SO WHAT ACTUALLY IS A MICRO-DATE?
Picture the scene. It’s your first date with a potential partner you’ve been chatting to online. They seem nice but it’s only 7.30pm – half an hour into your rendezvous – and you’ve already realised the most interesting thing at the table is your bowl of spaghetti. It’s not that they’re unpleasant, but as they brag about their promotion for the fifth time since you met, you find yourself wistfully daydreaming about how much nicer it would be if you were at home, with your feet up in front of the telly. But you have committed a whole evening to this person. All you can do is pray they don’t suggest pudding.
It’s an age-old hazard of dating that has been made more common by the birth of online apps. But some savvy singles have come up with the answer. They are a new and shrewd breed of dater who know exactly what they want and, more importantly, how they’re going to get it. Their approach to finding The One is incredibly efficient because as far as they’re concerned, there is no time to be wasted on a bad date or one that isn’t going to go anywhere.
They are the ‘micro-daters’ – people who, sick of lengthy and costly dates, have begun to implement stringent time limits on their romantic rendezvous. Meet-ups are limited to 15 to 45 minutes only, and certainly never go over an hour. Micro-dating is a trend that has become particularly popular with over-40s whose busy lives and multiple commitments leave conventional dating a near impossibility.
In fact, micro-dating is a concept that is becoming so acceptable that apps are springing up to accommodate it. And there are also big success stories from those who have micro-dated, with some mini meet-ups even ending in marriage...
Gone are the days of booking a romantic dinner or whiling away the evening in a dimly lit bar. Micro-dates normally occur during the day – perhaps a quick coffee at lunch or a swift drink after work before both parties go on to other engagements. Convenience is key, so possible suitors are seen in spare – otherwise unused – snippets of the day.
‘It’s a much more efficient use of your time,’ says George Rawlings, co-founder of the world’s first micro-dating app, Honeypot, which recently launched. ‘It’s also really exciting. You can line up more dates and meet more people. This may sound like a strange analogy but micro-dating is similar to a tasting platter. You can try out a few ‘You know whether you fancy someone within 15 minutes,’ says retail worker Jacqueline Wright, 61, who now only micro-dates
‘MICRO-DATERS SET STRINGENT TIME LIMITS ON THEIR ROMANTIC RENDEZVOUS’