AAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!....
....says someone online dating with an 18 year history of anxiety.
So why have I done it? Many factors, both demographically, logistically, and anxietally... (there's a new word for you):
1) The town where I live contains 116 men for every 100 women and is in the top ten in terms of towns in the UK with the highest ratio of men to women. So that doesn't bode well for starters.
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| It's Christmas, don't you know |
2) I know how 35 different couples met. Of these, 31 met through either work, school or university. The latter two have long since gone, and whilst, for me, meeting someone through work is a possibility, the nature of my job renders it very unlikely. I work in a team of only three other people (two from January!) and they are all married (and older, and one is male... you get the idea). I run a lot of events which attract many people but I'm too busy running round like a tit in a trance to consider who might take my fancy in the audience! So meeting someone via these seemingly usual channels for me seems unlikely or impossible. Of the four couples I know who didn't meet in one of these ways, two met online.
3) My confidence has been shot thanks to years of anxiety. On the rare occasion I grow to like someone, I don't have the ability to ask them out anyway. At least online you can hide behind the mask of this and appear fairly confident, as much as emails can do this anyway! Anxiety has also made me look at myself as a boring, uninteresting person with a lack of self-esteem - again resulting in talking to someone I like very hard.
4) I want to find someone. I've blogged many times recently about loneliness and how this is already starting to creep in, and more importantly how I feel isolation for me will only get more severe the older I get. Reasons 1-3 render finding someone unlikely so to try and eradicate these feelings of loneliness I considered online dating to be my only option (rightly or wrongly).
5) To test myself. Whichever way you look at it, meeting someone for the first time after only relatively brief conversation online is a rather daunting experience. Having gone through my 50 sessions of CBT for my anxiety condition in 2011-12 and since then having moved into two shared houses, bought my own house, moved jobs and improved vastly in other smaller ways, such as the ability to eat out with friends, I knew the one key thing I'd yet to crack - or get anywhere near to doing so - was meeting a partner. So I felt the only way to be able to test my ability to do this in the face of my anxiety condition, and to experience 'adult' dating, was to force the issue. I'll come back to this shortly.
Despite it being nearly six months since I first signed up online, I have only been out on three dates in that time, all with the same person. I had spent four months of total frustration, emailing several women who I felt I'd like to converse with further (none from my male dominated town) and with the few who did respond initially the conversations still seemed to wither. On the only two occasions prior to my actual date that I got round to asking to meet the girl, they politely didn't respond. This, of course, is not a good feeling for someone with already a fragile confidence on such issues. So of course, when I finally arranged to meet with a girl who I seemed to have a connection with, my confidence improved a little. Especially given that she had 'favourited' me in the first place.
Incidentally, I'm not going to go into the politics of online dating - this is a separate blog on its own. Sufficient is it to say that I don't really understand it. What do women think of 'winking' (please read this carefully)? What to put in your profile? In an email? When to arrange to meet? When to give out your phone number? I can safely say I haven't learnt the answers to any of these. Ladies, feel free to help me out.
Anyway back to the story. So I arranged to meet this girl, and overall the date was successful. Granted, I'd deem 'successful' as being able to get on the bus (remember, I don't drive thanks to years of anxiety) and actually arrive at the destination, let alone go through with the date. But despite the expected anticipatory anxious feelings - which I handled pretty well!! - the date was good. We chatted about a lot of things and we were quite relaxed, despite me being thrown light years outside of my comfort zone. Remember, this is not dating someone I've already begun to know or who was a friend first. This is someone I've seen a few photos of with some trivial textual based information, meeting her in a town 20+ miles away from my own. Me with anxiety. So I deem this experience as a successful one.
Even more so because we arranged to meet again a week later, this time over lunch and a mooch around a local-ish tourist attraction. Lunch would have been impossible a few years ago, so the fact I managed to eat something with no major hitch is the first tick in the box. I wasn't sure after this second date whether we would continue seeing each other because at this early stage I couldn't tell whether there was a proper potential relationship brewing between us. But alas, we agreed to meet again, and this time she was to come to my home town and we would go to a traditional pub first for a meal and then to watch a gig by one of my best friends (also my tenant) at said pub. It was something I would have gone to anyway, so it offered me the opportunity to provide her with more of an insight into my life whilst hopefully discovering more about her.
The start was more of the same - a little uneasy between us but overall okay and chatting, followed by another successful meal. What followed, however, was not expected. She got totally annihilated by alcohol. Perhaps this shouldn't have come as a shock, given that she had talked a significant amount about alcohol since we first met; I just assumed it was to make her come across as interesting, because that's the only reason I ever talk about 'alcohol related incidents' (of which there a few involving me, and if they do involve me it's usually someone else that was drunk). But this was our third date, and by the end she was barely coherent. Other things happened too, which I won't go into. I had to almost literally drag her back to my house and put her into bed. The worrying thing is that we didn't know each other that well - for all she knew, I could have been planning this all along and many guys would have grasped at the chance to be with a girl who, lets say, was offering them anything they wanted.
But the main concern for me was that this is normal behaviour for her. I knew this, one because of the amount of time she referred to past alcohol-fuelled nights, as previously mentioned. Two, because she basically admitted to me that this was actually a fairly quiet night for her and should I not have dragged her home, she would have carried on drinking somewhere else. Three, she wasn't hungover the morning after - suggesting her body is used to this extent of binge.
I, however, am not used to this, nor would I want to be. I spent much of my life unable to drink anything (due to the physical effects of anxiety, surprise surprise) so I've learnt to enjoy social occasions without the need to drink. I do drink sometimes now, but in moderation. It's not even the getting drunk I'm bothered about, it's all the factors that went with it. Again, I won't go into the details. And as I said, the main concern was the fact she considered this to be normal behaviour, and my other concern is how many other people of both sexes consider this behaviour to be normal? My naivety knows no bounds, clearly.
I spent the night (in a separate bed) barely able to sleep, my heart thumping. Anxiety-wise, it was one of the most difficult nights I've experienced for a long time (although nothing compared to my panic attack dominated days years ago, I must emphasise). My mind was racing - what happens now? Fortunately, I had the guts to at least speak to her the morning after and rather than blame her I just said that I didn't think I could make her happy from a social perspective. And that's true, as I'm sure some guys (most guys?) would be more than happy to get smashed with her and do whatever they want with her (which in my book equals disrespecting her). What I actually wanted to say to her was that I am deeply concerned that she is going to ruin her life by depending so much on alcohol and drinking that heavily (and 'socially smoking' when she has been drinking, something else I can't tolerate - although that's just my bugbear I appreciate). Fortunately, my friend who was gigging at the venue backed me up. You'd expect this given he's a friend anyway, but he's also honest and would have told me if I was over-reacting.
And it is a real shame, for she was a very nice person - interesting and ambitious. She's currently in the process of setting up her own business, which is admirable. But had you been me, with my history, in my position that night, all of this would have paled into insignificance. It's difficult to write about this experience without sounding like I am blaming her, or disrespecting her - who knows what circumstances she has had to go through in life up to now. And I'm also not trying to say that the relationship would have worked anyway, as getting close to someone like me with anxiety can't be easy either. I suppose I am just shocked at how different social lifestyles can have such a significant impact on people's overall livelihoods. And again, my naivety in terms of what people enjoy doing socially knows no bounds.
It did allow me to learn from the experience though, and despite what happened, I now feel more confident about what to look for, how dating should feel, and what I want.
And, despite the lack of success with the general online dating experience so far, it has also given me a little more overall confidence. Confidence that to some women I might be vaguely interesting. Confident to feel a little more proud of who I am and confident that I can potentially find someone if I persist.
However, it has also made me realise what a hard task this is - and it still feels like I'm forcing the issue. The experience with my date didn't help with this - the whole thing always seemed forced and I wonder, still, how 'natural' a relationship can feel when you're ultimately forced together online. My six month subscription has just ended and I haven't renewed, but this isn't necessarily the end. And now I've opened up about this on here, I will keep you updated. Deep joy, I hear you cry.
I'd like to conclude by wishing all readers a fantastic Christmas and a prosperous New Year. I know this can be a difficult time of year for many people and my thoughts are with you. Lets hope 2016 is a better one for all of us.
Best wishes
Al
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