In this weekly feature, Her.ie goes behind enemy lines to see what it’s really like to be single in Ireland.
From speed dating to making speedy escapes, our no-holds-barred blog will follow our attempts to venture into the dating jungle, play the field and share any wisdom that we finds along the way.
Week Twenty- Four: Birds and… butterflies
The dating game is an exhausting and frustrating business and it can be very easy to lose sight of what we bother in the first place.
But if you’re about to give it all up and join the nuns…hang on for one minute.
One of the Her team went on a very lovely first date this week, which reminded us that a few bad encounters are all worth it when you meet someone who has you hanging on to your phone for fear you might miss a message.
In case you’re struggling to remember a nice date memory, we went round the table and shared some of our favourites.
*****
“I’ve only ever had one first date but it did turn out to be pretty special because, almost seven years later, I am still with himself. Like most people, we headed to the cinema. Unlucky for me, the film was We Own The Night (I chose it so I only have myself to blame) which has one of hottest scenes in film history in it involving the very gorgeous Eva Mendes. Thankfully for me, that didn’t distract him too much and it all worked out very well indeed. And yes, I am a hopeless romantic.”
*****
“I met my first real boyfriend when I was in secondary school and we got together just before the Junior Cert. When I think back now, I was so bloody young but I was absolutely crazy about the guy and ended up with him for quite a while.
In school, he always sat in front of me through my entire secondary school experience. We would always send notes to each other but after we got caught out, we decided we would have our own code that we would use in our notes to each other. Basically, every letter in the alphabet was represented by a certain number and then these in turn would spell out words.
Now, when you’re young and impressionable, you always worry about whether that guy you really like is really into you (that doesn’t change, this will always be the case) but you’re more worried about it when you’re 14. On one particular day, he passed me a note before I went to another class he wasn’t attending. As I began to decipher it, it read.
“When you were here before
Couldn’t look you in the eye
You’re just like an angel
Your skin makes me cry
You float like a feather
In a beautiful world
I wish I was special
You’re so f**king special”
And so the rest of the letter basically read as Radiohead’s Creep lyrics. I asked him afterwards why he wrote them out and he said that was how he felt about me.
Cheesy but true.”
*****
“I had been single for a while and on Valentine’s Day when I was 19 I was asked out by a guy who I’d been flirty texting for a couple of weeks. I had mentioned in passing that I loved purple and orange flowers but it was a fly-away comment that was made alongside a list of favourites lists including my favourite chocolate (Terrys Chocolate Orange) or book (To Kill A Mockingbird). When I met him at the gates of Stephen’s Green he stood there with a big bouquet of orange and purple tulips and a Valentine’s card because he said it wouldn’t be right to take out a girl on a special day without a card.
We got hot chocolate and took a walk around the park. It wasn’t extravagant, but it was sweet and comfortable and we dated for a couple months.”
“It doesn’t really matter what age you are: when it comes to a first date your stomach is churning, palms are sweating and you have absolutely no idea what you’re going to say. Chances are when you do open your mouth, all that comes out is a high pitched squeak, before you then find yourself tripping over words and rambling at 100 miles a minute. Anyway… once you get to grips with all that, then there really is nothing that beats the feeling of nervous butterflies as you wait to see how the date unfolds. THE butterflies, you know the ones we’re talking about.”
*****
“One of my favourite first date memories harks back to my J1. I had met an Irish boy, (of course), on a night out and we made plans to go see a movie in Times Square. A pretty romantic setting, so we were off to a great start. We had a lovely meal, he bought me some street art and off we went to the cinema. There were three films on offer; a terrible action movie with Nicholas Cage (which he voted for), a terrible rom-com with Reese Witherspoon, (which I voted for) and a horror movie. We agreed on the horror film as a compromise.
“I’m not a fan of horrors but I figured it might be somewhat romantic – an excuse to cuddle up?! What I didn’t take into account was that the American movie experience is VERY different to an Irish Omniplex. Cue two hours with tears of laughter streaming down my cheeks as about twenty larger than life African American women narrated the whole movie by screaming at the lead character. “Mooooove girl! SH*!, she just ate a spider… she ATE the god damn spider!”
Romantic it was not, but I laugh every time I think of it.”
