Why I hate dating. A rant.

I’m going to have a rant about why online dating is so shit.

Somebody said it’s like a job interview, but that’s not really a fair analogy. It’s not like a job interview; it’s way fucking worse.

Everyone needs a job. Unless you’re a fucking ‘it’ girl whose job is to look pretty and sometimes flash your tits at some paparazzi, the chances are you’re going to need a 9-5 job in order to live, and the best you can hope for is that it isn’t completely shit.

Nobody loves going to work. I’m deeply sceptical of any hippy-happy basket weaver on £16k a year, who sincerely wanks on about how I love my job, it’s so rewarding, or the shiny suited banker on ten times that, who says I LIVE to work, as they gradually drink themselves to death.

Work isn’t much fun, and when you interview for a job you’re looking for the least-bad way to spend your working life. You might get more money or a nicer boss, but it’s still a job. You’ll still dream of winning the lottery one day and giving it up for good.

But dating, well that’s a whole different level of pressure. Because now you’re not just looking for a vaguely tolerable way to earn a bit of cash. Oh no. Now you’re wasting the few, slim hours you have between work and sleep trying to find somebody who will share those precious hours with you and somehow make them more fun.

Our free time is SO VALUABLE, and our biological need to partner up means we strive and yearn and long for somebody to spend it with. But if we make the wrong decision then that time will be stolen from us forever.

Fuck up your job on a grand scale and you’ll get yelled at by your boss. You might even get fired and have to move back in with your parents. But fuck up dating on a grand scale and you’re looking at misery, rejection, heartbreak, crying yourself to sleep, shattered self-confidence, recriminations, depression and eventually dying alone and being eaten by your own cats. THIS IS WHAT’S AT STAKE.

And we’re expected to make a decision with those kind of ramifications after just an hour or two? A date, a drink, a trip to the cinema. Is this guy my perfect match, or is he a serial killer? I don’t fucking know. And I won’t know after two dates or five, so ultimately you have to make a call. Maybe sleep with him. Maybe invite him to meet your parents. And a year later when it all falls apart, look back on the wasted evenings and weekends and realise ‘of course it fucking did – I’d only known him for ten fucking minutes’.

So with your whole happiness at stake, plus most of your free time, you sanity, your heart and your future, you sit there opposite a stranger. And you have to chat, because otherwise you’re fucked – but you have no connection. You’ve only just met. Who sits in a pub and chats to a total fucking stranger? So you end up having a contrived conversation, like a couple of new undergraduates meeting at uni for the first time. ‘What A-levels did you do?’ ‘Have you been travelling?’ ‘Any rapists in your family?’ It’s bullshit.

You don’t even know his fucking drinking speed, so you’re desperate to get onto the third or fourth glass of wine to make the conversation finally get going, but you don’t know if he’s drinking slowly because he’s trying not to seem like an alcoholic, or because he’s a fucking pansy. But what if he’s thinking the same about you? And anyway, when you do finish the glass will it be your round, or will he be one of those ‘I’ll buy the drinks’ types? THIS IS WHY WE DON’T GO DRINKING WITH STRANGERS.

And of course if he’s cute your vagina will be there shouting ‘stop acting like a prize bellend and just jump him already, we haven’t had sex for fucking months’ which is wildly unhelpful. And if he’s not cute you wander whether if he turns out to be really clever or witty or talented or kind or has magic fucking powers or something, whether then you might start fancying him, because if not then you’re fucked. But while you’re wondering that you stop listening and realise you don’t know whether he’s witty or a prize fucking bore because you’ve spent the last 10 minutes wondering whether you could ever fancy him.

Then it’s time to leave and you’ve got to decide whether to snog him despite the fact he’s basically a fucking stranger, on the offchance that your lips will somehow magically divine your suitability as life partners. And if there’s chemistry then maybe you see him again, but to be honest you could probably have guessed that from the fucking photo. And if there’s no chemistry then you wonder why you snogged somebody you didn’t really fancy in the first place, just because the circumstances of your meeting vaguely expected it. It’s not like you’d go into a bar and snog every bloke to find out whether you connect with them or not.

So that’s bullshit too, and you end up going home alone, poorer, frustrated, and angry that you’ve wasted an entire evening and you’re no fucking closer to finding your soul mate. Then a few days later you do it all again, despite the fact you’d probably be better off just going into random pubs and chatting up strangers.

To summarise, I do not fucking like dating. And I’m not doing it any more.

The end.