Remember I said at the beginning of the year that I wanted to start “challenging” myself?  Well, I think what I actually said that I wanted to start doing things that instilled fear in me and brought me out in hives/made me feel sick.  The 3 Peakes Challenge isn’t really my bag.  Infact, I’d rather tie my nipples to a moving car than take up any kind of challenge which involves mountains and walking. 

3 dates in 3 months?  Now that’s more my kind of challenge.

When Just Singles contacted me as a one of “the finest dating & lifestyle bloggers in the UK” (their words, not mine) I was in a bit of a dating rut.  By a dating rut, what I really mean is that I’d been flogging the crush equivalent of a dead horse of a crush for a little over 4 months and after several “non date” dates I entered the friendzone. 

The prospect of dating so soon after getting my fingers burned made me feel like running for the convent via the hills like Maria in The Sound of Music whilst and donning a wimple, but the sayings “you have to get back on the horse“, “the best way to get over one man is to get under another” (oo-er) and “there’s plenty more fish in the sea” rang in my ears and despite the sick to my stomach feeling it gave me, I figured I may aswell saddle up and get back on it.  After all, what’s the worst that could happen? GULP.

Dating can be hard, and I don’t just mean in a “that date was horrendous, I want to bath in bleach now”/”why didn’t he like me?” kind of way, but actually finding somebody to date when you work a fulltime job and have a “Lifestyle Blogger” alter ego which keeps you more or less chained to a laptop can be pretty hard.  Unless he works in the local shop (wine/frozen pizza), where I work (all married/old) or follows me on Twitter I’m pretty much struggling for places to meet men.  Normal men.  That’s where the challenge comes in. 

So how does #3Dates3Mths work?  Pretty much does what it says on the hashtag.  3 dates in 3 months using 3 different methods.  One of which being online dating, the other two completely of my choice.

I’ve completed 2 out of the 3 challenges (I feel like I’m on Grand Theft Auto) & I have my online dating experience all written up and ready to share with you in the next couple of days.

I feel a little bit Kate Hudson in “How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days” (without Matthew McConaughey) – alls fair in love and war – right?

* just as a side note, I was concerned about whether to make this challenge known to my prospective dates but I figured that would skew the results slightly.  A bit like how a “reality show” loses any sense of reality once the cameras are switched on.  Which is why I wanted to add a disclaimer incase any of my dates somehow stumbled upon this (because I’m going to make up alternative names for my dates in a “Womans Own” kind of way to protect the innocent).  The “dates” in this blog post and moving forward for the next few #3dates3mths posts weren’t used just for challenge purposes, I went on dates with them because I wanted to be there.  I couldn’t fake a date anymore than I could fake an orgasm (if you let them think they’re doing good when they’re doing bad, how will they learn that “that special spot” is appx 1.5cm away from where they think it is?) so with this in my mind, the date came first, the challenge came second.