Three months after a particularly bruising break-up with a guy I should have ditched long before our summer situationship turned sour, I decided I was ready to start dating again.
I’d been doing therapy, I was feeling resilient and optimistic. But at the same time I was painfully aware that I’d ignored a litany of red flags with my most recent ex, and surveying my dating history I realised something had to change.
At 40, I’ve been using dating apps for a decade and I’ve been single for the majority of that time. I often struggle to get beyond the situationship stage with men, usually because I have to break it off when the red flags start flying or when I realise that they’re “good on paper” but we don’t have enough chemistry.
As I prepared to unpause my Hinge profile, I happened upon a book called How Not to Die Alone: The Surprising Science That Will Help You Find Love and had a flash of inspiration. Behavioural scientist, turned dating coach, Logan Ury recommends a methodical approach when you’re looking for love, starting with defining your goals and assessing matches beyond just attraction or that elusive “spark”.
Since I make spreadsheets for every other project in my life, I decided that would be the best way to track my dating progress.
I set some ground rules to try and filter out the duds. If men didn’t ask questions on the app I wouldn’t reply, I would do coffee dates only (it’s easy to think you’ve had an amazing time when alcohol is involved), and I would keep the chat on the app until we’d met, meaning no Instagram follows or Whatsapp messages unless I wanted a second date.
Whenever I got a date in the diary I would enter the guy’s name in the spreadsheet along with his vital stats: age, job, and what he says he’s looking for in terms of dating/relationships. Before and after the dates I would add notes on any green or red flags. For example, what was the chat like before we met? Did he respond to messages promptly? In terms of assessing the first date and making sure I focused on personality not looks, I had only one question: would I be friends with this person?
This technique might seem a bit cold when finding a partner is meant to be about romance, or being hit by that lightning bolt of chemistry, but experts say a systematic approach can help you to be more objective and identify unhealthy patterns.
“It can help you organise your thoughts about the people you’ve seen and what you think about them as if you were making any other decision,” says psychiatrist Dr Janette Leal. “Some people prefer pen and paper, some people like a spreadsheet or a whiteboard. Anything that gets it out of your head and makes it visual, makes it easier to see [the patterns].”
Dr Leal recommends figuring out what red and green flags are for you and noting how you felt during and after a date: “Did you feel relaxed? Did you feel comfortable? Were you nervous? When you left the date, were you looking forward to next time?”
I tracked my dates from November to January and it turned out to be an eventful – and illuminating – two months. The biggest takeaway was how I became much better at setting boundaries.
The first time I was asked out it was by a French musician, Matthieu, who seemed intelligent and funny, but when he revealed he lived in Paris and was only visiting my city I told him I wasn’t interested in anything casual or long-distance. “Let me know if you ever come to Paris,” he said, and since I already had a visit booked for January said we could maybe meet up for a friendly hang, not a date, and no thanks, I did not want to add him on Instagram.
After a fairly slow start, by mid-November I had six dates scheduled in one week, but due to people flaking that turned into three. Of those, I wasn’t interested in two, but the third seemed promising.
Mark* was cute, funny and easy to talk to. We went on a lovely second date to a brew pub just before I went home for Christmas and said we’d have contact over the festive period to continue getting to know each other. We carried on messaging, but within a couple of days it became clear Mark was incapable of asking questions by text, and his flimsy excuses for his slow messaging set my BS-detector on high alert.
Inspired by my other dating bible, Attached, which preaches the gospel of “effective communication” from day one, I told Mark on the phone, politely and calmly, I needed more in terms of messaging. He apologised and said he would make more effort, but after another week of sending me random updates without so much as a ‘how are you?’ I called it a day.
In the meantime, I’d started having an interesting exchange with Anthony, who was very good at asking questions. After a pleasant date wandering round an exhibition and chatting over tea in the museum cafe we arranged to go for dinner four days later.
My Spidey senses started tingling when it got to the evening before the date and I hadn’t heard a peep. “Do you still want to do something tomorrow?” I messaged. “Yes!” he replied quickly, offering a few restaurant options.
The alarm bells were really ringing the next afternoon when he asked if we could swap to the following night because he was busy at work. “That’s a shame, but yes,” I replied. Let’s just do a quick commitment check, I thought, adding: “Can you definitely do that?” He never replied.
Next was a date for nachos and guacamole with a guy whose app photos were truly terrible, but who was more attractive in real life. He passed the ‘Would we be friends?’ test with flying colours, but on our second date, as I recoiled when he tried to hold my hand, I realised I didn’t really fancy him.
A few days later I flew to Paris to visit my cousin. She had to work so I arranged to go for brunch with Matthieu. We started in a cosy cafe then went for a freezing walk along the Seine and had a great time. I felt so at ease in his company, he had a wonderfully calm energy (compared to the frantic ‘I must impress you’ vibe many guys give off on first dates) and I felt like I could have carried on chatting for hours.
When we met up again the next afternoon the conversation turned to more serious topics (difficult family dynamics, past relationships) and the time flew. We kissed in the drizzling rain outside the Metro before I had to dash off for my dinner plans.
We started messaging every day and a few weeks later he arrived, staying with me for three dreamy days. We clicked instantly and were like teenagers all weekend, wandering around holding hands, snogging on street corners and basking in that glorious ‘getting to know you’ bubble. He even met a bunch of my friends and got their seal of approval.
Before he flew back to Paris, we had a chat and decided we’re going to have a few more weekends together and see how it goes. Matthieu could potentially move to the UK because he has family ties. Obviously, it’s early days, but since we have such a strong connection compared with all the other guys from my spreadsheet I think it’s worth a shot.
Given that I ended up ignoring one of my main criteria for a relationship during my experiment – namely, that I only wanted to date men who lived in the same city as me – would I still recommend using a spreadsheet to track your dates? Yes.
Instead of struggling to remember who was who and whether it seemed like there was any potential there, I was able to quickly rule out guys who flaked on dates at the last minute and didn’t follow up to rearrange.
Including the post-date “would I be friends with them?” question was a game-changer, because it made me focus on whether I felt relaxed in their company, and I didn’t agonise over cutting ties the way I had in the past when I tried to force it with a ‘good on paper’ guy who was clearly emotionally unavailable.
Plus, seeing the red flags listed for all the other guys brought into sharp focus why Matthieu is such a catch. I don’t think I would have met him at all if I hadn’t already been going to Paris, so there was an element of chance, and in fact I had to add him to the spreadsheet later because I didn’t even consider our first meeting a real date.
Utimately, I learned that you can’t control every factor in this kind of experiment. You’ve got to leave some wiggle room, because you never know, a last-minute, this-is-not-a-date encounter in the City of Love might lead to a spectacular spark and a burgeoning relationship.
*names have been changed
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