Dating in the past versus dating now

Dating and I are a match made in hell. Really, I should actually take a Dating for Dummies course once. I'm a disaster. Or well, I don't really know if I'm a disaster on the date itself, I usually don't get that far. Cancelling is so much less stressful than actually going on that date. I already get anxious when the date that the date should take place gets closer. Last-minute cancelling is therefore already a stressful thing. Which has led me to prefer to cut off a conversation immediately when someone suggests a date. Smooth, right? I know. It's often really appreciated. Not.

It doesn't help that dating nowadays is clearly not my cup of tea. Apparently, sliding into DMs is now often a perfectly fine thing to do. Well, I can tell you: when someone does that to me, I immediately feel like a dime a dozen. Not exactly romantic and the copy-paste factor is often really high. Tinder and Happn, I'm not really into it, but a few of my friends have had some successful dates from it. However, the majority was a serial Tinder dater, who was looking for Mrs. Right for a Night. So, the romance doesn't exactly ooze from that. No, I clearly don't find starting dating material through the apps..

I have become familiar with the phenomenon of LinkedIn flirting. Does that exist? Well, yes it does. My last (okay, and only) real love blossomed after I suspiciously often received notifications that he had viewed my profile. Do I have such an interesting CV? Far from it. And since he works in aviation and I can't even drive a car properly, I couldn't really imagine that we could help each other's careers. But I had liked him for a while, so checking each other's profiles back and forth was a fun activity. Maybe LinkedIn should add a dating aspect to their site in 2020. It worked perfectly for me, at least.

But to be fair: how much more fun was dating back in the day? No fuss, just meeting each other in the pub without countless messages beforehand. At most a few texts, or just a phone call to wrap it up. That you hadn't fully researched each other online FBI-style – we all do that, right? That the most info you had was either their MSN profile picture (and getting turned off if they used too many emoticons) or the photos on Hyves.

Maybe I'm just a few decades too late born when it comes to dating, since we're almost hitting 2020 and I apparently only have LinkedIn flirting down, and there's a small market for that so far, you know. And so I keep hoping as a hopeless romantic for such a spontaneous encounter, a few glances while going out, and that holiday romance that sticks. Hey, luckily the chance of that happening is really incredibly high. Maybe I should just give in, as a New Year's resolution for 2020..