How Far Would You Travel For A Date?
We are such creatures of hope, like Gabriel in my romantic novella Lavender Days. Many of us still on the loose and fancy free (and supposedly the envy of all too many in marital and partnership situations they yearn to be clear of!) would journey far more miles than is rational or sensible to pursue what might seem to be a promising opportunity to find a loving mate with whom to bond, start a family, share a life.
Dating Circuit
When I was doing the dating circuit I travelled from London hundreds of miles to distant places including the British Midlands, West Country, Edinburgh, and even crossing the sea to Dublin, to visit ladies who had responded to my entry on the list of ‘available male dates’. Never mind the South of France as in Lavender Days, I dare say I’d have hopped across to America, maybe even Australia, if the lure had seemed sufficiently promising. Indeed, the more desperate you feel, the further you’ll travel.
A Successful Date Means Talk
Not that I’m much of a catch, but all these dear and darling ladies didn’t seem to mind as they sensed not so much a man of means, which I’m certainly not (I’m a freelance writer, for heaven’s sake), but one who would be able to talk to them. Yes, talk. Forget sexy and rugged, it took me a while to realise that many of the men who were most successful with women weren’t much to look at and not always wealthy (which is what we chaps were told most women wanted, because it meant security in life). The joke used to be that a man and woman are incompatible if he’s got no income and she’s not ‘pattable’. Hmm
Feminine Side
Perhaps it was because I used to put that I’m a writer they imagined my feminine side would be more developed than that of, say, a professional footballer, solicitor, banker, engineer or accountant, whose professions don’t require them to search very deeply into themselves, but can operate perfectly effectively from the surface once they’ve acquired the knowledge they need, and passed their exams to qualify.
But writers, like artists and – most certainly – actors, are required by the work they do to look very deeply not just at others but also into themselves, to understand and be genuinely interested in how others in the world who are different from them ‘tick’. And, as happened with Gabriel and Kathryn, even though in correspondence or by talking on the phone, or these days by Skype or Google Hangout, it’s possible to get a pretty good idea of whether or not two people are likely to respond sexually and romantically to each other. None of that can be as effective as a face-to-face meeting, however, because only in the flesh does ‘real’ reality finally come leaping out to replace the imagined or hoped-for reality generated by these virtual or merely visual or aural encounters.
The idea is that if we can find our soulmate, it doesn’t matter whereabouts in the world they live, provision will somehow be made to allow the lovebirds to be together, possibly creating great upheavals and refocusing on the only essential thing that now matters: to be together.
How far would you be prepared to travel for a date if you felt, or even hoped, that at journey’s end the love of your life would be waiting?
Or perhaps you’ve travelled far, and have now happily found your loved one?
I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.
Read extracts from Lavender Days HERE
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