Were psychologist Martin and teacher Natalie a match?

Natalie, 43, says:

I think variety is the spice of life and in terms of meeting people I’ve tried various avenues. I hadn’t tried a blind date yet, so I thought why not? Something different. I was excited and really looking forward to it.

Martin looked lovely. He seemed sort of casual and he was really accommodating and let me sit in the comfy seat, which I thought was really sweet. He swapped chairs and said “You sit here” which I didn’t anticipate and I thought, ‘Well, that’s really nice, thoughtful and selfless’.

He started the conversation about previous ways of meeting people. And so we had a brief chat about that initially. We had common ground in terms of age and we both grew up in Perth and have similar careers.

Conversation flowed — there was easy banter. We both enjoy going to the beach, which is something he intended to do on the weekend, and we talked about travel.

We kicked on afterwards to see a local band playing at a bowls club in support of the Leukaemia Foundation, which was fun. I didn’t know if that was something he would have agreed to or not, I just thought, ‘Well, I’m going to this event, you can come if you want?’ But we got along quite well, I feel.

I think initially (the vibe was) definitely friendship with the potential for romance down the track.

There was plenty of laughter which was lovely. And we chose cocktails over the food, even though the food was fantastic, because both of us weren’t that hungry. I think he is lovely, witty, engaging, selfless and easygoing.

In the lead-up to the date I was thinking about blind dates, and you know, what does it mean? And I thought about Helen Keller, and how she once said, “Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all” and I was like, yes! What I’m doing is something exciting and adventurous and positive.

We said goodbye with a brief kiss and hug and also exchanged numbers to catch up later down the track. We both said we would get tickets to the upcoming Ministry of Sound event.

9/10

Martin, 46, says:

I’ve been on a few dates over the last few months. I definitely felt nervous not knowing who was going to be meeting me there, what they were going to be like and whether there would be awkward silences. But I was actually pretty excited about it.

First impression was great, Natalie’s an attractive lady. I think I probably showed zero chill when she first sat down. I was a bit babbly and a bit nervous obviously, and then after a few moments we relaxed, well I relaxed anyway. I think she was probably a lot more confident and calm than I was. We had a good chat and then things settled down and there were no awkward silences, lots of laughs.

We talked about a whole bunch of things. She’s pretty confident and outgoing so it was easy to keep the conversation going. We come from a similar sort of background. We are both single parents with similar values, and she had a great sense of humour. We chatted about all the usual things, travelling, food, restaurants, what we liked, family situations, hobbies. She described the night as ‘moist’ when she arrived, which we realised is one of our least favourite words. So we had a bit of a laugh. I think it’s probably everyone’s least favourite word.

The meal was a bit light on the food and heavy on the cocktails. After the meal we moved to one of the bars outside which was really nice and chilled there for another hour or so. I was supposed to have a slightly early night which didn’t quite happen for me. She knew of a cover band nearby that was playing, some of her mates were there and so I was like, “Ah, you’ve convinced me to come along” which was actually great fun. We went there and hung out and chatted some more, saw some music — we both have similar musical tastes — and chatted about going to a Ministry of Sound gig. It ended up being a little bit later than I anticipated.

I was worried we were going to be killing time until the end of the date, but it was actually really good, I’m glad I went. I was supposed to go swimming the next morning but the night’s festivities cancelled that out for me so it was a really good evening overall.

We’ve been chatting quite a bit. We swapped numbers, we’ll catch up again.

9/10