The Heartfix: An Online Dating Diary
‘Shocking, tender and funny… as gripping as a thriller’ Miranda SawyerMind-boggling, heart-rending and darkly comic, this is the full story for the first time, from the writer of the Guardian column Midlife Exwife….When her husband fell in love with someone else, Stella Grey thought she’d be unhappy for the rest of her life. But then she realised that she needed to take her future in her own hands. She needed to meet someone wonderful, and find a heartfix for heartbreak.So, she joined online dating sites and embarked on a mission. What followed were 693 days of encounters, on screen and in person: dates in cafés and over glasses of astringent red wine, short term relationships and awkward sex, but mostly there were phone calls and emails (many, many emails). Her journey was never dull, featuring marriage proposals, invitations to Tangier, badly timed food poisoning and much younger men – but was it ultimately successful?Totally compulsive, painfully true and darkly comic, this is an unputdownable account of one woman’s search for love online.
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4th Estate
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London SE1 9GF
This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2016
Copyright © Stella Grey 2016
Stella Grey asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library
Cover photograph © Getty Images / Felicity McCabe; Design by Anna Morrison
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008201739
Ebook Edition © September 2016 ISBN: 9780008201746
Version: 2017-04-13
COMMENTS RECEIVED VIA TWITTER, WHILE THE COLUMN WAS RUNNING IN THE GUARDIAN
From @RebNew1: It’s been a relief knowing it’s not just me who’s gone through these scenarios.
From @carolineratner: I recently suggested a newly single friend read you from the beginning so she knew what to expect from dating.
From @CharleneWhite, ITV news anchor: This has been one of my fav regular weekend reads. Love it. Thanks for sharing.
From @patriciajrogers: Thank you for all those weeks of laughing, wincing and nodding knowingly to your column. Parallel experiences start to end.
From @caracourage: You’ve written words I’ve taken to heart, on the self in dating.
From @gnasherwell: Your column/twitter has made me feel normal.
From @catherineaman1: I feel like you’ve gone with me into the maelstrom, as an entertaining & kind companion.
From @theflossietp: Sad your column is ending, but at least it won’t feel like you’ve been reading my journal any more!
From @Newhall70: I can relate to so much of this. #stillsearching
From @helwels: Thanks for the reassurance that all the idiots weren’t ‘just me’.
From @missinformed11: As a woman of a similar age in a similar situation, the IT’S NOT JUST ME Factor was huge!
From @accentdialectuk: I’ve grown to feel just as ritual-adoring with your column as some people feel about The Archers.
From @adrianalemus: Even as a 20-something I could identify. Stella Grey might not be a typical heroine, but the wit, honesty, and her self-awareness of her own attributes and flaws made me see a woman to aspire to be, in her.
From @NesreenMSalem: I’ve had to resort to writing satires to make sense of the absurdity of my experience. Yours were less crazy & made me realise that I’m probably not doing it right …
From @SarahABGee: I suspect that many (most?) of us could share similar tales … you were never alone.
From @dellvink: I hope you get a movie rights offer. It would be great. A grown up UK romcom.
THERE WERE ALSO MEN WHO COULD RELATE
From @nickodyson: Highly recommended for the romantically inclined, and believers in hope.
From @GervaseWebb: I loved the final column. It should be printed out and given to everyone; male or female, over 50 or under.
Outlandish though some of the following events and conversations may seem, they were real events and conversations, which took place over two years. This is not a work of fiction, nor fictionalised (although I can see why some people might think so). Names have been changed and some other identifying details, so as to protect those involved, including myself. Stella Grey is a pseudonym.
I’d like to thank all the people who have supported me in telling this story: Harriet Green, my editor at Guardian Family, who had already heard about some of these events, and who commissioned the original column. Clare, my sub-editor there. Nicholas Pearson, my editor and publisher at 4th Estate, who approached me with an offer to produce a book. The friends who cheered me on, throughout this journey, with unwavering support and love. My family, the thought of whom makes my hand clasp to my heart. My literary agent, who is always steadfastly in my corner. All the women (and men, too) who shared their dating stories – some of them very similar to my own – online and in letters.
Last of all, but by no means least … you’ll have to get to the end to see that final dedication.
The end of my marriage was an event that came suddenly and unexpectedly. It was rather like that scene in Alien, in which John Hurt is sitting contentedly eating spaghetti with the spacecraft crew, and then the infant monster bursts out of his chest, leaving everybody shocked and splattered. My ex-husband fell in love with someone else, and that’s that. I can say, ‘And that’s that,’ now, but I’m not going to pretend it didn’t take time and a lot of ups and downs to get here, to the point at which I’m able to use three words. At the time it didn’t feel real; we’d been married a long time; and then, when I started online dating, hoping to be cheered up, things became even more surreal. Life got quite
