'Right then,' my mate Lindsey said to me over thin-crust pizza in King's Cross. 'Consider this a dating intervention.' I dipped a four-cheese slice into some chive mayonnaise. 'You're dating too much and it's stressing you out. It's supposed to be fun!' I nodded, choosing to stay quiet over defending myself. 'You hope every guy is the right guy and, from what I can tell, none of the current lot are. You need to tell M (the one I brazenly kiss) you can't see him again because you've all but said you can't imagine sleeping with him. Delete the Yorkshireman's number because he doesn't make you feel good. You don't want to see the Kiwi again. Start over. Slowly. Chill out, you need to change your dating juju, Laura.'
My friend tells me: 'You need to up your standards. Be much less easy to excite'
I'd shied away from talking to anyone, really, about who I was seeing, because the number of dates I've been racking up is almost embarrassing. I didn't want to waste time dissecting every man I met with well-intentioned friends who'd have to go through the ins and outs of yet another faceless fella tomorrow, and the day after...and the day after. But Lindsey made me. 'There's something you're not telling us all,' she'd texted me earlier that day. 'You need to not be scared to open up about these men to me.'
She told me I need to get over being proud that every first date is usually a 'success'. 'You always talk about whether they were impressed with you, but the question you need to ask yourself is are you impressed with them? You need to up your standards. Be much less easy to excite.'
When I get home, it hits me that my bedroom is designed for a single woman. The bed is pushed up against a wall, so I move it - there and then - to the middle of the room, making literal space for a metaphorical somebody else to climb in the other side. I ask myself what is it I really want. The answer surprises me: tall, Northern, nobody who works in media because they're all little Peter Pans, and I want a man. High sex drive. I don't care if he has an ex-wife or kids, as long as his humour is there.
Two days later, I get a text from a vague acquaintance I've met a handful of times. 'I was on Instagram in the pub, and my boyfriend's best mate saw your photo and asked who you are. I told him about you, and he wants to take you out.' This vague aquaintance is a woman whose judgement I trust inexplicably: she brought her mother to my book launch, and bizarrely her mother recognised my dad instantly - turns out they went to school together, 40 years ago. I loved the coincidence of how our lives overlapped a little, and that she has a suitor for me fits perfectly with the crazy happenstance of how we know each other. 'If he's OK in your book, I'd bet he's OK in mine,' I text back. 'Give him my number.' And, just like that, I'm part of my first 'set-up'.
Read Laura Jane's column each week in Grazia magazine
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