From the editor: You’re history

Spring is springing, and Tinder is about to hit its annual sweet spot. Or at least, that’s how it seems. After a winter of hibernation eating warming carbs and spirit-bolstering chocolates (you’ve got to keep the long nights at bay somehow!) I’ve now noticed that friends are updating their dating profiles and preparing to interview potential partners through trials combining booze and best-pal-interrogation. The last time I ventured out on a first date with a new person though it wasn’t their attention to my capacity for Tuaca I noticed (very low, I’m a lightweight), but their detailed knowledge of my pictures on Facebook.

It does feel a bit “stalky stalky” when someone you’ve only met once before asks if you still have that swirly blue top you wore in a pub at a birthday once five years ago. I know, I kept telling myself that we all do the old internet search on any prospective mate these day, it’s on a par with daydreaming at school whilst doodling the surnames of you and your newly beloved hyphenated on your maths book. Just a bit of escapism. But surly you don’t go waving the paper graffiti in your new beau’s face and expect them to have an opinion as to which font looks best when you’re on a second date. Where’s the mystery in that?

Keeping one foot in the old and one in the new way of dating can be a bit of a balancing act. How long do you wait before you message back? Should you judge that they might become too clingy if every one of their past profile pictures is of them in a couple? How many days before casually meeting a new person is it cool to Friend Request them? I shall watch my pals and learn from their stumbles. And maybe through a few of my own.

Victoria Nangle
editorial@thelatest.co.uk