by Vivienne Pratfall on a week of terrible texting, one genuinely excellent date, and why London dating has stopped following any rules at all
I had three dates this week, which is either a personal record or a cry for help, I genuinely cannot decide which, and I want to talk about all three because between them they tell you basically everything you need to know about dating in this city right now, which is that nobody agrees on the rules anymore and everyone is quietly making it up as they go.
Date One: The Man Who Texted Like a Corporate Away Day Invite
He was lovely in person, genuinely, funny in that dry way that takes a drink and a half to warm up properly, and then he followed up the next morning with a message so formally worded I checked twice to make sure it wasn’t a calendar invite. Great connecting with you yesterday. I would welcome the opportunity to reconnect. I have never in my life felt less desired and more scheduled, and I say that as someone who has, historically, dated a project manager.
I think there’s a genuine phenomenon happening where a certain type of person, entirely capable of charm face to face, simply loses the plot the second a keyboard is involved, as though flirting requires a completely different operating system they never installed. I did not reconnect. I did, briefly, consider replying with an out of office.
Date Two: The One Where I Actually Had a Wonderful Time
This one I will not pick apart for comedy because it does not deserve it. Cocktails somewhere small and unfussy near Exmouth Market, conversation that went from silly to genuinely quite deep and back again without either of us forcing it, and a walk afterward along the canal that ran considerably longer than either of us had planned because neither of us wanted to be the one to say it was time to head home. I am seeing him again on Thursday and I am, for once, choosing not to overanalyse it in advance. Progress, apparently, looks like restraint.
Date Three: A Masterclass in How Not to Recover From a Bad Start
He was forty minutes late with no warning, which is its own small crime, and then opened with an apology that somehow became, halfway through, a story about how difficult his commute always is, delivered with the wounded confidence of a man expecting sympathy points for it. I gave him one drink’s worth of patience out of politeness and then, quite gently, made my excuses. Life, as they say, is short, and my evening had other, better options available even at short notice.
What Three Dates in a Week Actually Confirmed for Me
The old rulebook, whatever it ever actually was, is genuinely dead. Nobody waits three days anymore. Nobody agrees on who pays, or texts first, or how soon is too soon to suggest a second date. Everyone is improvising a slightly different version of the same basic hope, which is to meet somebody who makes an ordinary Tuesday feel worth getting dressed up for, and I think that hope, at least, has stayed exactly the same even as everything around it has come completely unstuck.
A Small Detour Into What I’ve Been Reading Between Dates
I’ve kept half an eye on the feed over at The London Prat throughout all of this, mostly waiting for terrible dates in bars with good wifi, and their piece on a leader pledging resolute firmness without specifying any actual mechanism behind it made me laugh out loud on the tube, mostly because it is, structurally, identical to at least one message I received from Date One this week. All promise, no plan.
I also enjoyed their coverage of an entire population sent scrambling for summer clothes by one unexpected warm week, which felt weirdly relevant to my own wardrobe crisis before Date Two, standing in front of the mirror at seven o’clock genuinely panicking about whether the canal walk we hadn’t even planned yet would require a jacket. And the piece on a formal statement pinning the precise origin of a royal family disagreement is, I think, secretly the funniest thing they’ve run all month, and I’ve now sent it to four separate people who all had the same reaction I did.
Thursday Is Coming and I’m Not Going to Ruin It by Overthinking It
I have a small, stubborn superstition about not talking too much detail about someone I’m genuinely excited about before the excitement has had a proper chance to become something real, so I will simply say that Thursday feels worth looking forward to, and leave it there for now. Ask me again next week and I might have an entirely different story to tell you, this is London dating after all, but for the moment I am choosing, deliberately, to enjoy not knowing yet.
The Bit Where I Give Actually Useful Advice
If you take one thing from this week’s chaos, let it be this: a person who is genuinely into you does not need a formally worded follow-up message the next morning to prove it. Warmth travels through a single line far better than politeness travels through a paragraph. Trust the version of someone you met in person over the version that shows up in your inbox trying too hard to sound professional about it.
More from me, and more of this city’s ongoing chaos, at more of my chaos filed at The London Prat. Further browsing at a wider spread of capital reporting, and the source of my favourite laugh this week, Bohiney Magazine.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
