From the Archive: I Fall in Love Easily (to the Tune of Natasha Bedingfield)
…or, beware the men on Tinder in the REPEAL jumpers
I wrote this piece in the summer of 2019, the year before I moved to the US, prompted by a ‘what a coincidence!’ moment that happened in my Instagram DMs, when I realised that a follower and I had pretty much had the exact same experience with the exact same man. In the 48 hours after I hit ‘publish’, I received more than a dozen messages from other women who had – you guessed it – also had the exact same experience with the exact same man. I guess you’d call that a pattern.
I am finding myself relating far too much to Amy Hart right now, the Love Island-er who, four weeks into her relationship with “professional dancer” Curtis Pritchard on the fifth season of the UK show, announced that she was ready to tell him she loved him.
All it took was a three-day sojourn in Casa Amor for her to realise the depth of her true feelings for the very bland Curtis, whose functions in the villa seem confined to making coffee for everyone and interjecting at the end of every conversation with a meaningless but quotable quip.
My mother has an extremely low tolerance for meaningless statements. You know the kind of thing – “sure, you’ll have that!” is one of her least favourites. Curtis and my mother would never get along, despite the fact that she loves a polite barista and is unfailingly impressed by anyone with a true talent for dance.
Anyway: Amy. Having fallen madly in love within one full menstrual cycle, it is she – not Maura, the Longford-born accidental feminist any self-respecting Love Island fan would die for – with whom I am strongly identifying. That’s not necessarily a good thing; I recognise the error of her – and my – ways.
The last time I fell pointlessly, inexplicably in love, it was with a man I’d met on Tinder. He was just what I was looking for: single, liberal, all for orgasm equality. (I’d put it in my bio – “on a one-woman quest to achieve orgasm equality” – and, let me tell you, the straight men of Ireland talk a good talk when it comes to the female orgasm. Let them into your bed, though, and things quickly fall apart.)
Myself and Adam (not his real name) went for coffee one evening after (his) work. Afterwards, he texted to tell me I had “the perfect body”. He told me I had beautiful skin. He told me the things he’d like to do to my body, to my skin (they sounded like things I would enjoy).
There was a spanner in the works, though; not only was he off out of the city for the weekend, but he was very busy, he told me, between work and a college course he’d started, and he wasn’t sure he’d have time to date. “The next few weeks are crazy busy for me,” he said.
He added something else. “I’d be totally up for a friendship with some boldness attached,” he revealed. (The fact that I overlooked this adult man’s use of the word “boldness” in a sexual context should show you just how invested I was in this love story.) “But I’d be very picky about anything more than that.”
This was no good. I’d already imagined meeting his friends. I’d gone through extended fantasies about going for long weekends away, spending evenings in the pub doing cool-girl things like drinking beer and winning pub quizzes. (I do not drink beer and I am terrible at quizzes.)
I wasn’t even enraged by his use of the word “picky”. This is a challenge! I thought. He just needs to spend time with me. He’ll fall in love! We would be so good together.
I took my dog for a walk one evening and deliberately strolled past his place of work. The walk took two hours. The dog didn’t know what had hit her.
The next day, I broke up with him. (We had gone for coffee once. We had kissed goodbye on the cheek. He had told me, expressly, that he had no time to date. Calling it a breakup is, you understand, poetic licence.)
“Listen, we’re both incredibly busy,” I lied. “I really enjoyed fantasising about the great sex we’d have” (that part was true) “but we may as well leave it here. Best of luck with the course!”
“We might bump into one another at some stage,” he said.
I then embarked upon a vivid fantasy involving bumping into him in a variety of places around the city. I took the dog on a few more long walks, coincidentally along routes I felt he might frequent. That weekend, I took my mother for lunch in a nearby town – the very town Adam told me his parents lived. That was a mad coincidence, wasn’t it! Mother was delighted.
A few weeks later, I was lamenting the state of the Men on Tinder (a tragedy in three parts, coming soon to the Abbey Theatre) on Instagram Stories when a woman – a stranger, a woman I do not know and have never met – sent me a message of warning. “Don’t even get me started on the men in the Repeal jumpers!” said she. (Readers, I LOLed.)
“He wasn’t called Adam by any chance, was he?” I quipped.
Readers, he was. “Oh. My. God,” she said. (Funnily enough, my sentiments exactly.) “The very one! Did he give you the speech about not wanting to get into a relationship, then text you incessantly?”
She was half right.
The sad thing is, even though I, like Amy, had seen the truth of the situation – that this man was not worth my time or fantastical imaginings – I was still hoping that he would, one day, think of me and send me a text. (I deleted his number, not trusting myself to exercise restraint.) A small part of me is still hoping this will happen. Maybe, just maybe, one of these days he’ll be feeling less “picky”, and he’ll get in touch.
Like I said, I fall in love easily – and by “easily”, I mean, it doesn’t take much. It doesn’t take anything at all.
Writing this down has depressed me. A dangerous result, as I am, in case you didn’t know, already depressed.
I think a lot about the power I have, historically, given away to the men I’ve dated, or wanted to date. I make a lot of excuses for their shitty behaviour. I make even more excuses for my, frankly, unhinged behaviour. I know, logically, that I am worth more than this. I know that I deserve better. And yet.
There’s a quote in a movie that I remember a lot. (It might have been The Notebook.) As I remember it, it’s Ryan Gosling. Speaking to a friend, he says, “women spend their whole lives waiting for a guy who’ll marry them. Men spend their whole lives waiting to meet a girl they want to marry.”
For what it’s worth, I am not really waiting for Adam’s text any more. I got enough detail from my new Instagram bestie to know that I deserve a lot better than a 30-something man who’s still employing the tactics of The Game to try and get laid.
But, you know – in the immortal words of Tai, “if I’m too good for him, then how come I’m not with him?!”
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God I don't miss dating sites...too many nasty men/experiences. Tho the one that made me laugh/cry and give up, was the meal with a normal looking guy..who was a true believer in the existence of the Illumiati.
The most bizarre 1.5 hours of my life.
The brst bit, he picked me as I was his slave in a past life, oh and I know more than I ever needed to know about the alien controlling us
The worst encounter I had on dating sites (I think the worst - I remember most of my time on dating sites as something akin to standing at the breach to the gates of hell) but anyway, it was with a man who identified as a feminist. I would still consider that a red flag to this day. His form of feminism was built around entitlement to special treatment from women, because he was masquerading as a good guy / "nice guy" and he really assumed that was the end of all debate/discussion as far as women were concerned. I bet he proudly sported that repeal jumper too!