5527/18447
My wife and I have been together for pretty much exactly 10 years. Which is only five times longer than my next-longest relationship, so I am not yet calling it as a big deal. And it may go on for longer than ten years, but maybe not after that last sentence.
Although I understand why I fell in love with her, I am still confused about what she saw in me and let’s face it, not many people would have been filled with confidence about the future of this relationship based on the track record of my first 40 years and six months.
Coincidentally, it was the same month in 2008 that I first started podcasting. So whenever I think of the start of my relationship with my wife I think about Andrew Collings. But this long into a relationship you need something to get the fire lit, so that’s just a blessing.
The choices that were made in January 2008 have certainly got a claim to be the ones that have had the most influence on my life. What if I’d started podcasting with Catie and got into a relationship with Collings? Now that’s a version of Sliding Doors that everyone would pay to see.
Anyway, I have thankfully been off the dating carousel for a long time - or so I thought. My favourite thing that happened this week was a chat with one of the women who works at the nursery that Phoebe goes to. She told me that she was using one of those new dating apps that you get these days, I don’t know if you’ve heard of them - we didn’t have anything like them in my day and I am glad, because it makes it all just TOO EASY. Anyway, you get photos of the potential person that you might want to step out with (I believe that’s the main aim) and she told me that more than one of the pictures she has been presented with on the app included me. Not, I hasten to add, because I have been secretly putting myself on Tinder, but because at least two men have decided the best way to impress women is to put up a photo of them standing next to me.
This might just be so that they look comparatively young and handsome. Or it might be in the hope that they will attract a female Richard Herring fan who will be impressed that they have somehow met me.
Bad luck fellas. There are no female Richard Herring fans and so all women who see that photo who don’t look after my daughter, are going to assume that I am your dad. Or be disappointed when you turn up on the date and it’s not the beguiling silver fox from the profile.
I can’t begin to say how weird this is or what a bad choice I think those men have made. I don’t think the woman from the nursery selected these men at least and I warned her off them. What kind of a shallow and weird pervert would like me?
The irony is that nearly all the men who like me are rather lovely and clever and witty, but having me in the photo won’t help anyone realise that, because my face is not a reference that most people will get.
I wondered about telling the lady at the nursery that she should arrange to go on dates with these guys and that I would turn up halfway through to freak them out. But they’d probably just want to spend the night talking to me and then take me home for a coffee.
Hey guys, I am very flattered that you have put me in your profiles. It’s sort of nice to know that even though I hung up my dating pants a long time ago, I am, in a way, still out there, at least virtually, trying my luck with the ladies. And the fact that I am in at least two profiles does suggest that for whatever reason, my presence still works.
Good luck guys. I hope it’s working for you. I know you just want to be with me. And if we all play this right then you might be.
