Dating Like It's 1995: Is it Possible To Date Without Technology?

Dating like it's 1995: Is it possible to date these days without technology?. Photo: ThinkStock

Over the past 10 years I’ve had a pretty healthy love life. Three serious boyfriends, lots of hot flings, lost nights pashing in bars, and plenty of gin-soaked first dates of anecdotal offroading until 4am.

I’ve had a great relationship with sex, counting each lover as a new adventure and racking up a respectable yet intrepid number (to paraphrase Four Weddings And A Funeral: “less than Kesha, more than Kate Middleton, I hope”).

Yet it dawned on me recently that I have never had a relationship that didn’t involve the internet.

My first foray into romance was courtesy of MSN messenger. I was at an all-girls school and used to add boys from the local boys school who I didn’t know. For me, the crackles of the dial-up tone as I waited to see if a boy – any boy – had messaged, were the first sounds of love, each beep filling me with hope. At 16, I moved on to Myspace. At 17, Bebo. At 18, Facebook and, by my 20s, I was regularly finding my next prospective date on Twitter, Tinder and Match.com.

The internet has allowed me to get to know men in what I find to be the most revealing way possible – words. A good email can tell you everything you need to know about a man before you meet him – is he funny? Eloquent? Does he have good taste? Is he sending you all the links to all the good songs? Does he know the difference between “you’re” and “your”? But, after years of trawling through online dating profiles and weeks of back-and-forth messaging before a first meeting, I found myself yearning for a proper old-fashioned courting.

I want the excitement of the unknown. I want love letters instead of WhatsApp messages; I want locks of hair instead of dick pics. Damn it, I want to go on a date with a tall dark stranger and let him be just that – a stranger – without me having stalked him via every social media platform available.

So the challenge to date for a week as if it’s 1995 – the year marie claire launched – was too irresistible for me to, well, resist.

Before we all head out on a Saturday night, I announce the plan to my housemates. “What … so … no mobile?” one asks, looking bemused. “And no internet?” the other one says, aghast. “How will you contact him?” “You know, the old-fashioned way. On a landline.” “Nobody has a landline. Not even my grandad has a landline!” my housemate yelps. “Well, he can contact me on my work phone,” I say. I put on a denim jacket and a crop top in homage to 1995, finish my glass of prosecco and head out to a local bar to pick up a guy.

As soon as I get there I realise there’s a fatal error in this plan. No-one picks up in real life anymore because the internet has made us so lazy. Also, I quickly realise, the chat-up line is a lost art – as antiquated as playing the mandolin.

After an hour of eyeing up blokes in the bar and wondering which ones are single and trying to figure out how to approach one of the herd, I am losing hope. Seriously. I don’t know how our parents did all this – it’s exhausting and frustrating. So I do what every right-minded, slightly insecure girl would have done in 1995 – I drink. And then, two vodka tonics later, I spot him. He’s tall (crucial) and well-dressed (preferable). He’s the first guy I spot who I really fancy, so I go in for the kill. “Hello,” I say, tapping him on the shoulder (a move I instantly regret as it feels both creepy and formal). He turns and looks at me, slightly confused.

"Hello,” he says, half laughing. There is silence. I don’t know what to say. I go for a classic line. “Can I buy you a drink?” “Sure!” he replies. “I don’t think a woman has ever asked to buy me a drink. Vodka tonic, please.” We find a booth and spend half an hour chatting. He becomes even more handsome as the minutes tick by – chocolatey eyes, dimply smile, strong, straight nose, and he lights up when he talks about his very interesting job (he has a chain of restaurants). Quickly one drink becomes two, two become three and the next thing I know, we’re playing footsie under the table and he’s asking for my mobile number.

“Er. No,” I reply. “You can’t have my number.” “Right,” he says. “Maybe I’ve got the wrong end of the stick, here.” I offer a quick, awkward explanation that I’m spending the week dating without technology, and think of a solution: “Why don’t I give you my work phone number?” I get out a napkin and an eyeliner to smear it down. I have a crashing realisation. “I don’t know my office number.” “That’s fine,” he says, getting out his mobile. “What’s the name of your company? I’ll Google it and ask for you when I get through.” “No! We can’t look it up online! It’s against the rules!” “Well then, what do we do?” he laughs, exasperated. I’m just as stumped as he is, but I can’t let this one get away. “I know!” I say. “I’ve got it at home. Why don’t I write down your address, then come round tomorrow and post my work phone number through your letterbox? Do I sound like a stalker?” “No,” he replies. I think he’s fibbing.

And early the next morning, when I trudge over to his place, nursing a mild hangover, I certainly feel like a stalker.

I find his house number, shove the piece of paper into the letterbox, then run off in hope of not being caught. The next day, I sit at my desk at work waiting for him to call. It’s agony. I can’t email him, I can’t send him a casual prompting text. I can’t even get a fix by looking at photos of him on Facebook. At 11am, I think he’ll call by lunchtime, then by lunchtime, I make a promise with fate that he’ll call mid afternoon. “I remember this,” says my married 40-something colleague, as she watches me stare at the phone on my desk. “The torture of waiting for a guy to call. The hours spent sitting by the phone helpless, assuming they’d died or worse. Then the slow realisation that he never fancied you.” “How did you handle it?” I ask. “Well, I didn’t. That’s why I got married,” she replies.

At 5pm, an hour before home time, he calls. The excitement I feel when I hear his voice is unparalleled. Getting a text has never felt this thrilling. We organise a time and a place to have dinner the following day and I ask for his work fax number, for good measure (this turns out to be in vain, as I discover there isn’t one fax machine to be found in my entire office building. “I think we threw them all out in 2000,” says the receptionist).

Tuesday night swings round and I couldn’t be more excited. When I get to the restaurant and he lands a gentlemanly kiss on both of my cheeks, I realise he is even sexier than my booze-addled brain had remembered. But as we sit down at the table, the atmosphere is ever so slightly tense. He’s not as funny as he was three drinks down. The conversation is pleasant, but stilted.

“What are you going to order?” I ask. “Veal, I think,” he says. I gasp. I am a passionate vegetarian who saves spiders around the house and sets them free in the garden. While I’ve dated plenty of carnivores before, all I can think about is that veal is a baby cow. He looks at me blankly. “That’s almost as cruel as eating foie gras,” I say. “I own restaurants. Obviously I love foie gras,” he snaps. “Animals are animals. I feel no connection with them.” “I’m a vegetarian,” I explain. “You’re an idiot,” he says, jokingly.

There is a silence.

“I actually go hunting when I’m in the UK,” he adds. “Hunting what?” “Foxes.” This is a deal-breaker and I want to leave then and there.

The mood has turned sour and so has the romance. If only I’d had the internet … if only I’d had the internet, I keep thinking. I would have seen photos of him, probably dressed in tweed, holding guns with all his chinless mates. I would never have gone on this date. I would have realised he wasn’t that charming sober. I wouldn’t have wasted time and make-up on this awkward date. We make it through the main course and I make my excuses after that. I give him two polite kisses on the cheek and leave to go home, happy he hasn’t got my mobile number.

I leave with only one thought: there must have been so many bad dates in 1995.

Perhaps I’m not as much of an old romantic as I thought. Perhaps I’m more practical. Perhaps I’ve grown up with the internet as such an integral part of my love life that I can’t do without it. I’ll happily keep the crop tops from the ’90s, they’re great. But give me back my mobile phone, please!

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