Taking My Love-Life Online

I lasted all of 24 hours.

Let's take a look at my experience.

In defence of both Tinder and Plenty of Fish, I knew what I was getting into. This is not match.com, the ads don't suggest you're going to start giggling like teenagers straight away and then look longingly into each others eyes. These are hook-up websites at the least and finding a date websites at the very best. Everyone who is on there is well aware of that.

That being said, this is something I felt I should at least give a chance at least once,

Not least so I could write about it afterwards.

I'm no good at it though, I shouldn't have been let anywhere near it.

For one I feel really uncomfortable if people just start talking to me without feeling like I at least gave them a little bit of permission.

For another, I'm terrible at being sexy, and conversations on these things get sexy pretty fast.

Let's look at an example shall we.

A very nice young man had engaged me in a conversation about my ambitions for the future, I'd mentioned I wanted to be a lecturer potentially.

He decided to take it down the 'you could teach me something' sexy route.

Unfortunately for him, he was talking to me, and all through this exchange all I could think was that I wasn't really qualified to teach yet.

I was also drinking a cup of tea and watching Midsomer Murders.

Whilst writing a blog post about Midsomer Murders.

I was also sent poems.

Told I looked too young to be 22.

And sent a wonderfully passive aggressive follow-up message when I failed to respond to his first which read:

'You know Claire, you're never going to find any dates if you don't reply to anyone ;)'

At that point I gave up.

But then, as with most things, I gave it another chance.
And this time, with the phrase 'The French Revolution is basically my life' in my profile, it was much, much better.
I started to feel like a historian; I was the resident Tinder expert on all things French Revolution.
No one tried to make that sexy, they just asked me loads of questions about it.
I started to become a bit worried that some people were poaching me for potential History PhD ideas.
Actually one guy did try to make it sexy:
'Are you the French monarchy because I would go lower than the Third Estate on you'
Just in case you were wondering, that doesn't make sense.
The Third Estate didn't go down on anyone, they killed them.
Unless you're trying to suggest that you are an actual peasant and you'd be lower than me because you'd be literally under my feet, Which isn't really that sexy.
Nor is it historically accurate.

Also huge shout out to the guy who looked so promising only to then suggest he would put his hand up my top 'if I was lucky'.

Unfortunately for you babe, that is sexual harassment, and I've experienced it so many times it ceased to entice me a while ago.
xx