I expect you’re wondering what happened. Why it ended with me not finding my pen friend attractive (which I’m sure happens 99 times out of 100 when women dip their toes in online dating), musing why he didn’t wear a jacket, implying he was ‘small and dry’… and then nothing. Yes, most men will have felt humiliated, but rejection is always hard. I didn’t flirt or make false promises. He had every right to be upset, but not abusive.
My column about our date was published online under the headline, which I didn’t write or approve: ‘I’m a catch who has spent a lifetime renovating my body, so why did my unattractive date ever think he had a chance?’ I wrote he was intelligent, good company, gentlemanly in paying for lunch as well as proactive, given that he organised and paid for entry to an exhibition, but ultimately not for me. I had only received a recent selfie the evening before (me in print: ‘No one looks good in selfies’) meaning if I’d cancelled it would have seemed rude. My photos are all over the internet. I didn’t meet him for the column – I found him genuinely clever and kind. But he wasted my time (call me shallow but there needs to be a physical attraction), which, as it turns out, he doesn’t think I have much of left. I have never identified him, but he told his sister we had emailed about films and books. I imagine she will be as shocked as I am. Once you read something, it cannot be unread.
His response? That I no longer look like I did in a photo taken a decade ago*. That I am ‘old’ and ‘bitter’ and ‘delusional… easy prey for any man who thinks you’ve got a few bob’. Oh, and ‘thick’, as he’d had to mansplain the ending of Smile 2. He said my last boyfriend ‘made a humiliated laughing stock’ of me. Actually, the reverse is true. The boyfriend who lied and stood me up on my birthday and New Year’s Eve revealed himself to be pathetic, frankly: love bombing, cheating and ghosting aged 60. Why are women always to blame?
He wrote that he only sent me a (flattering) letter as he thought I could help ‘improve’ his writing, ‘help with getting published’. That was his ‘real motive’. Why not say so at the start? He said my famous friend isn’t my friend at all, and that it would be ‘interesting’ to contact my sister, suspecting I’m the ‘evil’ one. Go ahead, Sunshine (I could easily publish his name), make my day. He gave me permission to use our conversation in my column and, come on, everyone knows I write about my life.
He said there was no chat over lunch because I am ‘stone deaf’.
‘At one point, me and the waitress were taking the p**s but you were dumbly unaware.’
I am sure, now I’ve sent Tate Modern the date and time of our visit and the table location, they’ll be able to ask the woman in question if it’s true she was making fun of a disabled customer. I’m waiting to hear what she has to say.
The most shocking part of one of his emails (and there were many, some sent at 6am: ‘You are old, doomed’ etc; in one he calls me ‘plastic’ six times; I genuinely felt vulnerable) is when he recounts talking me out of ‘topping’ myself, which is nonsense – I’ve had years of therapy. He says how can I be unhappy when my horses are frolicking. That is hardly going to cure me when the best psychiatrist in Switzerland failed to even dent my low self-esteem or quiet the constant, stomach-churning terror.
He said I ‘have nothing to live for’ and ‘nothing to look forward to’, that if I don’t reply to his emails, he will post our correspondence on Mumsnet. I wonder what they will make of his latest missive, scattered with the c-word. What man calls a woman that? No wonder he never married, lives alone. Wow, the rage that bubbles beneath the surface of these outwardly harmless men.
Turns out I was damn right to reject him. I send his emails to my friend, who says his level of aggression, his hatred of women, would make her afraid to be in his presence behind a closed door.
His emails made me physically sick. I wake at 3am, turning everything over in my mind. Shocked someone can switch from empathy to menacing threats. I didn’t think confiding in someone about my fears, my feeling I have nowhere to turn, would be used against me when I didn’t want a romantic relationship, which is after all my prerogative. He wanted to be the hero but, hurt, he now becomes the person egging me on to feel bad about myself. Mine any insecurity and twist a nail in my guts. Thank god I have Teddy, just in case he can find me, given the photos online.
I’ve decided to draw a line under the whole sorry episode, to focus now on the good things in my life: my animals, my vicarage. The things I’ve worked hard for and deserve to enjoy in peace.
*My teeth are much improved. Also, odd, as the day after we met he emailed to say I ‘still look good’.
