Dear Readers,
my friends often mocked me for “only dating online”. Try it in real life they said. It’s much more honest they said.
Well… 😁 let’s say it was interesting.
For those who don’t know how speed dating works let me explain the concept.
You register directly at the location or with a platform that organizes the event. At the location most times you get divided into 2 groups. The group that gets seated and the group that rotates. Depending on how many people there are and how long the event is supposed to take you have 5-7 minutes with each person. So the ‘seated’ group is seated at individual tables and the ‘rotate’ group picks their first table. You talk for 5-7 minutes and then the ‘rotate’ group moves on to the next table. Once you get to know everybody, you either tell the organizer who you are interested in or you enter your favorites on the platform and if they return the interest phone numbers, or email addresses get exchanged, so you can get into contact outside of the speed dating event.
I always wanted to try speed dating just for fun. I had never done it and when a friend of mine, who was done with being single, agreed to go as well, we registered together.
Funnily enough, I went to a single party with her the day before we went to the actual speed dating event. They had a small speed dating set up as well and we thought about taking a ‘practice’ round there. They separated us into several age groups, so my friend and I didn’t talk to the same people and we had only 2 minutes, which I figured out can be quite a long time. 😅
I had all the experiences you can have while dating compressed in a few minutes. A person my age told me their whole life story in 2 min. 2 times divorced, with 2 kids, and in search of a partner no 3. , cause the third time was a charm (these 2 minutes felt like ages) to an older person who was super sweet that just wanted to see if they could find good company (which made the 2 mins seem like 2 seconds). But no one piqued my interest.
The next day, we went to the actual speed dating event we were originally planning on going to. Now that we were aware of the rules, and we were not divided into different groups we talked to the same people. I had 2 people that I thought were interesting cause we shared the same sense of humor. I have to say that the group generally seemed to fit very well, cause most of us stayed afterward to have a drink together as a big group.
You can imagine that my friend and I shared our experiences! 😉😅 and yes call it gossip, but in this case, it was really helpful. My friend wasn’t interested in anyone and remembered she had met someone the day prior. I told her my favorites. It didn´t come as a surprise that one of them and she had a very intense conversation about his sexual preference. A typical eye-rolling moment for me. Great! sarcasm on…. I decided to mark him as a favorite anyway and funny enough we were a match. So I got their phone number and wrote them. Regardless of what my friend had told me. We exchanged messages and found more similarities, which I liked. We even talked about another date and we already had a place we wanted to go to, but then they asked what I was searching for. So I was honest and told them that I first and foremost was searching for someone with that I was on the same wavelength. See if we click and like each other and then go from there. Their answer frustrated me “Oh, ok. I’m fresh out of a relationship, so I’m searching for some easy fun!”…. and there it was again, the frustrating reality of dating it’s always about sex….
My friend on the other hand had a really good conversation that went on after the speed dating and after the party and ended up in a relationship! So it turns out speed dating can work… just not for me, it seems.
Have you ever been to a speed dating event and how did it go?
Yours, ACE
