Romeo is Bleeding (whinging again)

I have written an open letter to Match.com to help fill you in on how I’m feeling, nearly midway through my quest to find Love. A quest, incidentally, I am beginning to realise is a little bit like trying to stroke a moth’s wings. However, having read it back I realise this letter is nothing more than the fist you bite to choke back the sobs.


Dear Match.com,

Please don’t take this the wrong way but I suspect you may be ruining my life.

Like the depressed commuter who feels most alone on the packed rush hour tube, I am suffering something of an allergic reaction to that which I crave. This dating business is not only making me believe that Love is a club I’m not allowed to join but it’s also grinding my confidence down into a fine powder to be sold on the Chinese black market as a cure for children with ADHD. Every date (even the good ones) is like a cannonball to the flimsy bow of my ego.

Rejecting someone is nearly as depressing as being rejected (though the frightening psychological scars fade euphorically quickly) and that’s what Match.com is. One long marathon (as opposed to, you know, those short marathons) of rejection. If it’s not you then it’s them, rejecting away bafflingly like a hungry baby who's bored of chewing. When you walk down the street you can be fairly certain that 99% of the people trundling about would have no romantic interest in you but you are saved the indignity of having to have this confirmed. Well, thanks to you, Mr and Mrs Match, this nightmare can become the bucket of cold water that greets you each and every day.

It’s starting to affect my everyday life. I admit that I always thought the chances of finding Love using your services were slim. But I still held out a belief that Love and I would bump into one and other at some point in my turgid life. But. No more. You’ve kicked me to such a low ebb that I’m fairly certain that I will spend the rest of my life with no romantic interludes or physical affection at all. Not even a drunken fumble in a dark disco.

To put it another way - being involved in Match.com is similar to being intravenously fed a Richard Curtis film 24 hours a day. Look! It shrieks. Look at all this Love! Look at all this happiness. Look at all these people who are happy because they have found Love. Love exists! It’s real, you can touch it, you can taste it. Gnam. You can have it. And for a while this is an experience of giddy joy and elation. But the longer it goes on the louder that nagging voice at the back of your head gets. ‘Hmm’ it twitches, ‘It seems Love really is all around us. And. Yet. Here. You. Are’

And yet.

In a country overflowing with Love, in a city filled with millions of lonely hearts, in a world of quickening pulses, of furtive glances, of stolen kisses, I remain unwillingly, intractably and sickeningly unloved and unloving.

The worst part about this is meeting someone outside of your website who I am interested in. Having to think about dating people you’re not that interested in all the time, meeting someone you (naturally, organically, healthily) are attracted to pulls the rug from under your feet. I am now so confused by it all I can’t make sense of real people anymore. I’ve been rejected on your website so many times that I now automatically assume that all women find me faintly repulsive.

I am tired. Can I have my Love now please? I can’t take three more months of this.

Yours, as ever

Romeo


Chin up. You’ve got three new dates in the next few days.

Ah yeah.

Settle down, you lot. I’ll get funny again next week.