That one time I went on a blind date

It’s probably no big surprise to you that I decided to take a sabbatical from dating while I am pregnant. To be honest, It was hard enough trying to find someone to date when I wasn’t carrying around a human in my uterus, so I figured it would be next to impossible to find someone while sporting this baby bump. Although, as Jennifer Lopez proved in that one movie where she finds the hottest, sweetest man in the world who wants to date her no matter what, You CAN find love when you’re knocked up carrying someone elses baby. What was the movie called? “This isn’t real life”….. “Knight in shining armor rescues hot pregnant woman”…. “Lets give single pregnant woman false expectations”. Ah I just can’t remember the title…. Oh well!

Anyway, to a normal guy in his later 20’s early 30’s, nothing says “Red Flag” like a single pregnant girl looking for a date! So I hung up my dating heels and traded them for comfort slippers for the time being.

And to be honest, I’m not complaining about this time off. I’ve been given a lot of time to myself to think, process, and learn. But I’ve also been given a lot of time to be bored…. Very very bored. So since I’m not dating I figured I would tell you one of my more interesting  dating stories. Because one, it’s a fun story, and two, because I’m bored and I can’t sleep.  Writing this is giving me something to do.

Okay! So the Blind date!

It all started last summer when I wrote the blog about online dating. If you haven’t read it you can find it here. Online dating blog

I wrote that specific blog to share to the world how difficult I find online dating to be and how different the dating world is now because of tinder and bumble. I wrote about how longed for something different, something spontaneous, authentic, and meaningful. Something where you didn’t know their whole life story before the date, where you couldn’t stalk them on facebook to see if their ex-girlfriends new boyfriend’s sister is friends with your friend Sarah.   I just wanted to go back to the days where if your friends knew someone who, “you would be great with!” they’d set you up.

Someone heard my cry for this type of experience and sent me a message on facebook saying they had the most perfect guy that she wanted to set me up with, but she had a catch……

Dant dant dant!!!!!!

She would only set us up if it was a complete blind date for both of us. (So 1990’s right? She would only give me his first name, his job, and other very very basic facts about him. And same for him. He got my first name, and what I did for a living. She wanted to create the experience of an authentic blind date for both of us. 

My initial reaction was, “OMG this is amazing, of course I’ll agree to this!” But then I started actually thinking about it. Why did it HAVE to be a blind date…. Maybe she was setting me up on a blind date with him instead of a regular date because she thought he was ugly and thought no one would agree to date him if they saw his photo first. Did he have contagious warts all over his face?  OR mayyybe she was setting me up on a blind date with him because she didn’t want HIM to see MY photo because I was not his type physically and he wouldn’t have agreed if he saw me first! Or maybe it was someone I already knew and she wanted it to be a surprise! There were so many options running through my  head.

In the end I realized that even if all of those things were true it would still make for a great story and that I had to go on this date! If it was a flop I could get a good blog post out of it and if it worked out I’d be in a relationship! Win win! So, I told her to set it up and tell me where to meet him and what time.

She decided to keep the mystery alive by not giving either of us the others phone number until an hour before the date so that we wouldn’t start texting each other before hand. If we had questions she would play middle man and communicate for us!

On the day of the date I got super nervous….What do I wear?  What were we going to talk about? What if he doesn’t like girls that drink whiskey? What if he proposes to me right away because we fall in love immediately? would I say yes? lol.

Right on cue, an hour before the date, my friend texts me the mystery man’s number and says that he’ll meet me at Annie baileys at 6:30. At 6:29 I parked my car, and text the number, “Hey, It’s Lauren! I’m here” and elegantly got out of my car in case he was watching.  He responds to my text, “I’m out front.” So I anxiously walked to the door not knowing what my eyes were about to see and thankfully saw a very handsome man standing outside!

“Andrew?”

We awkwardly hugged and then immediately started joking about how weird blind dates are and how this was our first time on a blind date. Blah Blah Blah. You could tell we were both a little nervous, (he claimed he wasn’t nervous at all)  but to be honest it was the first time in awhile that it was the fun type of nervous and not the scary nervous.

I’ll spare you all the details of the date, because most first dates go the same. BUT I will say that this date was one of my favorite dates in a very long time because it was set up with purpose. My friend knew we’d get along and she was right! We really did get a long great! We had each other laughing for hours! The date was also so organic and we had so much to talk about because we knew NOTHING about each other before hand.

We did go on another date after that first blind date, which was equally enjoyable. In the end, though,it didn’t work out. But it did show me that being set up can be quite amazing if the person setting you up is actually good at setting people up. (Liz if you’re reading this, this isn’t you. You are amazing at a lot of things, but setting people up isn’t one of them lol.)

Would I go on a blind date again? Absolutely! But before you get too excited to set me up with your friends friends brothers college roommate, you should know that I don’t plan on putting on my dating heels for awhile. I’ve got a new little man coming into my  life that I want to be with!

For now I’m content wearing these comfort slippers for awhile.

XoXo,

Lauren