So you’re heading out hoping your first meetup with Mandy, from Fictional Town, won’t be a disappointing date like the last one was. You’ve been messaging and getting on like a house on fire, you’ve got loads in common… hell, you may as well as just book that honeymoon suite for later in the evening and plan your retirement together, things are looking that good!
But the minute you meet up it all starts to go downhill. Maybe your date looks less fantastic than they did in the profile. Perhaps they’re not as funny or as smart as they seemed. They haven’t got the chat they appeared to in the initial communications. For whatever reason, as the date rumbles on, you know it’s going to be back to the drawing board. Sigh!
Not to worry, here are some ways you can banish those blues.
Takeaway
I don’t advise this if you have a string of lousy dates, otherwise you’ll be in the chippy every night, but if it’s just the odd stinker of a date, why not indulge yourself? You can always work it off the next day!
Might I suggest going back to basics and calling in at your local chippy? It’s the classic takeaway option. And after the ordeal you’ve just been through, you want to go back to a time when you were still content with single life and Markus from POF hadn’t even been born.
Make it happen with a battered sausage and chips. Don’t let them put the salt on for you, though, as kind of them as it is. You’re trying to re-establish control of your evening and of your destiny. Put your own salt on, just this once. They’ll understand.
Go for a workout
Make your date a mid-afternoon coffee and you can still squeeze a workout in before the day is out! Nice!
I confess there have been times when I’ve sensed rejection is imminent and thought, ‘Hey up, I can still get to the pool if we finish up here soon enough’ or ‘I might get back just in time for the snooker’. Deep down I’ve thanked those ones for keeping it brief so I could have a splash around or savour a spot of fraught safety play at the Crucible!
By the time you’ve been hammering the treadmill for half an hour, with the sweat dripping down your arms, and trying to break through the pain barrier, you’ll have forgotten all about the non-events of the day.
Your day will also feel fuller. Starting it on a negative but ending it with a positive. Oh, if Deepak Chopra could see you now!
Subscribe to the UFC
You’d been on a thousand million dates, but this was the one… or so it seemed. She ‘popped to the bathroom’ and didn’t come back. Maybe it was like in that scene in ‘Trainspotting’, the one where he ends up climbing into the toilet bowl and having a swim around. Either way, this two-faced treatment has wounded you.
So what better way to ease the letdown than watch two grown ups in peak physical condition knock seven bells out of each other! You’ll wince as they go to ground and one repeatedly pummels the other with everything they’ve got, for sure, but you’ll also forget about your own sufferings. You think you’re hurting? Imagine how these guys feel when they get up the next day!
You might feel guilty seeing someone get badly while thousands of fans look on and cheer in delight, but don’t: these men and women pretty much love what they do. If you still can’t shake off the guilt follow them on Twitter or Instagram, congratulate them on the fight and then ask them for some dating advice, or even for a date. I’m a Miesha ‘Cupcake’ Tate man all the way! *heart beats faster*
Oh, and when I say ‘subscribe to the UFC’, what I really mean is watch free videos on YouTube.
Watch a silly comedy or movie
Alternatively, you don’t have to go down the ‘watch two people try to kill each other with their virtually bare hands’ route. You can try for a more lighthearted approach to lifting your bruised and battered spirits, with a bit of comedy.
There are two people you can always count on to take the bitter aftertaste of a date away: Alan Partridge and David Brent. One combines just about every unlikable human trait known to man, the other is a hopeless manager and not so great a human being either. But both are comedy on another level when you need a pick me up.
If they’re not you’re cup of, try the madcap Fawlty Towers or Phoenix Nights. I wouldn’t recommend Only Fools and Horses or any kind of romantic comedy. Some of the drama is too close to real life.
Better than all of these is to just not get your hopes up. You’re just meeting up for a chat. Don’t try too hard. Just be yourself (unless you’re a jerk, in which case try to be less of one). You can always do something more fun later!
Image by Wesley Fryer used under Flickr Creative Commons licence, J_Dacanay , used with Wikimedia Creative Commons license, and Dai Lygad, with Creative Commons licence
