It takes a special sort of person to document their dating life online, a brave soul unafraid of potential humiliation and the endless judgement in comment sections. Hannah Zaslawski is just that, documenting 50 first dates on TikTok to her 15,000+ followers.
An Australian living in London, Hannah has currently posted sevendating videos, each time showing her before the date, during and after, providing updates along the way about how it’s going. At the end, she gives a summary of whether she’s likely to see them again, but the most recent dating debacle has caused vitriolic debate online.
‘I matched with this guy on Hinge, and he asked me out for dinner so we’re going to go and get some pizza together,’ she begins. ‘Update, I met him outside the tube station, and it was raining, he bought an umbrella and the whole time he was holding it over me!’
The date appears to be going well, moving from pizza to an arcade to a swanky hotel – the only red flag, in Hannah’s eyes, that he commented on her body on the first date. ‘This is actually really fun, I’m having a nice time with him,’ she says halfway through the date. ‘He’s so sweet, so nice and intelligent… he doesn’t drink.’
Then, things take a turn for the worst for Hannah, but that’s where she appears to lose her viewers. Giving an update at the end of the date on the tube home, Hannah say’s there was one major dealbreaker that will stop her going on a second date.
‘He was really sweet, but alcohol thing is a bit of a dealbreaker for me,’ she explains. ‘I thought about seeing him again but at the end of the day like I want to be able to cook dinner and have a bottle of wine, I do want to go out and like have a crazy drunken night with them, you know? So that’s where we’re not aligned.’
Fair enough, right? Wrong. According to her comments, Hannah dumping a guy for not drinking makes her the devil incarnate. ‘That’s a really sad dealbreaker,’ the top comment reads. ‘Booze should never be the deal closer, pls do a second date,’ another says.
‘Oh god are we being picky on not drinking?’ a third asks. ‘When he did so many other lovely, nice things! I don’t drink and my partner does, it’s not an issue!’
Honestly, the majority of the near 300 comments are people chastising Hannah for viewing alcohol as a dealbreaker – so much so she took to one commenter to explain herself better. ‘I have friends that don’t drink, and I support them! You can totally have fun without alcohol. But it is a preference for me,’ she said.
But that’s the thing, Hannah already explained exactly why she wants a partner who drinks. She wants to be able to enjoy a wine on a Friday night WITH someone, to go out and lose all inhibitions with alcohol WITH her partner. Of course, there’s plenty of valid reasons not to drink, and people who are sober should absolutely be supported in that, but it’s also perfectly valid that if you do drink, you want a partner who shares in that enjoyment from time to time.
In fact, it would surely be worse of Hannah to continue dating a man that doesn’t drink when it’s something she enjoys doing with a partner, because not only could she be inclined to encourage him to drink – when he doesn’t want to – but he may equally feel uncomfortable that he can’t share in something his partner wants with him. It’s a simple desire Hannah has for a partner, and we all deserve to meet someone who can meet those basic wishes.
What Hannah is evidencing by her 50 first dates series – that commenters seem to be missing – is that there is plenty of fish in the sea. You don’t have to find a romantic partner by hell or high water, sticking with them regardless of your needs and wants just because you want a relationship. If one person is sweet and kind but also isn’t compatible with you in a certain way, that’s perfectly fine because there’s hundreds of other sweet and kind people out there who might be! Hannah’s not being ‘picky’, as some commenters say; she’s just not settling for a relationship that doesn’t fulfil all her desires – and none of us should be.