took her for a drink on Tuesday....

It's been some time since I was last "dating".  To be honest, I'm not sure that I've ever really been out on a "date", and I'm pretty sure that I've never really actually asked anybody out.  I went to a mostly single sex boarding school when I was seven years old and I'm permanently emotionally scarred.  But hey!  I got lucky!  Fifteen years last week, the lucky girl.....

Anyway.  

Most of my team are in their early twenties, and some of them are single. Over the last couple of months, I've watched as they've struggled their way through the minefield of dating.  Speed dating, online profiles, blind dates.... you name it, they've tried it.  One of my team even had the slightly embarrassing realisation after a date last week that she didn't even know the guy's name as the site she'd met him through worked on nicknames and it had just never come up in conversation.  Like the good supportive colleagues we are, we ran a sweepstake.  Turns out that he was called Ross.  Anyway, it seems that intelligent, attractive young people don't just meet organically any more.

As well as my official role as boss, I seem to have picked up an unofficial role as dating counsellor too - an irony which is certainly not lost on me.  I've been asked to read nuances in the dating profiles of complete strangers, to try to calculate whether someone had been lying about their height based upon a 'he's about this tall' estimate, to decide if it's okay to go round to his house for dinner on a fifth date (she's left me the postcode, just in case....), to discuss what constitutes an "attractive but not easy" outfit... but probably most importantly to tell these girls that they are worth a damn and that anyone who doesn't think so isn't worth their time.

Dammit.  I'm either their gay best friend or their father.  

Note to self: I need to work harder to make sure I stay married and never, ever have to go through this.