AllTheseThings: It takes a village.....

….to raise a child. Yep, we all know that one, but did you also know it takes a village to chose a boyfriend? This is what I learned last night, as I threw Mr Second Date into a party full of old and new friends.

Just to set the scene, I embarked on the first date with low expectations of a long-lasting relationship but high expectations of a fun evening. (And I never turn down a first date, based purely on their rarity. That would be ungrateful). I was pleasantly surprised to find we had more in common than I realised and the evening was a lot of fun. And, in reference to my previous post, I was thrilled that it was unmistakably a date, not a super-casual, hangout, slap-on-the-back, split-all-the checks, who-the-heck-knows-what-this-means kind of evening, which is much more common and endlessly irritating. This was a DATE. He got his hair cut. He was wearing his nice jacket. He had the evening planned out, with drinks and walks and then food. Wow! I feel the need to report this rare occasion to some tracking organisation so they know that real dates are not extinct.

Giddy from this extravagant display of romance, I invited the man in question to a party a couple of days later. He wouldn’t know anyone there, but he was brave and accepted the invitation. Not knowing him very well at this point, I thought it might be interesting to see him in this kind of environment. But I had grossly underestimated the prophetic nature of the evening. In fact, I am now prescribing a party for all second dates, as a sure fire way to find out if your fledgling relationship has legs. It’s quick and (relatively) painless and it gets the job done.

But first, this only works if you have really great friends, with copious amounts of hospitality and ideally, impeccable judgement. (Yeah, I know it’s a high bar, but do the best you can). Then just observe, as your potential sweetie-to-be works the room. I can’t tell you exactly what to expect, because as we know (ladies) there are some really weird personality traits that no-one warned us about in Dating School. These traits are invariably latent until the subject is thrown into a crowd of strangers, then POOF!, as if by magic they appear……..all at once, and in far too many possible combinations to describe here.

So all I can say is, you’ll know by the end of the evening if you have winner or not. (And if you don’t know, your good friends will tell you the next day). As I listened to Mr Second Date screeching into the Karaoke microphone at 12.30am, I knew. A winner he was not. I’m sure some lovely lady out there will appreciate his, er, uniquely quirky and relentless sense of humor. Good luck to her.

So, onward and upward into 2009!! And if you invite me to a party and I show up with a strange man in tow, you’ll know what you have to do.

Don’t let me down.

Philomena

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