July 23, 2012

ELIZABETH ROSE

**In case you haven’t already heard our first book, Asses to Asses, Bust to Bust, is now available as an e-book or in print. For further details, including the various ways you can get your hands on a copy or two of your very own, click here.**

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The following post was first published by @SSDated as part of her Down In The Dating Trenches series last month. So head on over to her site to check out what the other guest posters (including our fave perv Ken, Alex, of The Urban Dater and one of the funniest women on the Twitter, Ariel) had to say – after you finishing reading this post…of course.

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If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life. – Oscar Wilde

 
When SSDated first approached us over at Met Another Frog for our stories of dates gone wrong, I was hesitant. Not to write for her, that is an honour I was most grateful for, but to find an original story of woe in the dating life I have catalogued so fully over the years.

I am Elizabeth Rose, and I write tales of slutty adventures and humour with my fellow defenders of the filth at MetAnotherFrog.com, and it is the case that much I have to tell has already been told. But it occurred to me there are several stories, or non-dates I have yet to share with anyone…

Those of wasted evenings and ill-fated nights of being stood up.

I think it might be the worst of any dating experience, that slow realisation you aren’t going anywhere. That this night will never be a tale to tell your girlfriends over cocktails or your grandchildren over cake frosting.

It’s a nothing of a night, where no new connection is made, no new story to be told, nothingness. It’s a bleak feeling. I think the worst of it is that ownership, the feeling of blame, of rejection. A bad date can always be their fault, not mine. There will always be some character flaws to assassinate endlessly at dinner parties to entertain the coupled guests. To be stood up is to be denied that, there are no what-ifs, no stories, no amusing recollections. It is an ending without a beginning and as such leaves me feeling most piqued at such a slight.

The worst feeling, however, is knowing that I’ve done this to others, that there have been gentlemen sitting in restaurants, pubs and bars waiting for Ms Rose, who will never appear. In the moments when you realise they aren’t late, that they aren’t coming, that’s one of the few times I feel any empathy for the men I date. I share with them the sense of betrayal – that this other person has betrayed our possibility, ended us without beginning. I always feel a moment’s remorse to previous slights I have committed. I even sulk briefly, wondering if this is karma, or what of the multitude of possible excuses he might have, that this wasn’t intended.

At the end of it all, my ego and libido will right themselves (they have always been naturally buoyant). I find rather than skulking away with a look of rejection, that leaving with the cute waiter/bar man/innocent bystander, has a way of making me feel better. After all, the worst thing to do with an evening is to end it without at least a small fumble.

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