The curious incident of Night Nurse Gary

This blog post is a hilarious tale from Solo Connects co-founder Rachel, who matched with 'Night Nurse' Gary last year on a dating app. It's not ENTIRELY Gary's fault that Rachel was fed up with dating apps and decided to join forces with Sam to set up Solo Connects, but...well, he was one of the straws that broke the camel's back in October 2024!

Let me tell you about my ‘time’ with Gary and why he is now becoming an almost ‘viral sensation’ in the land of Solo Connects.

One of the weirder, but equally pointless online interactions I’d had with dating apps led me to match with Gary, from Northampton. If you’re a seasoned online dater like me, you’ll know the drill.

We matched, Gary initiated conversation and we got to know each other over a period of time. Gary expressed an interest in meeting up for a coffee, but as he was moving house, we hadn’t quite nailed the date down.

Gary was a consistent texter, his communication skills were top-tier green flag!

One night, Gary messaged me to say he wasn’t feeling well and was going to bed with some Night Nurse. I replied an hour or so later to wish him well and I assumed he’d pick my message up in the morning, as was quite typical over our ten days of back and forth What’s App-ing.

Morning comes, no blue ticks.

Evening comes, no blue ticks.

A week later…I’m still left unread.

I ask myself, what on earth has happened to Gary?

Had Gary taken an overdose of Night Nurse?

This question remained unanswered for many, many months. I’d even gone on the radio to promote Solo Connects and talked about being ghosted. The presenter put a shout out to know if anyone could tell me the fate of Night Nurse Gary.

Nobody knew anything. Every lead was dead.

Now I want to be clear on this. I no longer have any romantic interest in Gary. I just want to know what the f*ck happened? I don’t believe Night Nurse has any mind-altering properties, so did something happen to Gary to make him cease all contact without a ‘it’s not you it’s me’ message or at least READ MY LAST MESSAGE to him.

Roll forward to early June (about ten months later), and I was having a shimmy through Facebook Dating (I do this occasionally to check that it’s still horrendous) and who pops up.

Only Night Nurse Gary.

I quickly swiped on him and lo and behold, we are a match!

I didn’t know what to do next, so I did what any sane person would do and went Live in the Solo Connects community to ask 2000 single people what I should do.
Unanimously, everyone tells me to send him a message and ask (politely) what happened.

In the time this took, Gary obviously spotted this was me - promptly unmatched me - and he’s slipped out of my fingers again! An explanation still evades me.

So, I’m no closer to solving the curious incident of Night Nurse Gary, but if I’m anything, I’m tenacious so I WILL FIND HIM and let you all know what happened.

Let’s hope he will pop along to one of our fantastic Solo Connects events – what do you fancy coming along to?