#WednesdayDatingTale (Southern Belle)

Belle’s been Wednesday Dating Club dating this week … let’s see how she got on!

Miss Twenty-Nine xxx

 

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been reluctant to go on dates.

This isn’t from lack of options, there are 30+ people each week that are “possibilities” but I find it hard to want to spend time with someone I don’t know. In our busy lives nowadays (I know I’m not alone in this) I schedule time to see friends, cook dinners, work out, do chores: that just doesn’t leave much spare for me by myself, let alone plus one.

As part of my year of being 30, I promised myself that I would take eating healthily and working out seriously again. As such, a few weeks ago I started doing Crossfit three times a week again, which gives me some lovely exercise endorphins and a much calmer attitude towards work, which I enjoy. This involves getting up at 4.45am, walking the dogs, working out, heading to work, showering and then starting at my desk at 7am. I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this…  In order to make sure that I’m a functional human, I then need to go to bed around 9pm!

Last night I missed my morning work-out because of car trouble, so I had to drag myself to the 5.30pm class. HUGE MISTAKE.

I had scheduled a date with a cute Ukrainian from OK Cupid for 7.30pm and at the end of the work-out, lying on the floor shaking in a pool of sweat and tears, I had to text and ask him if we could meet at 7.45pm instead, because I just wasn’t going to make it otherwise!

I drove home with shaking legs, nearly killing myself on the Houston freeways in the process, and proceeded to lie with ice packs on my wrists under the A/C vent to stop myself from continuing to sweat buckets.

For the date, I had chosen a little local place called Double Trouble, which serves both great coffee and cocktails, in a coffee shop/tiki bar atmosphere. It’s very pretty. So I dragged on a pair of dark skinny jeans and a stripy sweater, did the bare minimum of make-up, considering I was still disgusting from CF, then lay back under the fan with my foster puppy.

I considered cancelling for a brief minute. I didn’t know much about this guy, other than the fact he was Ukrainian, worked in marketing and flirted just the appropriate amount over text message.

That’s what I’m struggling with. The great thing about not having anything invested is you aren’t going to lose anything by going and meeting someone new.  But for me to have any desire to allocate my precious spare time to people, I need a little bit of a connection, a little bit of possibility. I don’t want to feel like dating is just this random numbers game, where the more dates you go on, the greater chance you have of meeting someone special.

In my job, that’s lazy recruitment. We call it throwing shit against the wall and seeing what sticks. That shouldn’t be the approach to dating!

With this in mind and almost resigned to a bad date, I headed out to Double Trouble.

As I walked toward the shop, I wondered if I could get out of this date any faster than my disastrous date last Wednesday. I walked past the windows and spied him sitting in the corner at the bar.  Not unattractive. Balding, but with his hair cut very short and some nice manly stubble. Black shirt, jeans, shoes. He greeted me with a hug and we sat down, for me to apologise that I was late and also that I wasn’t drinking! He laughed, ordered me a coffee and we started talking about diet/health/fitness generally. I’m not at all familiar with Eastern European culture so it was really interesting to hear his stories of growing up in the States with an extended family of Ukrainians all around. I asked about his opinion on the current situation in Crimea and we talked about that for quite a while as I brushed off the cobwebs in my brain from the University days.

He was the perfect amount of flirty – friendly, with little touches of my knee every now and again and a couple of subtle compliments. I found myself relaxing and just enjoying the company of a fairly interesting guy. Were there sparks? Maybe a few. I kept watching his face. He reminded me a lot of Justin Timberlake and a very hot guy I met in NOLA a couple of weeks ago, but in flashes of resemblance rather than a lookalike deal. My only turn off was that he was quite skinny. A runner, who doesn’t ever lift weights – which shouldn’t be something I notice, but I hang around 5 hours a week or more with CrossFit men. Muscles are good – even if they come with more weight attached.

Skinny boy with less of a butt than me = bad.

We were deep in conversation regarding European dating attitudes versus American culture, when I realized I felt pretty tired, despite the coffee. 11.50pm. I had about 5 hours before I had to be back up again and at the gym, which he both apologized for and was amused by!

As we were waiting to pay the tab, he asked if he could take me to dinner next week, and I said yes. There’s definitely enough interest and personality there to warrant a second date; more so than the previous first dates. He walked me to my car and kissed me on the cheek, with a good hug.

I sat in my car giggling to myself and phoned a friend, telling her it had gone well. Received a text message on the 3 minute drive home saying it was great to meet me. I responded in kind.

Guess we’ll see what happens with this!

Southern Belle