because, during the summer months, it’s so much easier to be single. You’re out in (beer) gardens, wearing bright colours, skimpy outfits and showing off your cleavage .. and, heck, that’s just the guys (boom-BOOM).
But the long winter evenings, when you’re wrapped up in so many layers you need professional assistance to refill your hot water bottle, with the wind and rain rattling your window pane .. well, who wants to go out in THAT, even if you are jonesing for a cuddle?
It’s entirely human, of course. When the nights draw in, and the temperature drops, lacking the simple joys of companionship makes the best and worst of us just a tad wistful.
Some folk make particularly great winter companions, of course; I once dated a guy who’s personal thermostat meant he radiated heat at all times (alas, I dated him during a heat-wave, when he was perpetually pole-axed by either the pollen or Piriton; classic schoolgirl error). Due to reasons too boring to divulge here, I myself am a great winter companion, too (if by that you mean ‘apt to fall asleep beside you on the couch after that aforementioned pizza, like a prettier, cuter Garfield’).
But would I want to be dated by a guy who just wanted someone because the nights are drawing in? No, thank you. Because let’s face it: who could really take comfort from that?
So is there a place for ‘Winter relationships’? What are your experiences with winter love, does it have to be so seasonal?
This post was written by a Toyboy Warehouse community member.
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