Help! There’s a third wheel on my blind date – and it’s my ex’s best friend
Atext message arrives from my friend Alice. “Would you be up for a blind date?” My heart, I have to admit, doesn’t immediately beat faster. It’s 10 months since my break-up but I reckon I’d be eligible to join a religious order in Bhutan by now because I haven’t been on a date since. “Women grieve, men replace,” goes the saying, and I haven’t remotely wanted to think about relationships again so I’ve been getting into bed at 9pm every night and reading my book. Books only make you cry in a good way. Books don’t fart under the duvet.
Still, unless I do want to book a one-way ticket to the East and dress in orange for the rest of my life when it’s really not my colour, I feel I should make an effort. I text Alice back: “Oh, go on then,” and, madam-like, she
makes the necessary introductions, leaving her husband’s friend and me to arrange a date at the pub.
A week later, I reach this pub sweating since I’ve walked too quickly, so that’s alluring. He’s there already and my nerves steady. He’s funny, friendly and we find a table with our drinks. I can feel beads break out on my upper lip and try to wipe them away subtly. Did Greta Garbo have this problem? I suspect not. But once I stop leaking like the Whaley Bridge dam, it’s nice, exploring someone else and laughing at one another’s jokes. I remember this! And then… disaster. I look outside and spot one of my ex’s best friends having dinner in the same pub, directly in my eye line. We sit for another hour or so, another drink, and I know I’m saying words but, really, I’m obsessing about this awkward social situation and what to do if she walks past our table on her way to the loo. I start sweating again.
Oh the agonies of dating. How do people do it? Find yourself single again these days and most people will first download a dating app. Another friend made me do this recently and I tentatively started using it – no, no, maybe, no, no, yes, no, no – until a message popped up. “Hey, are you the Sophia who did a reading recently at Emily and Fraser’s wedding?” That was too much real-life for me. Back I went to my book.
Then there are the singles parties. I did a lot of these in my 20s – girls on one side of the room, boys on the other, like a teenage disco, until people start mingling. But at the grand old age of 34, this feels too
meat-market. Like a game of musical chairs, the writer Holly Bourne put it, where you simply have to sit down on whoever’s nearest. Which leaves the blind dates, the set-ups by friends, or the option of simply bumping into Mr Right randomly, on the Tube or while I’m shuffling around my local Co-op buying loo roll as often happens in films. It seems a tall order to me. My blind date that night was sweet, but I’m hoping that my next relationship, whenever that may be, is the big one. So unless it’s magic from the off, I’m not sure I can face going on a series of dates where the main result is me returning home dangerously dehydrated. But is that naive, wise Telegraph readers? Alternatively, I’ve checked out the weather in Bhutan and it remains clear and quite balmy even in January. So there is still that.