Dating is tough work for any human being, plus it’s immensely stressful. And one of the worst possible fates is… getting some food stuck between your teeth on a hot date.

Of course, as we all know, spinach is the worst offender.

Spinach (or The Green Hell, as it’s known) is the curse of a billion failed dating stories. But today, we’re about ready to take this SOB down. Once and for all!

When a Man Loves a Woman, But She Has Spinach Lodged in Her Teeth

Dear agony aunt. My name is Deirdre. I am 55 years old and I am dating again after my husband went to jail for running a Ponzi scheme involving his cabbage patch business. But... there were no cabbages. Just patches. And then he got caught after conning investors of £135. Why? WHY?!

While he rots in jail over the next 18 months, I'm piecing my life back together.

I've joined Tinder, Bumble, OkCupid, Hinge, Badoo, OkCupid, Match, POF, ChristianMingle, EliteSingles, Zoosk, SilverSingles, DateMyAge, Mingle2, Lovoo, Ashley Madison, Facebook, Flurv, Kippo, Raya, JAUMO, Coffee Meets Bagel, eharmony, Happn, and Grindr. All in the name of finding my next husband. So far I have received 1,354 unsolicited dick pics and had four dates with men who didn't come across as positively insane.

While two of them did, perhaps inevitably, turn out to be positively insane, the other two were nice enough. One, Derek, is 61, retired, and volunteers at a prison. The other is Eric, 60, and is a plumber.

Unfortunately, while trying to impress Derek and Eric on our, respective, dates... something truly awful happened.

I'm a big fan of spinach. I'll order anything with the stuff in it haha. But it does have this awful consequence of spinach getting stuck in my teeth.

Well, it happened with Derek during our hot date at an Indian restaurant. While I slurped from a bowl of saag aloo, I emerged grinning from it in delight. Derek see all the green gunk in my toothy grin. He pardoned himself and, as I was informed later by my waiter, he fled the premises and sprinted in a panic out into the streets. He was run over by a taxi, but continued to hobble off with a sprained ankle and, as the waiter informed me, "was then savaged by a gaggle of hungry dogs and dragged off to an uncertain fate."

I vowed for this to never happen again.

So, then there was the Eric date. This time we went to an Italian restaurant. Can you guess what happened? That's right, I couldn't resist the spinach and ordered a dish layered up with the stuff. After I'd eaten, I sat there with a big grin on my face and sauce splatter all over my dress. Eric, sitting there open-mouthed in disgust, tried not to barf and then got up and ran for it. Our waiter thought he was doing a runner without paying and rugby tackled my date, bringing him crashing to the floor with a dull thud. Eric hit his head during that fall and is now in a coma at hospital. All because of my spinach-in-teeth issues.

Two lives... ruined. Because of me.

I'm scared to continue dating now, despite having many, many, many offers from all sorts of freaks of nature on the aforementioned dating apps. 

Yet, I feel if I continue at this rate I may well wipe out a significant proportion of the male species.

What do you suggests? Yours with trepidation and (I swear) no spinach in my teeth as I type this - Deirdre

Hi Deirdre. As with spinach in the workplace, you need to be extremely cautious when dealing with spinach on a date.

It appears you have not been extremely cautious. At all.

You’ve been a bloody menace to society—reckless. Yes, that’s right. Reckless! And you should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself.

Luckily, we’re on hand to stop you before you trigger World War III.

And the answer to your quandary is simple—STOP SMILING. That simple, Deirdre. As we covered recently with our body language dating advice, a “smile” is considered a good bit of body language in a flirtatious and attractive kind of way.

But when you’re eating in a restaurant it most certainly is bloody not.

No, you need to grimace, frown, refuse to open your mouth as much as possible (except to stuff food into your mouth). Generally give off this attitude of being thoroughly disinterested in the person you’re on a date with. And if they ask “What’s wrong?” just flip them the middle finger.

Then, on the second date, you can gradually introduce smiling.

Flash your gnashers carefully, with little glimpses, so that the green of the spinach is hidden amidst a, kind of, toothy/lip/gum mirage. This will arouse your date significantly and should lead to date number three, at which point you can let yourself go and let out all your repugnant bad habits simultaneously.

Let’s face it, date three means you’re effectively married by that point anyway. Best of luck, Deirdre!