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Why First Dates makes me (possibly) want to date again


Ah, love.

Much like my dear friends 3OH!3 would say: L-O-V-E is just another word I’ll never learn to pronounce (in Essex, we call it ‘luv’). What even is it? Do you buy it? Does it come with tax? Like a tampon? Is that why so many people complain about it?

Love is speculated as something to search for – something that has the potential to enhance your life and emotionally uplift you when you find it. Apparently, you know it’s coming as it starts with a spark, a metaphorical firework so to speak, but we all know how they end (a bang occasionally paired with a near death experience and singed hair).

Fred Sirieix, the French matchmaker and maître d’ of the restaurant in Channel 4’s television show First Dates phrases the concept of love in the most eloquent of ways – to the point of almost persuading me that if I find it, I won’t need anything else; the M&S knickers of the amorous world. “Some people have perfected the art of dating, it’s the way they bring flowers, champagne – just like a peacock displaying his feathers, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.”

I don’t really think about love, in relation to me that much I’ll be honest. I think of it more as a thing that only relates to other people due to the fact that I’ve never experienced it. I want to fall, I really do, but right now it seems like a cliff I’d have to step off as opposed to a small with someone there to catch me underneath.

First Dates enhances and idealizes the concept of dating and ‘wooing’. It’s all very Lady and the Tramp: text book oppositional seating arrangements, good food and wine streaming typically faster than broadband.

I adore the characters that stroll willingly yet coyly through Sirieix’s glass double doors. They all share the common desire to fall in love and that their potential life partner is the figure sat at the bar, already nursing their fifth drink.

One young man professes his love for Game Of Thrones, and when his suitor reveals a mutual admiration for dragons and alarmingly honest medieval sex scenes, his eyes light up to the equivalent of a thousand watt bulb.

Two young men share a love for opera – yet friction occurs when one mentions he is a 1D devotee. The tension promptly vanishes though after it is established that, as a result of their hiatus, their concerts have faded in to extinction.

It is connections like these that trigger me to yearn for love. Yearn for a date that doesn’t come from my fridge. I yearn for someone who will, when I say ‘I’m not a big drinker’ or mention that I am owner of rabbit slippers, or scream Toto’s Africa at the top of my lungs and envisage that I am a giraffe roaming the African planes, won’t back away slowly before making an abrupt B line for the door.

Saying this, I also yearn for romance in the same way I yearn for a ‘Three Bean Chili’, which seems like a good idea at the time until you eat it and realize that ultimately, whilst it looks good on your Instagram feed, it’s just a load of pulses and is going to give you the pops.

I know I’ll find ‘it’ eventually; I’m young and not in any rush. I find that life would get in way of a relationship and that I wouldn’t even try to adapt it so it didn’t. When you’re thinking like that, you’re definitely not in the position to be anyone’s anything. However, my Essex accent is fading, and thanks toFirst Dates, I’m positive that L-O-V-E won’t be another ill pronounced word forever… I’ll just have to digest the chili first.

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