Last Friday I was sat in a candlelit basement bar off Broadway Market, the kind of place that charges eight quid for a negroni and calls it “elevated.” My date – let’s call him Jasper, because of course he was called Jasper, had spent the first forty minutes telling me how “incredible” my “working-class perspective” was. He said it like I was some exotic bird he’d spotted on a David Attenborough doc. I smiled, sipped my drink, and felt my Basildon accent get thicker with every sentence. By the time he asked if I’d ever been to Puglia (I had to Google it later), I was already drafting this piece in my head.
Because here’s the thing nobody wants to say out loud: dating in Hackney when you’re a council-estate girl isn’t just about bad bios and ghosting. It’s a quiet, grinding class war. And the battlefield is every overpriced small-plate restaurant from London Fields to London Fields.
I moved to Hackney six years ago thinking I’d made it. Proper big-city journalist dreams. I was twenty-three, fresh off the train from Basildon with two suitcases and Mum’s Tupperware of leftovers. My first flat was a box room in a Victorian terrace that smelled of damp and someone else’s weed. Rent was still more than Mum’s mortgage. But I was here. East London. The cool bit.
Fast-forward and I’m twenty-nine, still in the same postcode, still dragging myself back to Essex every other weekend for Sunday roast because some things don’t change no matter how many oat-milk lattes you mainline. The area around me? It’s changed. Proper gentrified. The pie-and-mash shop on the corner is now a sourdough bakery. The pub where the old boys used to drink mild is a cocktail spot with ferns hanging from the ceiling. And the men? Christ.
They’re everywhere, these soft-handed, trust-fund-adjacent blokes in vintage band tees and vintage dad trainers. They talk about “decolonising their book shelves” while their parents still own half of Cornwall. They’ve got degrees in something called “critical theory” and they want you to know they read The Guardian. They love a “strong, independent woman.” Until that woman opens her mouth and the Essex comes out.
I matched with one last month, architect, said he was “from North London” like that was a personality. Turned out his dad’s a barrister and his mum does something vague in the arts. First date he asked me what my parents did. I told him straight: Dad drove lorries till the back gave out, Mum worked nights in the Co-op. He did that little head-tilt thing. You know the one. The “how fascinating” tilt. Then he said, “That must have been so formative.”
Formative.
I nearly choked on my eight-quid negroni.
Babes, I wasn’t “formed.” I was just poor. We had one bathroom for five of us. Mum used to hide the electric meter key so we wouldn’t run out before pay day. I didn’t have “formative experiences.” I had free school meals and hand-me-downs from my cousins.
But you can’t say that on a first date, can you? Not without sounding bitter. So I just smiled and asked him about his gap year in Berlin instead.
That’s the dance. You learn it quick.
The accent is the first giveaway. I’ve got the full Basildon package, the flat vowels, the “innit,” the way “nothing” comes out like “nuvvink.” In Hackney it marks you like a barcode. Some men think it’s cute. They’ll do the whole “I love your accent, it’s so real” routine while they correct your pronunciation of “quinoa.” Others get this flicker in their eyes. Like they’re wondering if you’ll embarrass them in front of their mates from uni.
I went on a date once with a guy who kept laughing every time I said “mate.” Not in a mean way. More like I was a performing monkey. Halfway through he actually said, “You’re so refreshingly unfiltered.” Unfiltered. Like my personality was a filter he could swipe past later.
I blocked him before the bill came.
Money’s the other big one. Not the obvious stuff, I’m not expecting some bloke to pay my rent. But the tiny things that pile up. He suggests a pop-up restaurant that does twelve courses for ninety quid a head and you’re mentally calculating whether you can eat beans on toast for the rest of the week. Or he talks about his summer plans like everyone just “nips to Lisbon for a few weeks.” Meanwhile you’re thinking about whether you can swing the train fare to see your nan.
And don’t get me started on the “I’ll get this” dance. Some of them do it out of genuine niceness. Others do it because they want you to feel like you owe them something. Like the bill is a receipt for emotional labour later. I’ve had men get proper arsey when I insist on splitting it. One actually said, “I thought you were more chilled than that.” Chilled. Meaning I should just let him pay and shut up.
I split it anyway. Every time.
Then there’s the family stuff. These men have parents who holiday in Tuscany and send them money when the boiler breaks. My mum still rings me panicking because the council tax bill’s gone up again. When you bring a Hackney boyfriend home to Basildon they either go all wide-eyed like it’s an episode of TOWIE or they get this awkward politeness that makes everyone tense. One guy I dated for three months kept calling my mum “Mrs Webb” even after she told him twice to call her Karen. He thought it was respectful. It was just weird.
Sex is where it gets properly messy.
There’s this assumption in progressive dating circles that class doesn’t matter once the lights are off. Bollocks. I’ve slept with men who treat my body like it’s some working-class novelty. Like they’re ticking off an experience. One actually said afterwards, “You’re so… earthy.” Earthy. I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.
Others get weirdly competitive. They want to prove they’re not like the boys from my estate. So they overthink everything. Consent becomes this whole performance where they ask permission for every tiny thing until the mood’s completely dead. I get it – they’re trying. But sometimes I just want to be touched like a person, not a political statement.
The worst ones are the ones who fetishise it. They want the “rough girl from Essex” fantasy. They’ll make little jokes about “council estate chic” and expect you to find it funny. I had one guy tell me he loved how “authentic” I was right before he suggested we role-play some class-war porn scenario. I got dressed so fast I left my blue nail polish on his bathroom shelf.
And don’t get me started on the “I’ll get this” dance. Some of them do it out of genuine niceness. Others do it because they want you to feel like you owe them something.
And the thing is, a lot of these men call themselves feminists. They’ll post the black square. They’ll share my threads. They’ll tell their mates they’re “unlearning.” But when it comes to actually dating someone from the class they claim to care about? Suddenly it’s all subtle little digs. The way they correct your grammar. The way they assume you don’t know who Audre Lorde is. The way they get uncomfortable when you talk about money like it’s real instead of some abstract concept in a sociology seminar.
I keep a colour-coded Notion tab just for this. Red for the ones who say “I’m an ally” then expect me to explain feminism 101 over drinks. Orange for the ones who want to “save” me from my background. Green for the rare ones who actually get it. The list is mostly red and orange, babes. Green is basically empty.
The irony kills me.
Feminism talks about intersectionality all the time. Race, disability, queerness. But class? Proper working-class stuff? It gets shoved to the side like it’s embarrassing. Like admitting you grew up poor makes you less radical. I’ve sat in rooms full of middle-class feminists who talk about smashing the patriarchy while wearing three hundred quid trainers their dad bought them. And when I bring up how class affects dating, how it affects who gets believed, who gets heard, who gets to be angry without being called “aggressive” or “chippy,” they go quiet. Or they tell me I’m “essentialising.”
Nah. I’m just living it.
My mates in the Coven group chat get it. Half of us are from round here or similar. We swap horror stories like trading cards. The guy who asked if I had a “trust fund for emotional damage.” The one who tried to explain Marx to me like I hadn’t read him at college while working two jobs. The one who said my accent was “sexy” and then looked shocked when I told him to fuck off.
We laugh about it. We have to. Otherwise you’d just cry into your pillow every night wondering why nobody sees the war happening right in front of them.
Because it is a war. Quiet. Polite. Middle-class.
It’s in the way they assume your ambitions are smaller. The way they talk about “making it” like getting a Substack that pays the bills is cute instead of a miracle. The way they expect you to be grateful for their interest. Like dating a girl from the estate is some kind of charity project.
I’m not saying every middle-class bloke in Hackney is a prick. Some of them are lovely. Some of them are trying. But the pattern is there and it’s exhausting.
So what do I do?
I keep swiping. I keep going on dates. I keep writing these threads even when they make people uncomfortable. Because somewhere out there has to be a man who doesn’t flinch when I say “mum’s on nights” or when the bill comes and I reach for my card first. A man who can handle the fact that my idea of luxury is a full English with extra hash browns and a day without checking my bank app.
Maybe he exists.
Or maybe I’ll just stay single, vape cherry flavour on my fire escape, and keep writing about it until the patriarchy and the class system both pack it in.
Either way, I’m not shutting up.
If you’re a working-class girl reading this in some gentrified postcode, wondering why every date feels like an interview you didn’t apply for, you’re not imagining it. It’s not just you. It’s the unspoken tax we pay for daring to date above our station in a city that pretends class doesn’t exist anymore.
And if you’re one of the Jaspers reading this… maybe next time don’t call it “formative.” Just buy the girl a pint and listen.
We might surprise you.
— Emma x
