Single And Safe Dates
I was eating pizza with a group of friends when one of them mentioned she was going on a safe date with a man from work. “What’s a safe date,” I asked, “is it like safe sex at an earlier stage?” “No,” she said, “it’s a handy date with someone who’s desperately keen on you but you haven’t made your mind up about him yet. You know you’ll have a good time because you get on well, but there’s no pressure because you’re in the driver’s seat. It’s a safety net where you can’t get hurt because you’re not involved and probably never will be.”
The penny dropped – I had a safe date relationship with a man for a couple of months when I lived in London, I just didn’t know what it was called. He was courteous, punctual, always telephoned when he said he would, refused to split the bill and frequently bought me boxes of chocolates for no reason. He’d simply arrive, laden down with them. My friends used to call him James Stewart because it was all so proper and 1950s.
What more could a woman ask for than to be respected, treated to dinner and sent home in a taxi with a box of Belgian truffles on the seat beside her?
Quite a lot, actually. I grew bored because the relationship never progressed, so I started seeing someone else who was the polar opposite of a safe date. It was infinitely less predictable and incredibly more fun – except I had to buy my own chocolates. Later I discovered James Stewart was only going out with me because his older sister, with whom he shared a flat, told him he needed a girlfriend – and, incidentally, she wanted the place to herself sometimes. So I was his safe date as much as he was mine.
All the women at our table in the pizza parlour realised they’d been on safe dates at different stages. Often we turn to them when we’ve emerged from one relationship and aren’t yet ready for another.
But here’s where the discussion became interesting. All the men also admitted to safe dates – but their understanding of them was different. The male version was where they knew they wouldn’t be in bed alone at the end of the evening. They viewed safe dates as a liaison that would never amount to anything but was convenient, casual and occasionally companionable. They all knew a girl they safe-dated, but none of them regarded her as a long-term prospect.
“I’ll just ring her at a moment’s notice to see if she fancies a drink and if she’s free, well and good. If not, it’s no big deal,” was the prevailing attitude. They hooted at the idea of behaving like James Stewart and were unsettled by my story. It looked like one of those Women Are From Venus moments, except we had more in common than we acknowledged – even though the men wanted a pushover and the women wanted a man who wasn’t pushy.
You see, neither sex cared to linger in the comfort zone of a safe date. This was strictly temporary territory.
