Prince Charming and the single mother

“Internet dating is fun,” my friend said. “You meet new people, go out to new places, and it’s exciting getting ready for a date - you have a glass of wine, listen to music.” 

This is internet dating for people without children. It is not my experience. For me, the soundtrack is Ceebeebies. The drink is a cup of tea that I probably won’t manage to actually drink. The excitement of going out and meeting someone new is overshadowed by the huge challenge of actually managing to leave the house.

Challenge #1 - set the date

“Come out tonight, I know a bar that does great cocktails.” Oh how I laughed.

I don’t want to lie about having a child, but if I show how difficult it is to arrange to get out of the house, that’s not going to make me look like fun girlfriend material. I mean, if I were a bloke, that would put me off. So Prince Charming and I send  messages back and forth trying to arrange a time we can both meet and I can get a babysitter, without mentioning babysitters.

My daughter is going through a clingy stage and Prince Charming is asking me where we should meet. It will take approximately 20 seconds to send this text message, but small fingers are grabbing at the screen. I lock myself in the toilet to reply.

Challenge #2 - Leave the house

In two hours I’m due to leave the house for my dinner date with Prince Charming. I need to feed, bath and put my child to bed, and make myself presentable. 

Hardcore multitasking is the only possible way to achieve this. I carried out retrospective risk assessments on these steps:

• Step 1: Cook fishfingers whilst showering (risks: electrocution, house fire, cremated fishfingers)
• Step: 2: Apply moisturiser and dry hair in the kitchen while toddler is eating (risks: tripping, slipping)
• Step 3: Apply make-up whilst toddler is in the bath (risks: major mascara incident, flooding)

7.15pm: 15 minutes to go. Story time. I’m still wearing jeans and a T-shirt with finger-shaped yogurt stains - I don’t want my date clothes to get covered in bathwater. Where is my lipstick? Where is the Peppa Pig book? What’s more important? Must remember not to take baby wipes to the restaurant. And where the hell is the babysitter? 

7.30pm: the child is in bed and I’m supposed to leave the house now. There’s only one problem - I’m still not dressed. Jeans and T shirt off and skirt and top go on. Is this skirt too slutty? SHOES! I don’t know which shoes to wear. The babysitter is here. OK, just leave now. Is my lipstick smudged? Leave. NOW!

Challenge #3 Make the house look grown-up

Prince Charming arrives to welcome me back from holiday with take away curry. I just about manage to throw the toys into (and around) the toy box and brush my hair to look presentable when his car pulls up. I kick the Cheerios under the sofa.

He’s dishing out curry in the kitchen when the child makes herself known. We’re potty training and there’s a toilet-related incident. I usher her into the bathroom. One minute I’m wiping poo from my child’s bum. Five minutes later I’m breezing back into the kitchen demurely, for second helpings of rogan josh, hoping he didn’t hear any of that. Unlikely. I cross my fingers that the child doesn’t decide to pull an allnighter, and won’t ask me to sing her a song as I’m not yet ready to subject Prince Charming to my vocal abilities.

It's going well. I'm clearly a Goddess. Albeit one with yogurt in my hair, as befits a latterday Cinderella.

The joy of online dating

As a single woman in the 21st century it was inevitable that eventually I would experience internet dating. This is Part 1 of my experiences. Names have been changed to protect the guilty...

A few years ago there was a huge stigma attached to dating agencies. Newspaper dating pages were referred to as ‘lonely hearts’ conjuring up images of sad and wistful singletons, the last resort for those left on the shelf. There had to be a reason why they hadn’t managed to meet anyone in the normal way, right?

Skip forward to 2016, and not only is online dating completely acceptable, but it's becoming the most common way for people to meet their lovers, partners and spouses. Even my parents told me that I should head online to meet a man.

Circe Surfs the Web, after John William Waterhouse.
By Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com via Flickr Creative Commons

Boyfriend shopping

So after some of the divorce dust had settled, I decided it was time to find out what this online dating thing was all about, and find myself a nice boyfriend. Surely it couldn’t be that hard?

The way you hear people talk about internet dating, and the way it’s advertised, it’s just like a catalogue of available people. You pick the selection of characteristics you want - which as well as things like interests can include income, height, weight, and eye colour. Are there really people out there who only want to date people with a certain eye colour?

How do you do flirting?

If you've never been on a date in your life, what do you expect? Where do you go? What do you wear? How did you keep yourself safe? How long should you chat to someone online before agreeing to meet. And what on earth do you talk about? Do you have to do flirting (how do you do that?) or could we have a nice conversation about films and books?

I decided to approach Project Boyfriend like I would anything else - with lots of research. I signed up to a couple of dating sites pretending to be a man as that was the only way I could see other women’s profiles and try and work out what kind of thing I should write about myself. I sent my profile to a friend to check I didn’t sound like a total loser. And I asked any of my friends who have been single in the past few years for their experience. Advice was contradictory:

Friend 1: “You’re the woman - you should never contact them first.”

Friend 2: “There’s no chivalry in online dating. You have to make approaches.”

OK, that’s clear then.

Getting online

So I wrote some stuff about myself, collected a few photos (not easy when you’ve just had a baby, as all the pictures either feature you heavily pregnant or brandishing an infant - not really the look I was going for). And then I waited for the invites to flood in. Nothing happened.

Two months later I managed my first date, with a nice man, who decided after meeting me that he decided that he shouldn’t date any more women. Ever (and I don’t think he was gay). This didn’t do a lot to boost my confidence. Here are some highlights:

• Kris turned up an hour late (yes, I know, I should have gone), then lectured me about the marketing strategy for the company he worked for. I hadn’t asked.  
• Rob told me that he shouldn’t have to put up with so much from his small female boss, in fact he should probably just headbutt her out of the way. He demonstrated with a gesture. I made my excuses...
• Sam turned up with a huge Twits-style beard - his internet photos had shown him bald and clean shaven. He spent the evening complaining about women he’d dated who turned up looking completely different to their profile pictures. Pot. Kettle. Black.

But actually, none of them were nutters, just nice men who were probably even more nervous than me and saying the first stupid thing that came into their heads. Here are some things I learnt:

1. The world doesn’t owe you a living. Or a husband. Or a boyfriend. Or even a nice meal out. He’s not going to fall into your lap. You have to work at online dating and put in some serious hours, refining your profile, getting nice pictures, surfing the site and sending well-crafted messages (preferably about films and books).
2. You can’t judge a book by its cover - or tell what someone will be like from their photos. You can chat online for months and think you may be the perfect match, but within 3 seconds of meeting, you know that you are not right for each other.
3. I have a ‘type’ (who knew?): slight, dark and a bit arty, or ‘slamatic’ as my friend is calling it (slim and dramatic). If you know any of these, then send them my way (they’re not to everyone’s taste).
4. Get busy: the online dating sites prioritise the profiles of people who are online at the time, or very active. If you don’t log on for a week, don’t expect to find a ton of messages - you’ve fallen so far down the search rankings that none of the eligible lovelies you want to be chasing you have even seen you.
5. You don’t know what’s going on in these people’s lives: if you think they’re perfect for you and you never hear back from them, don’t be sad. It might not be deliberate. You can’t take it personally.

Coming soon - Prince Charming and the single mother

When you're a parent...

Does having children make you better equipped to run a country? Does parenthood (or specifically motherhood) necessarily make you care more about the future?

There's a bit of a furore since The Times has quoted Conservative leadership candidate Andrea Leadsom as saying that having children meant she had "a very real stake" in Britain's future. Leadsom has three children. Her rival for the leadership, Theresa May, has none.

It's been translated and proliferated as 'I'm a mum, you're  not, so I'm better equipped to do this than you are.'

Is it just having children? Or does it follow that the more children you have, the better you would be at running the country? Is that why Queen Victoria was so good? If that's the case, I only have one, so I'm out of the running,

Does this apply to men? Do you need to be a father to be a good world leader? Or is there something inherent in motherhood or the act of giving birth that means women need to procreate if we want to be in charge?

Quenn Victoria, Albert and their nine children. She must have been ace at running the country.
By Caldesi and Montecchi (fl.1857-67) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Does having children make you better at running a country?

Bringing up children is difficult. You learn things you never expect to learn. And the post-child you is undoubtedly different to the pre-child you. Although the same can be said for any profound life experience. 

As a direct result of having a child, I possess a whole new set of skills. This week I added how to remove dairy products from a range of soft furnishings to my knowledge base. Don't underestimate how useful this is. But it's unlikely to qualify me to be Prime Minister, 

Being a parent teaches you just how far you can function without sleep (useful for those high level all night political negotiations), but then so does going to Glastonbury. Remember that time John Prescott had eggs thrown at him? If he'd been my Deputy Prime Minister I'd have been right there with the baby wipes before you could say 'omelette'. And I expect that controlling a gaggle of unruly five-year-olds would equip one with skills that could come in useful when bringing a rowdy cabinet meeting to order, 

Being a parent is difficult. being Prime Minister is difficult. The similarity pretty much ends there.

Does having children make you more interested in the future?

I agonised for years whether or not to bring a child into the world. One of my main reasons for not having children was my concern over the state of the world into I would be bringing them to. 

I'm glad I overcame my scruples, but I still think they were valid. As our own country is in political, economic and ideological turmoil, when terrorism strikes at our neighbours, and people are killed for being gay, black, white, I wonder about the world I have brought my beautiful, innocent daughter into.

Caring about the future, for ourselves, our country, our planet can be a reason not to have children. But caring about these things is certainly not the exclusive domain of  parents. Whether Leadsom's comments were intended, or were distorted, they've been taken as a version of the hackneyed patronising phrase 'when you're a parent...' which assumes that once people become parents they magically gain a wider, clearer view of whatever is up for discussion at the time. It's just not true.