Stella
Everyone I know has been painfully anti-dating apps.
All I’ve ever heard is horror stories. The men are grim, the chat is dry, the profiles are agonising.
But in the week I’ve been on Tangl, I’ve come to realise that my single friends are spoiled.
If they think this is bad, they should try asking the same person what they want for dinner and hearing ‘I don’t really mind’ in response for an entire decade.
I don’t know where all the negativity is coming from because I can tell you, right here, right now, dating apps are fun.
After I got home from dinner with Lou, I did a deep dive on Instagram, TikTok and various women’s magazines into the best dating app and concluded that Tangl was where it’s at.
It’s described as ‘open-minded’ dating, and it has options for you to look for couples to date.
On day one, I admit, I was a little bit like one of those Amish teenagers who goes to New York and sees electricity for the first time.
Everyone’s profile had loads of complicated acronyms, and everyone seemed to talk in a complicated language.
NSA, GGG, FWB all left me very confused initially, but now I’m a dab hand (no strings attached, good giving game, friends with benefits).
I’ve uploaded three pictures, because since Rose was born, I’ve only had three decent ones taken of me, and before that I’m obviously pregnant, which might attract some quite weird people, and before that it’s so long ago that I look dramatically better and my literal worst fear apart from getting murdered by one of these men is that I get accused of catfishing.
This Thursday, some of my girlfriends are coming to dinner to ‘cheer me up’, which is very sweet of them, and when they put the date in the diary two months ago (this is how long it takes to get four women in their early thirties in the same room), it was much needed.
But right now, the idea of wasting a night talking about their actual careers, houses and lives, when I could be making small talk with boys on the internet, is less than appealing.
I’ve literally never done this before. I was too much of a baby to try the apps when I was at uni, and then I met Gav, so there wasn’t any need to.
But oh my god, the dopamine hit you get when you open the app and there are all these men just waiting there, it’s insane!
I’ve never even been bought a drink in a bar by a guy who isn’t Gavin and now I’ve got like seven of them just sending me messages.
And sure, if I met them, half of them would turn out to be losers, probably more than half.
But that doesn’t matter. At the moment they’re not real.
They’re deliciously, delightfully fictional and the only thing that matters is that they’re interested. In me.
It also transpires that it’s pretty distracting.
I’ve tried to keep it to evenings and naptimes because I keep reading studies about how babies with phone-addicted parents don’t develop empathy, and I need Rose to grow up empathetic so she likes me more than Gavin.
But my self-control is limited, and it’s turning into an issue with my girlfriends.
Kate, Olive, Steph and Louella all arrive on time, which means they’ve been for a drink together after work.
I’m hurt by this, even though I shouldn’t be.
I told them to come around seven; they’re here around seven.
The fact that they stopped for an Aperol outside the pub on the way home doesn’t mean that they weren’t excited to see me.
And it doesn’t mean that they like Louella more than they like me, an ongoing concern of mine.
Louella and I are only eleven months apart because our mother thought that breastfeeding was a contraceptive device.
I was born in September, Louella in August, so we’re in the same school year and therefore both, conveniently and very inconveniently, share a friendship group.
Obviously it’s nice and I shouldn’t complain about it, but having Louella – who is stunningly beautiful and effortlessly cool – as a sister is not totally without its challenges and I do sometimes wonder if I might have turned out a bit emotionally healthier if I’d at least had a couple of my own friends.
Anyway, they all file into the house, looking around, I think probably searching for signs of progress.
When Gavin and I moved in it was deeply, painfully unloved.
The previous owner had locked it up and moved abroad, and it had sort of rotted from the inside.
We bought it for a bargain and then spent all of our time doing it up.
I learned to wallpaper, learned to tile, learned to cut the most impressive straight edge around a power socket with a paint brush.
We were seventy per cent done when Gavin left, so thankfully the open-plan kitchen-living room is decent, as is the TV room; our bedroom and Rose’s bedroom are done, and we’ve got a working bathroom.
The rest of the house, all the hallways and the downstairs bathroom, are still untouched from the 1970s.
Not a decade famed for its decorative elegance.
‘It looks stun,’ Kate says, putting the wine down and throwing her coat on the sofa.
It does not look stun. We’re at a full seven drying racks, all covered with Rose’s clothes – mine are festering in the laundry basket upstairs – and there is a carpet of plastic blocks across the entire floor.
All of the post is in piles on the kitchen table and the vegetables I’ve been chopping are cluttering most of the counter space.
‘And you look stun,’ Olive adds. I really hope this is less of a lie than Kate’s comment about the house.
We gather around the table, fill our glasses and start the download.
Kate has given her boyfriend an ultimatum: propose or split.
Olive is thinking about leaving her job because she found out that a guy a level below her is getting paid more and when she asked why, her boss explained it was because he’d just become a dad.
Louella has had mastic Botox in her jaw to stop her from clenching all the time and none of us believe that’s why she did it, and Steph is stressed because her sister is doing a terrible job planning a very expensive destination hen do for her when what she really wanted was a lunch followed by karaoke in London.
I listen to all of this, genuinely interested.
But every time my phone buzzes, my hand reaches for it and flips it over and I literally cannot stop myself.
I’d put it on silent but if Gavin called because there was something wrong with Rose and I missed the call, I’d never get over it.
Every time I check the phone I tell myself off and resolve that I’m not going to look at it again.
And then it buzzes and I look at it again.
Chris, a 37-year-old software designer originally from New York, now living in Shoreditch, is asking me to recommend somewhere for a newbie.
I consider telling him that ‘Elephant Rhyme Time’ at the Wandsworth library is pretty exclusive and worth putting your name down for, but think better of it.
‘Stella, what the fuck?’ Olive says eventually.
I jerk my head up and look at them. They’re sitting around my table, which I’d hastily covered with a pretty blue-and-white tablecloth minutes before they arrived, all staring at me.
‘What?’ I ask.
‘I just asked you three questions and you were staring at your phone the whole time. Is it Rose?’
I want to lie, but I’m afraid that would tempt fate. So I tell the truth. ‘No,’ I say. ‘It’s not Rose.’
‘Then what are you so obsessed with?’ asks Kate.
Louella looks smug. ‘Go on,’ she says. ‘Tell them.’
I don’t want to tell them, but obviously no one has ever escaped a ‘go on, tell them’ without telling. ‘I joined a dating app,’ I say. ‘I’m doing the Mantourage method.’
They all explode. Mostly laughing at me for calling it ‘a dating app’ like I’m someone’s grandmother.
‘What’s the Mantourage method?’ asks Kate.
I explain about Lexie Leung. ‘God, I’m so glad I’m not single,’ Kate says. ‘This sounds so tiring, I don’t know how you’re doing it!’
‘Which app?’ asks Olive.
‘Are you sure you’re ready?’ demands Steph. ‘Don’t you need to be alone for a while?’
They continue asking questions without giving me a window to answer them and I let it wash over me, then eventually I refill my glass of wine and look at Louella. ‘It’s her fault,’ I say.
‘I just pointed out that she’s had basically no dating experience.’
‘That’s true,’ agrees Olive, archly.
‘I feel like before she’s ready to date to find an actual partner, she needs to put some points on the board,’ Louella says languidly.
They listen to her, because everyone always does.
In fact, everyone who was asking me if I was entirely sane before now murmurs their agreement.
‘She’s literally only had sex with two people,’ Louella adds.
She’s probably got a point. You can’t just jump back into having another husband with that kind of body count.
‘Lou!’ I retort. ‘It’s three – I’ve had sex with three people.’
‘Liar, you gave William C a blow job. It didn’t go all the way in and you know it; you’re rewriting history.’
‘That wasn’t my fault. I should get to count it as three because we got to the point of penetration,’ I retort, louder than intended.
The others are used to this, so it doesn’t rankle, but Kate, who is always the sensible one, takes a deep breath.
‘Look, I don’t want to sound like a downer, but is this healthy?
Are you ready to be dating? You literally just had a baby.
Is it even safe? Ryan and I didn’t start having sex again until nearly a year after Rufus was born. ’