‘We’re going to meet at a pub somewhere,’ Hannah Zaslawski says to her followers, as she frantically gets ready for a date.
In the next clip, she’s grinning at the camera. ‘He’s actually super cute!
‘My hands were really cold and he grabbed my hand and was like, “I’ll warm it up for you.”
This running commentary has became familiar to Hannah’s 86,400 TikTok followers, as she documents her ‘50 first dates’, a challenge the Australian-turned-Londoner set herself in January 2023.
Cut to the next morning, and her grin is even wider. ‘We stayed up until 6am talking about everything. He said he’s going to teach me how to play PlayStation.
‘I can honestly say that was the best date I’ve ever been on, in my whole life.’
The PlayStation guy (who ended up ghosting Hannah) was number 15, but now, 10 months on from starting her quest, the 30-year-old event manager has been on 33 first dates.
Hannah launched her plan when she moved from Sydney to Hackney, East London, in June 2022, and didn’t know anyone.
‘I was going on dates to explore the city and to meet people. Then I was telling my friends about my dating stories, and I was like, “you know what? I’m gonna post about it,”’ she tells Metro.co.uk.
As she began chronicling her quest for love on TikTok, people started to take notice – you’ve probably been served one of Hannah’s videos on your own FYP.
She says she wasn’t worried about the internet’s reaction or people getting the wrong impression of each date, because she knows the truth of each date.
‘[My date and I] know what really happened – the audience is only getting very small snippets of a few hours,’ she says.
But while Hannah’s initial goal was to get in a relationship, 33 dates later, she realised there may have been a different agenda for her project she wasn’t quite aware of.
‘I think that subconsciously I was starting the series because I couldn’t understand why I was single,’ she says.
The TikToker explains that her friends were all settling down, but she’d been single for seven years.
‘It was a way for me to look at my dating track record to see why I wasn’t in a relationship,’ she adds.
Documenting it all on TikTok, her dates have included a guy (date 12) who only had a jar of olives and half a bottle of rosé in his fridge – ‘you can’t even make a cup of tea!’ – a guy who didn’t bother to turn up (date 11), salsa dancing in her living room (date 21), getting ‘hot and heavy’ on the beanbags of a library (date eight) and getting picked up in the aisles of Aldi (date 21).
Hannah, who’s bisexual, says she has also learned that not only are men just as nervous on dates, but also that, in her opinion, women are way easier to spend time with.
‘I think men put up more facades, but with women it feels like you’re on a date with a friend’.
Plus, Hannah adds, she’s discovered a thing or two about heartbreak. Her mantra? ‘There’s always another one. On to the next, baby!’ she says joyfully. She also doesn’t believe in putting up with anything you deserve, because after all, ‘you’re the prize,’ Hannah says proudly.
Accumulating this knowledge has certainly changed the way Hannah dates over the months, something she calls a ‘year of growth’.
‘When I started this series, my idea of dating was like going out drinking with them and having a wild night,’ she explains. ‘Whereas now, I don’t do that. Don’t get me wrong – I still would, but the dates are a lot shorter, as I end it earlier. It’s coffee dates more so these days, or drinks, but it ends after having three.
‘I feel like you get to know them more genuinely if it doesn’t turn into a big night.’
While some of the dates were average and others a little annoying, Hannah says there have been three which were ‘amazing’.
Date 20, which was posted on May 28, 2023, has been her best so far, she adds.
Having met a guy in a fuzzy hat in Printworks, they immediately hit it off. ‘We spent the whole night dancing with each other,’ she told her TikTok followers while doing her makeup on camera.
It went so well that they began to see each other. The pair went on several dates, including to the theatre and even had some rom-com worthy two-hour phone calls.
She even told him about her dating series and slowed down on posting to give them time to get to know each other.
But after five dates, he sent her a text saying he wanted to end things.
‘He said he’s not in the right place for a girlfriend,’ she explained in a tearful video filmed at work. ‘I give a lot as a partner and he wasn’t giving me a lot back. I do deserve better.’
And despite her disappointment, Hannah says that she’s learned something new. ‘It made me realise that I really am ready to settle down and it made me clarify exactly what I want.’
While her initial plan was to document 50 dates, Hannah admits that she’s not sure if she will meet that number, after experiencing dating burnout.
‘I just wasn’t in the headspace to date. I wasn’t being my best self, and I wasn’t showing up fully invested in the date. It takes a lot of energy to meet with new people again, especially leaving your house in winter,’ Hannah says, adding that talking about the same things and having constant average dates began to get to her.
Hannah also says she’s wary of telling people about her experiment.
‘Even though it’s anonymous, I’m very conscious that somebody may be seeing it and not feeling great about themselves,’ she says.
And while she didn’t feel the need to tell her dates when she first started the experiment, Hannah admits that it now feels like a ‘substantially big part’ of her life that she’s hiding.
‘At the end of the day, it’s my life. It’s entertainment for a few people now, but I don’t want that to overshadow the fact that I’m doing this for me,’ she explains.
Now, Hannah plans to wrap up her dating experience a year after she first posted a video – January 24, 2023 – but says she doesn’t want to pressure herself to ‘squeeze in 20 dates in the next two months.’
Even so, she says that despite all the average dates, burnout and heartbreak, she wouldn’t change any of it.
‘I like that I have that growth – I think that was really important for me to learn how I want to date and what I accept and my boundaries,’ she says.
And if she hasn’t found a partner by then, Hannah insists she’s ‘totally okay with it.’
She’ll take a break from dating and probably get a dog – sounds like a great plan.
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