My story: how 138 dates helped Rebekah Campbell discover her true self
On the outside she had it all, but Rebekah Campbell hadn’t had a boyfriend for 10 years. Lonely and terrified, she embarked on 138 dates in a systematic bid to find “the one”. This is what happened.
At 34-and-a-half, I appeared to have an enviable life. I was founder of a hot Sydney start-up, and I regularly appeared in the media and at business conferences, where I encouraged other women to strive for their goals. But on the inside, I was miserable. Because when I arrived home from work and looked at the four walls of my nice apartment, I was alone. I cooked alone, ate alone, watched TV alone and fell asleep clinging to a pillow.
All I wanted was love and a family of my own. But I hadn’t been on a date in 10 years following the tragic death of my first boyfriend in a car accident. The first years after the accident were filled with grief. But as I clocked into my 30s, I realised that I’d become stuck. I’d been single so long, it was as if a hard shell had formed around me.
On Christmas Day 2011, I woke on a fold-out child’s bed in the garage of some friends of my parents. ‘I can’t live like this forever,’ I thought. And I calculated: ‘If I meet a man by next Christmas, it’ll take at least a year to move in, another two before he’d agree to start trying for kids.’ By then I’d be approaching 38. Yikes!
I sat on a beach and pulled out my plan for 2012. Could I take the same approach I’d used in business and apply it to finding a man?
I set myself a goal: one date every week for an entire year.
With trembling hands, I signed up to eharmony. I imagined men I knew through business spotting me and laughing. “Rebekah Campbell is looking for a date … She must be desperate.” But I persevered.
The first man I met was a sales manager at Vodafone called Dan. I remember feeling terrified as I climbed the steps at [Sydney eatery] The Winery. I spotted him sitting alone on the balcony, with black hair and wearing a pink shirt like he’d told me to expect. He smiled and
pulled out my chair. We chatted about incidental things, and at the end of the night he told me how nervous he’d been coming out to meet me. This was his first online date too!
Dan and I went out a few more times, but it was obvious we were very different – he was conservative and religious. I broke up with him on the phone; he was understanding and thanked me for helping to become more comfortable with online dating. I pictured all those other faces on eharmony. Surely the perfect man was around the corner?
This wasn’t the case. What followed were 137 more dates across Sydney, New York and San Francisco. I met Pierre, a Stanford professor; Matthew, a member of the NSW Upper House; Peter, a stock market trader who wouldn’t stop calling; and Sanjay, a surgeon at Royal North Shore Hospital who only dated blondes and was disappointed when I arrived with red hair. I learnt that a high proportion of single men in Sydney wear platform shoes to make them taller and that men in New York date like it’s a sport.
I approached dating like a business, and used my sales skills to build and manage a pipeline of prospective partners. I expanded my acquisition channels to include RSVP, Match.com and Tinder. I followed a weekly routine: scout for new candidates on Monday and Tuesday after work, line up screening phone calls for Sunday afternoons and choose one from the call to go out with Thursday night, always 6pm, at one of two bars within five minutes from my apartment.
I wrote in a journal after every date noting what I’d learnt, any unanswered questions or feelings that I didn’t understand, and ideas for how I could improve my dating approach. There are way too many lessons to list in this short article, but here are three that I think are important.
I started by looking for all the wrong things. I wrote a list of the attributes of my perfect husband (tall, smart, fun). I told myself that ‘tall’ was key to physical attraction, but actually, I was just being superficial. Women discriminating against men who are short are no different from Sanjay ‘only dating blondes’ – ruling someone acceptable or not because of something they have no control over.
Pierre, the Stanford professor, was smart and fun. He took me to the Hamptons for the weekend and booked the most expensive restaurant in town. In the morning, we went out for a jog. He was much fitter than me and ran ahead within minutes. I took a wrong turn and got lost among the eerily quiet streets of huge white mansions and manicured lawns. If I screamed out here, no one would have come. Pierre pulled up in his black Jaguar two hours later. “You’ve made me late,” he shouted.
I reordered my list of priorities and added ‘caring’ at the top. I also discovered that having a positive outlook, an ability to self-reflect and reliability are important attributes in a long-term partner. By the end of my journey, I’d worked out a much better list.
The most important lesson was to be myself – not try to shape myself to what I thought my date might be looking for. I questioned, for example, how much I should say about my career. Would men be intimidated? I acted giggly, wore clothes that weren’t me. And I started a relationship with the member of the NSW Parliament, who seemed to like my malleable personality. A friend gave me some powerful advice: “Who you are when you date is who you’ll be matched with. If you act like you don’t have opinions, then you’ll end up married to someone who isn’t interested in what you have to say. You’ll end up miserable, probably divorced.”
Becoming myself was much harder than it sounds. I had to work out who I am. What do I stand for? What’s my vision? Who will I be in a relationship? Each date chipped off another level of ego and insecurity. After 137, I felt completely at ease in my own skin. The little voices in my head that judged others and criticised myself had disappeared.
Date 138 was Rod, an academic I’d met on Tinder. There was an instant connection when I first saw his big smile and sparkling eyes. Dinner that evening felt like arriving home. I remember the distinct moment when I knew he was “the one”. He was munching on gnocchi and describing why he became a teacher. It wasn’t a bolt of lightning from above, it was an active decision made by me.
It’s been just over six years since then. There have been arguments and there’s been wonder. We’ve made two magnificent little children and not a day passes when I don’t reflect on how grateful I am that I made the effort to put myself out there and find happiness.
Dating 138 different men is the hardest thing I’ve done – nothing in business comes close. At the beginning I had no idea what I’d have to go through in order to find love or who
I’d have to become. But I can tell you now, the end is definitely worth the effort.