My friends and I go on triple dates – and then write about them in our Burn Book

‘Excuse me, I’m popping to the loo,’ I told my date, who was clearly incapable of asking women any questions.  

Swinging the door open to the toilet, two girls stood waiting for me, knowing smiles spreading across their faces. It was my flatmates – also on terrible dates. ‘One for the Date Diary?’ one said grimly. 

This was no coincidence, but planned – we’d been going on triple dates for a couple of years, unbeknownst to our companions, and ripping them for all they were worth afterwards in our fabled ‘Date Diary’.   

I am a 23-year-old woman who is lucky enough to live with her two best friends in the world, in what I know to be the best city in the world – Bristol.  

One thing we have in common is our share of bad dates.

But something that is key to the way in which my friends and I seek romantic partners, however, is that many of our dates happen at the same time, in the same place, without any of our respective courters ever knowing. 

Us girls don’t tend to make eye contact or text under the table during dates, although I did once sit back to back with one of them in a very small beer garden (I could hear her whole conversation).  

On another occasion, my other housemate and I happened to go to the bar at the same time to get a drink, laughing hysterically and avoiding the other’s gaze, we explained to the bartender what was going on.  

We then chatted to each other while pretending to chat to him. Essentially, we chatted through him – a perfect disguise for learning about the other’s date. He found it so hilarious that neither of us had to pay for our drinks that night.  

We have an allotted time where we meet in the toilet, at which point we decide whether to tell the people that we’re out with that our housemates have been sitting just two metres away the whole time. 

Most of the time this doesn’t happen, because, as I’m sure you already know, first dates are often dull and conversation is samey. The process for working out whether to tell our dates or not is a military one.

Often, the decision is based on how outgoing and spontaneous they seem, although of course this can be difficult to measure over the course of a couple of drinks.  

The dates we tell tend to love it – they react as if they have been caught on camera and broadcast to the nation

For me, the general rule is that a good sense of humour means I am safe to reveal our secret, whereas a conversation about philosophy and politics is more often than not a red flag. However, we don’t tell our dates unless all three of us want to – a discussion that happens during our allocated toilet meeting.  

After going out together, we head home and write a one-page summary of the date in our beloved ‘Date Diary’ (occasionally we will write two pages, but this is only for particularly dramatic dates).  

However, there have been rare, golden moments where the three of us have miraculously liked our dates enough to confess before we all head back to the flat for a drink.  

The dates we tell tend to love it – they react as if they have been caught on camera and broadcast to the nation; jaws on the floor, scanning the place for the nearest reporter. Watching their reaction is the best part of the night.  

No one has taken it badly as such, although one woman my housemate went on a date with was so indifferent that it was almost worse than if she had kicked off. ‘She got three of us for the price of one!’ my housemate wrote in the diary, ‘how could she be anything other than thrilled?’

Our triple dates are so exciting to us that if we receive anything less than utter astonishment from the dates we choose to let in on our precious secret, then it is an absolute tragedy and they’re clearly not worth our time.  

We discovered our particular brand of double/triple dates back in 2020 – the successful first of which being a double date, where my housemate Lola and I both met with a man each.  

We invited them home, rolled them cigarettes, played games and poured them both our alcohol – all the while sharing wide-eyed glances with one another over sips of drinks, communicating without speaking that this way of dating was our new thing. 

I remember we left the boys in the living room chatting as we headed for the kitchen to ‘get a drink’.   

In actual fact, as soon as we were out of ear shot, we clung to one another and laughed as silently as we could. 

Buckled over with a combination of adrenaline and giddiness, it dawned on us that we had happened upon an experience so unique and hilarious – one that unbeknownst to us at the time, we were to repeat almost weekly for the next two years. 

The ‘triple dates’ have been a light hearted, glorious way to ease ourselves back into socialising and dating post-Covid

Reflecting on that date, I wrote in the Date Diary: ‘We had an average first date – he told me he was a dentist and so naturally I showed him my teeth, in hindsight I’m realising that this is not that hot. Note to self: don’t get your teeth out on a date’. The Date Diary is like a dating version of Regina George’s Burn Book from Mean Girls. 

The dentist and I were seeing each other for a few weeks, but Lola went on to date her man for seven months. After they broke up, she updated his page in the diary: ‘We have discovered that David* is an emotionally underdeveloped, pre-pubescent boy in the shape of a lanky scuba-diver. Had fun while it lasted but now he can f**k off’.   

This kind of savage tone remains consistent throughout the Date Diary, occurring as a result of the entries having been written alongside friends who are too close, too honest, and more often than not, too drunk.   

After another notable date with a man, we’ll call him Ben, a few months later, I wrote: ‘He didn’t ask me one question about my life, and yet proceeded to tell me entirely pointless things about his own – this came to a real crescendo when he ended a five-minute story with “…and that’s how I learnt my bank details off by heart”’. 

Later in the evening, he made some casual homophobic comments. As a bisexual woman, I found these to be irritating, predictable and extremely boring.   

When I eventually did leave the date, it was so unbelievably empowering to walk home arm in arm with my best friend – who also happens to be queer – while laughing at the absolute absurdity of some people.   

It is because of my friends and their wonderful ability to pick me up and put me back together again, that what could have been a horrendous memory turned into ‘just another funny story for the Date Diary.’   

My friends and I live fiercely by the mantra: ‘It’s either a good shag or a good story’. 

Our third flatmate got involved when she moved in – this was in 2021, so there had been a fair amount of double dates before she arrived.  

Mostly, the ‘triple dates’ have been a light hearted, glorious way to ease ourselves back into socialising and dating post-Covid.   

It is something that bonds us as a trio and that we all find so unbelievably hilarious – hence why we feel the need to record it so meticulously in a diary.  

On a more serious note however, I feel confident in saying that most women will have had an experience like I had with Ben – a date where they either feel disrespected, unseen, or more worryingly, unsafe.   

There is no relief like turning my head to the right or left when on a date that feels slightly off, only to see my two best friends appearing through the dim light of the bar, knowing that in a matter of hours I will be walking home with them and breaking open a chilled bottle of rosé – no matter what. 

*Names have been changed

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