A short while ago I was surprised to receive a “first approach” type message in an online dating inbox from someone who l remembered well but had evidently forgotten me.
“Don’t you realise that we already know each other?” I asked her.
“Oh! Do we?” There was a few seconds of bemusement whilst she mulled over the question.
Then came her answer. “OMG, Yes I do remember!”
It says something for the world of online dating that you can sometimes approach people as if you’ve never spoken to them in your lives when in fact you have already actually had a date with them. In fact, excruciating as it is, it has happened to many of us. It has certainly happened to me.
Painful memories
In this case the memory had been particularly painful for me. We had had one of those intense pre-date conversations where you start to take it for granted that a relationship will flower as soon as you meet in person. Virtual chemistry, I call it.
In fact she had plenty of virtual chemistry but not so much of the real thing, but preferred not to tell me, instead gradually parcelling out shorter and shorter doses of attention until her feelings became obvious.
This was seven years in the past and it still ranked as one of my most painful dating experiences.
A chance to rewrite history?
Now however something had changed.
“To be honest I didn’t recognize you. You look different,” she said.
“How so?” I asked.
“Actually, you look… better.”
I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t want her to expand slightly on that point so I sent her a blushing emoji and a thank you and asked her to continue.
“I don’t know. Slimmer maybe?”
She’d hit the nail right on the head. I’d lost a few kilos in the years since we saw each other.
Slim pickings
I suddenly felt self-conscious, like I was being praised for something that wasn’t really part of me.
We chatted for a while longer and it started to feel a little awkward. Both of us were probably thinking about how we lost our heads to quite a large extent before we even met.
“Well,” she said. “Nice to catch up with you. Perhaps we could meet.”
I thought about it but I wasn’t convinced. I suppose I felt slightly resentful that she thought that she would like me now and hadn’t liked me before.
What’s in a few pounds?
Before I gave a non-committal reply, what I was really thinking was: when it comes to dating does losing 9lbs really make me sexier?
The truth is all of my partners have been women that didn’t mind me having “a little extra around the middle”.
But most of those I met when I was in the middle of a diet and temporarily at a lower than average weight.
And of course I always wondered whether losing that weight might’ve given me a temporary advantage.
So naturally, I also wonder how many rejections were prompted by that same spare tyre.
A weighty conundrum
A female friend once did me the favour of looking over one of my dating profiles from a woman’s point of view.
One of the first thing she took her red pen to was that I had listed my weight as “normal”.
“Normal?” she said, questioningly.
“Well…” I blustered. “Who decides what is normal?”
I didn’t quite believe my own argument.
It occurred to me that a long time ago this friend and I had also been on a date – and she ended up telling me she didn’t have romantic feelings for me. Could that’ve been the reason?
Possibly reading my mind, she added diplomatically: “What does weight matter anyway?”
“He ain’t heavy”
I wonder if it would be culturally acceptable today to do a scientific study on how much our weight fluctuations affect our dating success.
However I would be surprised if the answer is not “significantly”.
I’d be interested to know if any readers have had similar experiences where they can compare before and after experiences after losing or gaining weight.
By Max
