Hello, date. I am an anxiety sufferer and have a super low opinion of myself.

Okay, so I've never actually tried to introduce myself with this chat up line at any of the dates I have recently been on, but perhaps that would have shown me to be, at least, comfortable in my own reality.

As I wrote in my blog on Christmas Eve last year (why I chose this topic for then I do not know), I have spent the last year online dating.  I signed up to an online dating site for six months and then had a brief hiatus before signing up to another site for a further six months.  This came to a conclusion at the end of July.  So I had twelve months to go out on a multitude of dates, putting it about like the way societal pressure demands that I should do.  Alas no - six months and six dates in total, three with the same person that ended, well, in a drunken stupor four days before Christmas  Ahhh... that's why I blogged about this on Christmas Eve...

I don't know about you, but mine has J, K and L...
and then colon, not speech marks?!

Anyway, that particular experience, where, to save you reading the previous blog, I had dated a closet drunk for two and a half dates without noticing, could have been enough to put me off online dating forever.  I mean, in that first six months, I'd only met this one girl, or should I say, only this one girl wanted to meet with me, despite me contacting several girls (I won't say how many) during this time and getting 'X viewed your profile' but no return of message.  And yes, I know you're thinking it - why this particular girl wanted to meet with me was probably because she was smashed off her knackers whilst reading my profile.

What I did say in my Christmas Eve blog was that online dating "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."  I think perhaps this was a 'reflection a few days after finally having a few dates, but not too soon so that the vision of the nightmare evening of said final date was still in my head' quote - in other words, I was happy that finally someone had found me interesting, even though it didn't ultimately work out, so overall my confidence had risen temporarily.  Actually, just over seven months on, I would say that my confidence in terms of how I feel women perceive me has, if anything, declined more compared to where it was over a year ago when I first started this adventure.  The main reason that I went online was to find someone to ultimately settle down with, but one of the subsidiary reasons was to beef up my meagre confidence.  This hasn't happened medium-term.

So what's changed in the past six months or so?  Well, I went on two dates, one in around April and one in June.  The first one was with a girl who lived an hour and a half train ride away, and alas the train was cancelled.  So that wasn't the best of starts.  When I finally arrived, I found someone who seemed interested in me and happy to be in my company - an achievement in itself for someone with my lack of confidence - but there was a lot of forcing going on.  Before you interpret that wrongly, I mean in terms of conversation.  We'd ran out of things to say about halfway through, which makes it difficult from then on.

At this point, I will say that this is something I'm absolutely terrible at.  I've touched on this in recent blogs.  Because my confidence is low in social situations, and because the opinion of myself is quite low generally, I don't tend to talk about my life.  I feel that it doesn't not conform to the social norm and is 'emptier' and 'less interesting' as a result.  I don't have lots of hobbies and I haven't been to lots of countries.

Therefore I have less to talk about in the first place, and what I could talk about (my love for walking, cycling, buying a house, work, writing this blog(!) etc) I tend to only touch on then move on as I fear I will bore them. Yes - the irony is that doing this means longer periods of silence which actually leads me to appear more boring than I ever could by talking about the things I avoided talking about in the first place.

Thanks, anxiety, for this psychological labyrinth of utter bilge.

Anyway, back to the date. As I said it was okay, but not something either of us wanted to pursue I don't think.  Ultimately, though, as I was on my train journey back I thought to myself "three or more years ago I could have barely carried out the train journey, let alone gone out on a date," which gave me the perspective that I needed to carry on.

So I did, and after linking up online with another girl we met after the usual email exchanges and I thought the date went well.  Clearly she didn't after subsequent radio silence, but still I counted it as another tick in the box.

One thing I should also mention at this point is some advice for anyone thinking of utilising online dating sites. Be prepared to spend wasting a lot of time. When I say waste time, I mean by contacting people who haven't even been online for months and are no longer using their account.  Annoyingly, one of the dating sites I used didn't even tell you when the person last logged into their account.  I also didn't like the preliminaries - by that, I mean the emails, the compatibility questions, the winking and smiling. I understand the need for them but I'd rather a girl learn that I have nothing to say when I meet them face to face, rather than via email. Ultimately it's just a mask and textual contact can go on for weeks if you're not careful.  I don't think there is a good time for one to say 'shall we meet up' as it will vary from person to person, but by the end of the experience I probably started to insinuate meeting up too early because I was losing interest in the red, vaguely heart-shaped tape.

Anyway, my final date happened only last week.  I met this girl online who, following various subsequent emails, seemed to be more my sort of person. We could actually sustain reasonable conversation, which continued even when we met.  It was about topics that I would never dream of raising myself, which in a bizarre way bodes well.  It may be because she's not actually English, which, based on my close-to-being-a-rant blog not long ago, is probably why we connected better. To the point where I'm seeing her again this weekend. 

Now before you get carried away with your overwhelming positivity, it is still extremely early days and who knows where this will lead. Nowhere... friendship,,, more...? One thing I need to stop doing is over-analysing the situation and take it as it comes.  For if anyone is not an expert in relationships it is moi - so what's the point in analysing?  That said, had I been writing this blog two weeks ago, I would have dissuaded anyone with my sort of history of confidence issues and anxiety from using online dating.  As rather than it being a confidence booster, a lot of the time it was a confidence floor-er.  I've mentioned the six dates I've been on - that's negligible in comparison to the amount of girls I actually contacted.  That doesn't make you feel good.  Maybe my recent date will make me change my mind and say it was all worth it, but for now I can't guarantee that.  I'll keep you posted (you lucky things).

Either way, if you are thinking about it and have similar issues to me, tread with caution and an open mind.  And like me, just be grateful you can actually go out on a date without having a nervous breakdown, which as I said earlier, is not something I could have done a few years ago.

In your face, anxiety.

Best wishes
Al