#FirstDate #FirstDates #FirstDatesIRL #Dating #Kilkenny #JohnsStreet #BiddyEarlys #Ireland #LEGO

We went to eat tacos at IXCA. IXCA has the most authentic Al Pastor Tacos I have tried in Ireland. And for a short period of time in 2021, they were serving out of the back area at Biddy Early’s. As FirstDate50 is a vegetarian, she got grilled haloumi tacos. She had lost her sense of taste and smell in early 2021 due to COVID. Because of this, she was constantly searching for food that might spark some memory to her taste buds. So, while I only had the mild salsa, she had the hot. Her taste buds might not have been working for sweet and savory, but their ability to detect variations on the Scoville scale were still in working order. Needless to say, her mouth was on fire. Fortunately, it didn’t put too much of a damper on the remainder of the evening.

After tacos, we went back to her place, and yadda-yadda-yadda. I know you’re thinking that I yadda-yadda’d the best part. I didn’t; I mentioned the tacos. I was very excited to see what happened after tacos, but it wasn’t as exciting as my expectations. Despite that, I went back to her place a couple of days later. This time, I could tell something was off. She was immediately saying things like, “I really LOVE this” and “I really LOVE that”. I could tell right away that the balance in the relationship was already out of whack. She was falling in love, and I couldn’t even see a cliff yet.

I went to her house a couple of days later, and I broke the bad news to her – I wasn’t into her like she was into me. I tried to convince her that it wasn’t her, it was me, but she wasn’t buying it. I have never disappointed another woman like I had disappointed her; she was devastated. Honestly, there were a lot of warning signals and red flags that should have told me that moving from friends to more than friends was a terrible decision. And I honestly feel awful about how I made her feel. She told me that she was extremely hurt and that I used her. I couldn’t apologize enough to her about how sorry I was. I never meant to hurt her. Using her implies that I simply wanted to have sex with her and nothing else. And that wasn’t the case at all. I truly had every intention of seeing where this would go. But I was blown away at how fast her mind went straight to LOVE!!! 😍 There was no way that we would ever be on the same page for emotions, and probably a lot of other things as well. It’s almost a year later, and I still regret trying to be more than friends.

So there you have it. First Date #50, and I haven’t reached the end of this journey yet. This was the First Date that gave me the idea for the blog. After dating 50, I looked back at all of my failed relationships. I added up all of the First Dates, and I realized that I had been on 50 First Dates at 50-years-old. 50 First Dates was never a goal. It was a consequence of trying to find love. And here I was, in a new country, having gone on 50 First Dates at 50, and I still had nothing to show for it. Well, I do have something to show for it – this blog. And, with a little luck, I’ll have something else to show for it eventually.

(Last Dated – October 2021)