Stood Up

My phone vibrated as my hand touched the rear door of my office building, as I left work on a Wednesday evening in mid-July. I pulled it out of my bag as I briskly crossed the car park, keen not to lose any time as I made my way to the train station. I needed to get the fast train at 12 past 5 to make it to the restaurant in central London for my 6 o’clock booking

It was a message from him, a man whose name I no longer remember, standing me up for a second time. Something about him not having any money to go out because he and his ex-girlfriend still shared a bank account and she had emptied it. Outrageous. And less than an hour before we were scheduled to meet.

The previous week, we were due to have a first date at a pub in Highgate, near where I lived. I had a honking cold and wanted to defer but he was keen to meet me. He wanted to come round to mine but I knew that was daft from a safety perspective. I was feeling so rotten I hadn’t even gone to work that day, but I made myself up as best I could and went to the pub. Ten minutes past 7 and he hadn’t arrived. I checked my phone. Nothing. Quarter past 7 and still nothing. I messaged him. ‘Are you on your way?’ One tick. Maybe his tube had gotten stuck between stations. Twenty past 7, still nothing. ‘If you’re not here in 10 minutes, I’m heading home.’ One tick. Nothing. I left at 7:30, furious at his rudeness and my own foolishness. Part of me expected a flood of messages as soon as I got home, but still nothing.

I didn’t expect to hear from him again. I had gotten good at cutting my losses and moving on quickly. But I did hear from him, the next day. He was so sorry. He was on the tube but his phone died and he had forgotten which stop he was meant to get off at, so he turned around and went home. I thought of Occam’s Razor: the concept that the simplest explanation for something is most likely the correct one. His explanation, his excuse, wasn’t simple. It was also weird. And was therefore probably bullshit. Why would a grown man forget his destination mid-journey? I could buy that he wouldn’t have felt confident walking from the tube to the pub, but the pub was literally on top of the tube station. But he was so sorry. He really wanted to meet me. I could name the time and place. I proceeded sceptically, telling myself that ‘everybody gets one.’ I didn’t want to be a doormat but I also didn’t want to be a hardass. Reluctantly, I agreed and the time and place would be the following Wednesday at one of my favourite restaurants in Soho.

Roughly two decades of romantic fuckery had led me to this point in the car park. I hadn’t dated at all in high school. Once described by my family doctor as ‘chunky,’ my shyness as a teen was governed by my lack of self-worth, the conditions of which were fed by magazines, television and the generalised sexism and fatphobia which permeated late 90s and early 00s American culture. Growing up Catholic in a small town led to a lifelong habit of judging myself harshly, because everyone else (including Jesus) did. After many failed attempts, I lost about 30 lbs at the age of 16 when I started restricting my diet and getting up at 5:45 in the morning to exercise before school. No one was particularly concerned when my periods stopped for the better part of two years because the weight loss was a ‘healthy’ thing to do.

From university onwards, my dating life followed the typical patterns of a young, heterosexual woman with low self-esteem: one-night stands, short-lived relationships with narcissists, ‘no-strings attached’ sex with male friends. I didn’t think I was worthy of strings. I didn’t want to inconvenience a man by having him love me back. I was nauseated by the emotional rollercoaster ride, but it also made for interesting viewing from the outside. My friends in relationships would listen to tales of the latest letdown or the promising new guy with patience, frustration, and sympathy. They wanted me to be happy so they did what friends do; they gave advice. I did my best to listen and to take it on board. These were Relationship People. They knew how to get into relationships. I did not. Ergo, they knew something I didn’t or they had something I lacked. If I vented to friends about getting ghosted or about a horrible date I’d been on, I felt like I was burdening them with my misery. I felt like I owed it to them to try what they suggested and report back. It was exhausting and I didn’t feel any closer to figuring out how to find someone to have a real connection with. So one day I decided to stop talking about it.

I stopped giving friends, colleagues, and my sister a blow by blow of the dates I’d been on. I stopped screenshotting conversations from Tinder. At first I felt like I had closed myself off, but in the quiet I found some space. Once I stopped canvassing opinions from my friends and family, I realised how little I listened to my own. I realised just how much I distrusted my own instincts. How long I’d been convincing myself that there was a correct way to ‘get a boyfriend’ and that if I could just figure out how, or just fix every little flaw about myself, then I’d be drowning in committal men. I also started to understand how much nonsense I’d absorbed over the years about relationship tropes, which resulted in me putting up with all kinds of appalling behaviour because I thought epiphanies and meet-cutes were right around the corner.

In the absence of being told what to do, I started to listen to my gut. After a few experiments, I found it was accurate. Of course it was accurate, it was my gut. Then it started to sink in that no one else could really give me dating or relationship advice because I am a complex human being looking to fall in like or even love with another complex human being. I found power in my instincts; the better I listened, the better decisions I made. I stopped feeling guilty about messaging guys after a first date to say that I’d had a nice time but I didn’t feel a spark. I didn’t keep going out with them to find out if they’d do a 180 and be my Mr. Darcy. My time was precious and limited, and I was only going to spend it on men who wowed me. For the first time in my dating life, I had boundaries. I was a chooser, not a beggar.

Which isn’t to say everything suddenly came up roses but I felt much more confident, less despairing and less desperate. I was in this place when John and I started messaging each other. He was funny and intelligent. He lived just up the road from me in an adjoining neighbourhood. He worked as an editor and he was impressed with my correct use of semicolons. We made a plan to meet for Sunday lunch at a pub we both knew and liked, and I was looking forward to it much more than I’d usually look forward to a first date.

But here I was, the Wednesday before our Sunday lunch date, at a loose end on the train back into London. Once I had finished giving No-Name a piece of my mind and blocked him, I messaged John to see if there was any chance he was free. He replied to say he’d been at the cricket all day with his friends but would love to come meet me. He warned that he was in his ‘cricket clothes’ which were extremely casual. He said he might be carrying a cool bag, and by that he meant a bag to keep food and drinks cool and not a fashionable accessory. I was delighted that what could have been a shitty night now held some promise. I was as pleased when he arrived at the restaurant looking like he’d had a summery day outdoors rather than the self-deprecating picture of a scarecrow he’d painted. We closed down the restaurant that night, and went for Sunday lunch as planned.

Last August, I told an abridged version of that story to our friends and family at our wedding reception, at the same pub where our first date became our second date. Maybe if No-Name had shown up, things might have still worked out the same. But getting stood up that Wednesday night hammered home to me that choosing to be with someone who shows up for you, literally and metaphorically, is also showing up for yourself.