While dating I was also building a word game as my side hustle. Hoping that one day I’ll be next Wordle and sell it to a rival paper for a few million bucks.

I got every man to play my word game. It’s just a quick daily puzzle where you need to unscramble five hidden words. I was secretly enjoying their very tense serious faces while playing it on our first date. I’d cheerfully say ‘well done’ once he completed the puzzle. He’d look very happy and ask if I had more puzzles. Of course I had!

I was just happy seeing his beaming face and feeling proud of my exceptional first date skills. Some men were happy with a simple ‘well done’ others asked for sex. Majority had acceptable levels of IQ.

I am extremely confident. I can come up to a stranger and strike up the most delightful conversation. So you will be surprised that I was afraid of online dating. I was putting it off for a few weeks. Eventually, my friend had enough of it and took matters into her own hands. She created a dating profile for me, picked the best pictures, and started swiping. I had a lot of matches. My friend and I have such different tastes in men! 

Swiping on a dating site is like going through trash. I was on the free version so I was digging through piles of trash every single day. I occasionally found gemstones and a couple of cracked diamonds. There are more gemstones and diamonds in New York than in London. Sorry, London men! It could be a selection bias at play – all single New York men are on dating apps while single London men are chasing women in running clubs.

Some stats:

I had a total of 20 dates with 13 men in the course of two months. Every 1 in 2 men asked for sex and didn’t want a relationship. The other half still wanted to have sex and were looking for a long-term relationship. The sex thing I just treated as a compliment. Imagine if none of them wanted to have sex with me, that’s something to be offended with, right?

Every single man paid on the first date. New Yorkers are much more generous.

You think it’s a lot of dates? Well, yes I took dating very seriously.