The date rules - rewritten

Posted by Kate Matharu at 17:20 on 5 May 2009

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It appears, that after my initial wobble I am officially seeing Matt Black. Can you believe it? Me?! I bet you’d given up on me – I think I had – that I would ever have a man in bed again, let alone have sex. Amazing.

Anyway, I know he won’t mind me saying because I tell him all the time, (poor bloke)  that as lovely and exciting as it is, it also scares the hell out of me. Seriously, I must be the biggest pain in the arse to go out with in the world. I can’t believe we’ve got this far, the man deserves a medal.

They say you never forget how to drive a car or ride a bike but I think you can forget how to have a relationship, at least I have. I have learned more about myself in the past few weeks than I have in the last year and let me tell you, it’s not that pretty.

The other morning, in bed (well, I say, morning, it was more heading towards midday. We seem to have reverted back to student-type, i.e. lots of lying in bed with the curtains closed, necking in pubs, that sort of thing. MB says seeing me is like having a baby again – he had one of those ten years ago so he’s speaking from experience -  in that we’re in a permanent state of sleep deprivation and go to bed at strange times.)

Anyway, I digress. The other day, he also said that I seem to have torn up the dating rule book and written another one. (Dating for the Warped and Clinically Insane, perhaps? He didn’t say that bit by the way. …)

Rule 1: Be fascist in your judgements. Take one thing – anything you like, the more irrelevant and inane the better – that they say or do then draw as crazy and as sweeping a conclusion as you possibly can.

I feel we have reached a point in our relationship where we can laugh about this now, so I hope he won’t mind me sharing a couple examples with you.

In the past month, inane details about him that I have taken, run with, drawn conclusions loopy enough to send most men sprinting in the other direction are:

1. He didn’t know where Whitstable was, or much about Kent. (Unforgiveable. Indefensible! How can I possibly go out with a man who doesn’t know Kent like the back of his hand? The fact I have been to Kent  three times in my entire life and also have no idea where the Isle of Wight is – he does – does not come into it, obviously.)

2. He’s not a foodie. He eats to take in calories. (not to take him to a higher spiritual level, like me). This clearly means that we will never, EVER be able to go to a restaurant. How can I go out with a man who claims he would never run home, excited about the Roquefort in his fridge? Value systems all over the place, I tell you. It’s a worry, a real worry.

There’s more, but I shall spare you the true horror of my warped mind. I shall simply move onto

Rule 2: Once you have identified inane detail, hone in on it, let it ferment and magnify beyond all recognition in your warped mind machine then drop it, clanger-style in conversation. (This works much better if you are drunk)

The other night was a shining example. I’d been on Radio Five Live talking about my ‘modern family’ (which must surely be about as modern as a Betamax these days, the length of time I have banged on about it to every national newspaper, magazine, radio station, but hey! ..) MB was there to give me moral support and afterwards, I obviously had to drink an entire bottle of white wine in order to ‘come down’ from my adrenaline high.

 Anyway, about half way through this, I piped up, for no particular reason. “I want to go to a restaurant! I want you to take me to the seafood restaurant in Berkhamsted (not having a shared interest in clams is also bothering me, you see…)

“I don’t care if you don’t like eating, I DO” I said. “So there.”

How utterly terrible. I had turned into some sort of Violet Beauregarde character from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and it would have served me right if I had been turned into a giant prawn, right there and then.

MB only reminded me of what I’d said the next day. Needless to say, he felt it was all very amusing since contrary to my fears, he has no problem whatsoever about going to a restaurant and will not, as I was concluding as per my Dating Rule Book for the Clinically Insane, order a side plate of chips and seventeen beers and demand we go to the pub.  He will – get this! – eat dinner like a normal person!! And possibly even enjoy it.

It’s not the first time I have picked him apart these last few weeks  - all women are a little bit harsh, underneath, he says, and I’m beginning to think he’s right -  because guess what?  I’m not perfect either!! In fact I am awfully and terribly flawed, more so than I even thought.  And yet, he doesn’t seem to worry about the fact that I think too much, draw ludicrous conclusions about people, that I am a domestic slut, that I lose something – on average – every single day,  that I own a Scouting for Girls CD, that I have a flaky skin condition, that I, lest not forget, have a baby with my friend and enough emotional baggage to fill an airport carousel. And that, methinks, is something worth sticking with.

Of course I don’t know what’s going to happen, or how or whether this will progress – that’s what scares the hell out of me  – but I do know this: He constantly surprises and impresses me. The other day, during one of my weekly, if not daily wobbles, he said to me: “You have two choices: You sit in your safe rut and invite no possibilities,  or you take a risk – the risk that things might not work out – and open yourself up to hurt, but also possibility.”


And so I am trying to do the latter, and it’s exposing and scary. But then I’ve been scared for years anyway, so I may as well have something to show for it.


 

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