What it takes to date in London.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
They say you either die a hero, or you live long enough to find yourself sitting on the bus to Borough market, browsing the pdf menu sent to you by a man waiting for you in some godforsaken wine bar. I just ask for the same thing he’s having, I can’t stop laughing as soon as I start to write this scene down.
Recently, I told a man in private equity that I find men in London aren’t ambitious enough. He later retorted that he was in fact going to go into politics, and inevitably become prime minister (for the Conservative Party, RIP), after he makes this next £20million.
He didn’t understand even vaguely what I meant by ambition. I’m not that interested in the fantasies of men, which is why I really hate the sex app Feeld. He was lucid enough to answer truthfully when I asked him if I looked like his mother (yes), and when I asked if he thought he was intelligent. (He confessed he wasn’t sure, because of how much money his education cost, leaving him to wonder if he was just diligently spoon-fed.) He wasn’t lucid enough to know that I meant that I find British men exceptionally romantically lazy.
When I’m inevitably asked what I am looking for, I don’t even take a beat to answer: devotion. That’s all I can ever accept in love. I would love to say this is some cellular truth emerging from a powerful and innate sense of self-worth. It’s good for scaffolding that which I have had to agonisingly tend to. But the truth is that devotion is all I can give, and the imbalance of being met with anything less has just led to some of the most awkward romantic endings imaginable.
It feels good to have someone like me be in love with you. Clearly. It makes it really hard to dump me, which is retrospectively obvious. In the dying days I’m treated like a much beloved pet the day before I’m catapulted over the rainbow bridge. They might take me for one last really nice date. Maybe a lovely meal. They relish my manifold compliments and endless prattling. They’re distant. I’m too autistic to notice. I’m still happily, adoringly taking beautiful pictures of them, editing them as necessary. The pictures go straight onto the Hinge profile they didn’t even pause.
Like an ancient arthritic dog I am not surprised by my demise. In many ways I’m desperate for it. I don’t care that I love more. I’m practicing. I’m training. The challenge thrills me. But deep down I always know these imbeciles lack the grit or stamina to love the way I do. This is a diss track, by the way. I fear a lot of this series is going to be profoundly pointed.
Dating in London, closing in on thirty, being eccentric and clearly looking a bit like a lot of posh mums requires unthinkable stamina. I think it’s the short hair? It’s very middle-aged lady of the house. British men seem to lack romantic ambition but also any real direction. Children? Yeah, probably. Not sure. Monogamy? Figuring it out. What are you looking for? They just lie.
Despite absolutely no intention to reciprocate, London’s eligible men want to be chosen in their three dimensions, even if they’re just looking for a set of three holes. They want you to see them as successful, brave, healthy, benevolent about their evil exes and most crucially: as a man shopping for a wife, with a big budget.
They aren’t. They’re just like the rest of us, latently horny, being shafted by multiple algorithms, deprived of likes and the approval of their fathers.
People are always so shocked by my candour but I find it easy. See: autism. I can’t even pretend to empathise with the fakers, sorry. You’re going to have to figure out how to be honest about what you want on your own. I do think we’d all have a better time if everyone directly just begged their parents for validation rather than surmise that dating A Model will be the methadone to their swiping addiction. Therapy has got to be cheaper than the countless cocktail dates.
Unfortunately, I am eventually just a person, with genuine desires and needs instead of fantasies and followers. Thankfully, these days I see the material benefit of throwing down that gauntlet: thinning out the pretenders. That’s what we have to resort to, to speed up the process, to stage-dive off the pedestal. The days of making it easy and cinematic to date me are finally over. War is finally over.
We all just want to be chosen. It’s so fucking boring and trite but it’s true. Our brains have been pulverised by the illusion of endless choice. I have visions of the future studies done on dating apps that will elucidate the end of civilisation, and I’m not even sure if I’m joking.
The only guard against becoming the kind of person who periodically peers at me and says, “you are hotter than me…” with the vaguely suspicious tone of someone who is going to take me, tail wagging, to the vet- is unfortunately good old-fashioned self esteem. It’s new to me, but it works. It even makes it easier to keep it moving, too, when you’re summarily dumped by whoever thought you were the ideal woman five minutes ago. You can’t trust someone who hates themselves.
It takes courage to love. Everyone is so frightened that it won’t work out, of being a crushing disappointment, of ending up miserable, stuck together. Well, I’m not. Most of that will happen, over and over again. Giving up would dignify any of the frankly mediocre entanglements I’ve had lately. I’d rather they remain ridiculous anecdotes. In the end, all of this is really about my relationship with myself- surprise! I do trust myself to walk away, to be merciful, to forgive myself.
It’s all just fodder for my Substack anyway.