The 100-day challenge continued into May as I felt I was now into a routine which was getting easier each day.
With feeling better in all senses of the word, I decided it was about time I bit the bullet and got back on the dating scene. A few months earlier I had slowly started to dabble in dating by investing a small amount of money in Pear, this is an ‘in real life’ dating thing. You basically pay for a colour-coded ring, which you wear with the idea being that if you see someone else wearing the same colour ring it gives you a reason to speak to them, great idea in theory, however, with Lincoln being quite a small city and me not really going out that much, I never met anyone wearing one of these rings. The other thing I found hard was that I felt embarrassed when people asked me about the ring, yes I could have just said it was a fashion choice but I’m just too honest for my own good sometimes.
I know I shouldn’t be embarrassed about either being single or dating but in reality I am, I feel like a failure, a weirdo or a freak and often wonder what is wrong with me! The truth is when I’m thinking rationally I know there is nothing wrong with me but I also know that over the 13 years, I have had other focuses and a lot of healing to do and still to do.
Anyway, I decided to go all in and downloaded numerous dating apps – Bumble, Match, Tinder! And invested my hard-earned pennies to get access to men who looked/liked my profile.
The other thing I find hard about online dating is that I am so much more than what I look like and a few words or random questions don’t give who I really am, yes it’s a snapshot but it feels so unauthentic & false.
From previous experiences, I know that online dating is pretty brutal, so it took me an enormous amount of grit to do it again. Firstly, I needed to pick some pictures, this was quite hard as in all honesty I don’t like how I look right now but I also wanted to post recent pictures. I managed to find a handful that I kind of liked. Thankfully, I’d saved the words for my profile from the last attempt at online dating so soon my profile was live…let the fun begin!!
To start it was quite slow and I didn’t get many matches and when I did they didn’t turn into anything with messages going unanswered or unmatched. I eventually started talking to a couple of guys and went on my 1st date in nearly 3.5 years!
The guy was nice, just not for me! One date down & was feeling good for diving back into it. Carried on talking to a few other people and a week later another date was arranged! Had a lovely time, chatted for over 3 hours, felt good and thought a 2nd date was in the bag, little did I know that 24 hours later I would be ghosted! Why do people do this? If you aren’t interested just say thanks & goodbye instead of just ghosting someone, don’t think I’ll ever get used to that. I was gutted as just found it rude and started to wonder how I didn’t pick up any signs that this would happen! I took a step back from the apps for a week or so to re-group and go again!
This also knocked me in terms of my 100-day challenge, which took a back seat for a few days, I did get back to it as I knew I had to focus on the positives and pick myself up.
By the end of the month, I was back on the apps and chatting to quite a few people, which proved quite challenging with juggling lots of conversations!
The one big takeaway I currently have from doing this again is that I’m not a troll or dull (as that’s how I felt), even though my friends tell me I’m beautiful and an interesting & successful person I find it hard to believe and my brains says they are just saying it to be nice & that it’s not really true (I know, I’m so horrible about myself – I am working on this). We don’t often get a chance to see ourselves from others’ eyes/perspective but the comments and messages I’ve received from guys have been a massive ego boast, I’ve been screen-grabbing these to keep for when I’m on a downer and thankfully I’ve not had any d*ck pics to date, there is still time though…
Lincolnshiregirl 