The Blind Date

Now I have never been someone who was into blind dates. In fact, I am not a girl who has ever been into dating at all! First dates give me the creeps. The whole, 'where do we go', 'to kiss or not to kiss'. Seriously, some people I know only live for the first kiss; I personally think it is highly overrated. Maybe I have never been one of those lucky people who have experienced a 'great' first date. Maybe I am cynical, but I think those people who have great first dates are only fooling themselves. It was a first date… how on earth can it be great!

Let us just call a spade a spade for a moment and admit that first dates are awkward and uncomfortable, and that is when you have already met the person before! What happens when you have never met them? Why do people continually subject themselves to blind dates? It baffles me, especially when first dates in themselves are horrific enough… why put yourselves through further torment by not knowing what you are letting yourself in for in the first place?

As one of the only single girls in an office filled with married women, I deal with the office "I have a great guy to set you up with" set up sessions. I say sessions because they never come one at a time. I will be taking lunch outside when I will be suddenly surrounded by a horde of women looking to unload the 'nice but single' men that have passed through their lives. I am not sure why they feel the need to unload them on me, I like to think that these men are too much of a temptation for these married women to keep around them single. But then I realise, once I see photos and hear credentials, that this is not the case. I breathe a sigh of relief that I was wise and superficial enough to ask to see photographic evidence prior to committing to a date and move on.

However, as a single girl I have the added privilege of being one of the few that other singles, who are less fearful of the first/ blind date than I am, come to with their woeful stories of first dates gone bad (just as I have always stated).

A friend of the family once told me, when she was going through her faze of dating as many men as possible, she agreed to go on a blind date with a guy friend of one of her work colleagues. He came and picked her up to take her out for dinner, and initially she thought that although he may not be looks wise her dream man, he may still have potential. However as the date progressed, and they were ordering their starters she could not shake the feeling that she had met him somewhere before. And then it came to her, "We have been on a date before, haven't we." It turns out that the same work colleague had set them up a year before. Now some of you hopefuls out there may think that this was some romantic sign, unfortunately not. Although the date did last longer than the first time around, the extra time was pretty much taken up with embarrassed silences that they had clearly dated too many people not to recall that they had dated each other before.

A non religious guy friend agreed to go on a first date with a mystery girl who had managed to get his number from work (don't you love that Israeli companies will just hand out the personal numbers of their employees). Anyway, he was pretty turned on by the idea of a girl he had not seen before, seeing him and going out of her way to get his number, so decided that it was the least he could do to go out on a date with her. However, unlike the sex-goddess he was hoping to see before him he was faced with a very young (I have never liked to ask her exact age), very religious, very Shomeret Negiah girl.

Another guy friend was eager to get back in the dating scene. It had been a while since he had given the old first date a go, and after a series of flings decided that it was time to look for a more serious 'relationship'. So when a work colleague offered to set him up with one of her 'cool' single friends he was excited, although slightly sceptical. Like me, this friend decided that no date should be entered into fully blind, so requested that his colleague send him pictures of his intended date. What he received was a web photo album filled with hotties! It was like pick your own date. Whatever your taste or preference this work colleague had it all! My friend was in heaven and set about searching out the girl he was supposed to go on a date with. The girl thankfully seemed nice enough, but there was one girl in the photos who caught his eye. So he approached his colleague and politely said that although he would be delighted to go out with the first girl (lets call her girl A), he was very interested in girl B (B is for beautiful!). His colleague dutifully passed her msn address on to him and they spent the rest of the day flirting on msn. A date was arranged, and my friend was feeling pretty good about himself. That is until he discovered that the girl he had arranged to go on a date with was not girl B, but a whole other girl, girl C (C stands for Can't see an attraction there).

I would like to end on a positive note. I would like to be able to say that on the other hand I have friends who have gone on a blind date and found their be'shet. I would like to leave you all with a fuzzy feeling, however I am just not in that place at the moment. And the truth is that I know not of one person who has ever met their spouse from a blind date. Yes, I said right, I do not know one couple who are still together who met through a blind date. Please, I ask of you to prove me wrong! However, I doubt that you will be able to. Happy hunting daters :)