I didn’t set out to write a comedy.
I set out to survive a month.
In 2015, my fifteen-year marriage ended. What followed were three years of confusion, grief, and the slow, unglamorous work of figuring out who I was without the person I’d built my life around. By 2018, I was ready — or ready enough — to try something new.
I gave myself a challenge: ten first dates. One month. One hour each — two at the most. No second dates, just testing the waters. Learning to trust my instincts again. Learning to spot a red flag before it hit me in the face.
Because after years of not dating, I’d forgotten how. Forgotten how to read a room, read a person, read myself. I needed to know I could spot red flags—and heed them. I needed to know I could trust my instincts.
So I went on ten first dates in February 2018. And I took notes.
I made a “bottom line” list outlining things I knew I didn’t want, things that were deal breakers.
What I learned was that it’s dire out there. A man who crossed boundaries before we ever got off messaging and couldn’t make a complete sentence. Creeps who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Another who had no concept of personal space. A man who went on and on about his “crazy ex.” Another who joked about #MeToo and made my skin crawl. A lovely, intelligent man whose poly lifestyle clashed with mine, but he reminded me that good conversation still exists. Surprisingly, on date #8, I met my current partner, Brian. Completely unexpected—definitely not part of the plan… but love rarely is. He showed me that connection is still possible.
The reality of midlife dating for women doesn’t get talked about honestly very often. We get the romcom version — awkward but charming. We don’t get the version where you’re sitting across from someone who won’t look up from his phone, wondering why you got dressed up for this. We don’t get the version where you have to say no firmly, repeatedly, in a public place, and feel your heart hammering while you do it. We don’t get the version where you go home alone and realize, slowly and with some surprise, that alone is actually okay.
That version needed to be told. So I wrote it.
10 First Dates is a comedy — genuinely funny, I promise — but it’s also an honest portrait of what it costs a woman to start over in midlife. What it takes to trust your instincts when they’ve been eroded. What it means to take up space again after years of making yourself smaller.
The dates in the play are drawn from real experiences — mine and those of my friends. Every red flag, every awkward silence, every moment of “why am I still sitting here” — real, albeit often hyperbolized but sometimes not! Maggie, the woman at the centre of it all, has her own story, her own timeline — but she’s navigating the same landscape. The same exhausting, occasionally dangerous, occasionally wonderful landscape that so many women know.
The play opens 20 March at the Etcetera Theatre in Camden, London, as part of the Women Writers Festival. It runs through 24 March.
If any of this sounds familiar, come see the show! And if you’ve been out there wondering if it’s just you — it isn’t. You’re in good company.
10 First Dates · Etcetera Theatre, Camden · 20–24 March 2026 Tickets: https://www.citizenticket.com/events/etcetera-theatre/10-first-dates/ Produced by Gooper Dust Productions
Christine Rose 
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