40-odd dates in 46 days for Lent
The single, 29-year-old from Cashel, Co Tipperary, has just finished a marathon dating campaign. In an interesting variation on the traditional Lenten Campaign instead of giving up something she said she’d try something out.
For 46 days she packed in 40-odd dates over the period of Lent.
(Midway through the campaign, she discovered that, according to Catholic dictates, you get to take Sundays off during Lent; with the extra time at the end she slotted in a few second dates or picked up with guys she’d met along the way.)
The ruse was also conceived to promote her new business, Singlelista — a website devoted to single people, which gives the lowdown on the nuances of the dating game in Ireland, with practical advice on dating agencies, best places to date and so on.
The venues for her own dating game included a ghost tour around Dublin; a Segway tour through Phoenix Park; a trip to Bray’s Sealife Aquarium; and a “wet and wild” date togged out in a bikini at one of Co Louth’s Funtasia waterparks. Mulcahy discovered there are two Funtasias in the county when her date turned up late, having initially gone to the wrong one.
She laughs that she “put on a stone” over Lent with all the dinner dates she went on. She did, however, take in some offbeat activity dates as well, like a Céilí Mór, sushi-making, coffee-making, and hill-walking.
Her dates were a mix of the good, the bad and not so much ugly as un-tall. At 5’ 10”, she found a lot of the dates came up short — or shorter, technically speaking — than herself.
One date was with Breffney Morgan, the Cork star of The Apprentice.
She went for salsa dancing lessons with one fella based on the advice that “touch” is important on a date.
It worked a treat. She admits she could “easily have stopped there” with her Clarke Kent-lookalike dancing partner.
There was a date with an older guy — 42, who is separated for three years — which went really well despite her initial reservations about the age gap.
She was caught off guard by Lois, a Brazilian waiter, too. After her date she got a text message from him saying that he “missed my perfume”.
On the debit side, there was one bizarre date with a guy called Maher. On arriving at the meeting point outside St Stephen’s Green, he picked her up and swung her around. Before meeting, he’d promoted himself as a Hollywood-actor-cum-musician-cum-fortune-teller. During the date — in which he was wearing an “Ireland’s answer to a male model” T-shirt — he revealed he was also a world-renowned masseuse. He’d claimed to have had sex already that day with two other women. From the come-on techniques he was using, Mulcahy reckons he must have been a graduate of a pick-up artist course.
“He came up to me,” she says, “and said something like, ‘Why are you so beautiful?’ I’d say after a while any girl would have just thought ‘Fruitloop. Get out of here.’ It was laughable. Another girl would have probably kept walking, but I’d just met a fortune-teller myself. I was coming from a place where I was very open to everything. He was so far-fetched that he’s created another reality for himself. He was living in Delusional Land.”
It was, as you can imagine, a logistical nightmare juggling dates. She could have done with a Date Manager, she says, to orchestrate dates and to help deal with cancellations — one guy apologised for letting her down by saying he had to mow his uncle’s lawn. Also getting back up on the horse so quickly after a date that had gone awry, or having to shelve those tingly emotions she might have felt for a guy she met along the way that wasn’t part of her schedule, was an issue.
“Sometimes I was meeting people that I kind of liked,” she says, “people I was having connections with, but they weren’t on my dating plan. Managing those feelings going on, while at the same time having to put myself out there and go on the dates and trying to be really excited about them, has been really interesting for me.
“I thought it would be a lot easier — that it would be about just going out and meeting new people, but I forgot about the emotions that go with each date, and trying to motivate yourself when one date goes really, really bad.
“I got rejected in an early date and found it very difficult that day. I was thinking, ‘What am I doing? I want to get outta here!’ I used a confidence coach who was calling me through it and helping me along. I thought it would be a simple project, but it wasn’t.”
Having concluded the campaign with a singles ball on the D4 Berkeley Hotel on Easter Sunday, Mulcahy hopes to take her new-found dating wisdom on the road and do some coaching.
“If you want a partner, you have to be determined,” she says. “Ask your friends, ‘Is there any potential date that’s single at the moment that you think I’d be good with?’ They might say, ‘Yeah, there is.’ But they won’t get back to it. You have to push it and say, ‘I’d actually like to be in a relationship in three months time. Can you please set me up with someone?’
“Ask your parents. They know you better than anyone. Let them set you up on a date. Rather than sitting back and saying, ‘Oh, online dating doesn’t work for me.’ Or ‘there’s no singles in my town.’ Or sitting in every night watching telly and saying, ‘Oh, my destiny is never to meet anyone.’ Instead, try every single option that’s out there. Put it out there: ‘I am single. I would like to be in a relationship’.”
For more information, visit: www.singlelista.ie
* Never meet a date at his house; don’t take lifts with a guy; meet in a public place.
* Don’t be afraid to swap numbers — you have to arrange the date and progress things.
* Don’t meet in a bar with loud music — it gets in the way of conversation.
* Try not to go to a bar with too many distractions. I went to one bar which had lots of hot Brazilian men and my own eyes kept wandering.
* Dinner dates are always a good idea.
* Go for a coffee. A first date doesn’t have to be long.
* Don’t talk about past relationships.
* Don’t put on a facade. Be yourself. It’s time-wasting. Put your best impression forward, but let it be your own self.
* Be clear about the messages you give out. If you’re wearing a really slutty outfit, that’s the message you’re giving out. It doesn’t matter what you say afterwards.
* Be clear on what you want. If you say a comment like, “I love travel and I want to travel for the rest of my life” the message you give out is that you don’t want to settle down and get married in the next year or so.
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