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.

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Week Thirty-Seven: Mysterious Ways After putting months of research into Tinder, at this point I feel like I have the rules down. Plenty Of Fish is... well, a whole other kettle of fish. One week in and there are a few potential men on the horizon but while Tinder is clearly a banter zone, on POF I feel like I'm on three different dating sites. Suitor Number One was pure craic straight from the off and our communication consists of sporadic messages every day or two, Number Two is a more sedate 'getting to know you' conversation with frequent messaging over a few hours and Number Three is still early days so it's hard to tell. What's the usual timeframe for a face-to-face? Should there be a spark from the off or is it important to give things a chance? How long should a profile be? We're in uncharted territory, people! So I bow down to those with a bit more experience than me - what are your POF rules or warning signs? What should I be looking out for? Answers on a postcard... or to hello@her.ie with Shifty First Dates in the subject line. I've decided to give myself a deadline to arrange my very first POF date by next week so stay tuned! In the meantime, here's a story from our lovely reader Mary who found that romance works in very mysterious ways! “I fell in love with a beautiful Brazilian ‘abs of steel’ god! It was going well until I got a 3am call from him out of the blue to say he was heading back to Brazil and he hated it here. He explained that he missed his family and would leave in the morning so with this news, I had lost fate in men and decided to focus on work. After several months of the single life and moving from Meath down to Cork City, my friend suggested I try Plenty Of Fish. Now after a couple of dodgy chats with not so Mr Rights, I came across Alan. Lovely chap. Friendly happy photos. Loves the outdoors. Has a 9-5. Fairly goodlooking. Not the typical type I’d go for but he was a breath of fresh air in a sea of sex-crazed a**holes. After chatting every evening online for about two weeks, we exchanged numbers and the date was set. We planned to go to the pub. He meets me at the apartment and we headed over. Sitting down to our first drink, a waitress comes over. Only it wasn’t just a waitress… it was his mum. Bad enough, you might think. But it got worse. He introduced me as his GIRLFRIEND, despite us not even having shared a kiss at this stage! She was gushing and telling all the staff while I'm sitting there all red faced. Blushing was an understatement. Finally she leaves us alone and before I can do a runner on the clearly needy guy, who walks in only Mr Brazil himself! Holding hands with a heavily pregnant South African friend of his. So in sheer panic mode, I introduce Alan as my boyfriend. Our date continued after they walked off (and I established her conception date was while we dated.) I get slightly drunk. I end up kissing Alan (aka the washing machine). I woke fairly hungover after drinking the shock and anger away and checked my Tinder, POF and my Facebook. Alan has suggested we are in a relationship... alarm bells started ringing. I checked my other messages, swiped a few men and briefly replied to one of last night’s half asleep drunken swipe, Fiachra. Within moments, Fiachra suggests coffee and a walk to cure me. Ignoring Alan’s relationship request. I met with Fiachra and it was lust at first sight. Five months down the line, we have clicked and made it FB official so I guess you never know what is around the corner! If my date wasn’t such a disaster, I mightn’t have drunk swiped Fiachra and he would not have bought me that McDonald’s cappuccino we drank as we walked the Grand Parade.” We want to hear your dating stories! Email us at hello@her.ie or tweet us @Herdotie with the #shiftyfirstdates.