Relationships Blog
Dating Diary
March 15, 2008: be careful what you wish for
Because you just might get it, writes Linda Franklin, after a lost love turns up on a dating site. If the past is another country, perhaps that's where he should have stayed...
Be careful what you wish for. When I was in my late twenties in the early eighties I wished for a guy called David.
I used to work on Options magazine and we were based in the West End and - not far from us - were the offices of a well known international advertising agency. Some of us girls, clocking off from work (or even staying on from the lunchtime wine bar shift) would end up drinking in the same places their talent went drinking in. And when I say 'talent', I mean it in the broadest possible sense...
I regularly linked up with David, a creative director responsible for some ground-breaking ads: tall, slim, blond and amusing in a slightly off-key way and with a knack of appearing genuinely interested in you. As far as it went. Maybe he just wanted to know how people tick for the sake of work - so he asked about it.
But he didn't let you into his private self. His bedroom was as far as it went. And there we would end up regularly for the best part of a year or two having a wild time to the sound of the Thompson Twins (his choice of music, rather than mine). I could never get closer to him than that casual arrangement - try as I might. He was a keen cyclist, spending most of the weekend biking over the South Downs. Then Aids came on the scene and people just stopped acting like that and I met my husband-to-be and that was that.
So - imagine my surprise! - to see someone who could have been him on the dating site. Just a divorce a piece and two children each later. Here were the clues it could be him: he was in the media, saw himself as very creative, the age was about right, he had David in his user name. But you couldn't actually see it was him: the picture was just a blur of a man in a baseball cap bending over to pat a large, shaggy dog with some mountains in the background. A total cheat.
'Did you used to like the Thompson Twins and drink at Zanzibar in Great Queen Street in Covent Garden? Also earn vast sums of money for ads about household products?' I mailed him.
'Are you the tax man?' he mailed back.
'Do you ride bikes a lot?' I replied.
'Have people been talking about me?' He asked.
Reader - he didn't remember me! A journalist called Linda he used to see regularly rang no bells at all.
'Lawdy - just how many women were you seeing then?' I asked.
Too many to count, obviously.
'Hang on,' he mailed. 'Were you a bit chubby...?
'I wouldn't say 'chubby'! Quite...' I let him know. Cheek.
'What a bitch!' said Ewan, when I called him about it afterwards. 'Of course you're going to see him?'
'Try stopping me!' I said.
'You'll have to look as thin as possible,' said Ewan. 'High heels and a tight skirt, dark colours. Go glam to make up for the fact you're no longer the dewy, plump and juicy spring chicken you once were.'
Sometimes I wonder if dating is worth the emotional price you pay...
Anyway, Dave and I arranged to meet for an early evening drink in a bar near Charlotte Street, for old time's sake. And, as the hour approached, I found myself getting quite nervous. This was a man I had hankered after for the best part of two years in my late twenties. But who could barely recall me when I was - presumably - at some kind of peak. What would he think of me a quarter of a century on? Was I nuts to be setting myself up for comparison with the young woman I'd been?
But as I took a seat on the bar and confidently ordered a double whisky with lots of ice and sat chinking the glass, looking around and totally at ease in my skin I realised it didn't matter one jot what he thought of me. What mattered was what I thought about me. And what I was doing with my life. I thought: okay so I'm older but in those years I've raised two great kids, made a lovely home, built a good circle of friends and am doing my own creative thing. I am not the wild and insecure girl I once was. Thank God.
'I remember you!' A stranger came up to me. 'You were always such good fun!'
And there was Dave: the blond hair - alas - all gone, the muscles replaced by flab, the once sculpted face jowly. He smiled: 'Time has been very kind to you...'
But not to him. If only you could tell every young woman pining after some stud that in twenty five years she wouldn't look at him twice...
More from Linda
- March 6: trust your instinct
- Feb 29: flying visit from the legal eagle
- Feb 22: the lip-licking good legal eagle
- Feb 8: no more heroes
- Feb 1: eating my words
- Jan 25: please yourself
More on dating
- Is this 'The One'?
- How to get back into the dating game
- How to handle yourself on the first date
- Setting up the second date
More blogs this week
Reader comments
Ah the arrogance of youth - how we all think that we will be the same in 20 or so years time. A new man comes into your life and you are forced to acknowledge the lumps and bumps of your years, the wrinkly skin and thickening waist. It doesn't matter that your girl friends tell you how gorgeous you are! You have to believe it, yes Linda is right I am comfortable in my own skin and my new man (who is a little younger than I am) if he has noticed, doesn't mention my wobbly saggy bits. Like me he's more interested in the person, how lucky am I.
Posted by: jan sims | 24/04/2008 08:47:28
Some men mature like wine, the same goes for women I suppose, I often think when I see on TV the young reporters and compare them with the older version, I would often prefer the older version. Of course there are those that let themselves go and get a beer belly, others who must spend a fortune at the gym, I suppose it just depends on what turns you on! Perhaps its best to forget the past and concentrate on the 'here and now'! at least we do not have all the insecurities that we had when very young! (or do we?)
Posted by: Judy Parsons | 21/03/2008 14:29:53
