Eharmony - too choosy?

Bearing in mind my last post about being too choosy, it would appear that actually it's eharmony. A friend has just signed up to see her matches and found that there were none! Is this common, has this happened to others. Frankly I daren't look.

This is the friend responsible for this site mind - steamy stories. Maybe they have a point about her state of mind!

Is there such a thing as being too choosy?

My bestest, most delectable friend stayed overnight and my apologies to the whole of the south of England for the incessant chattering and giggling that you may have been able to hear. On the plus side, much frustration and indignation has been dissipated so we're happy bunnies again. For the time being.

She is also, to all intents and purposes single athough there are men in her life. Here are her choices:

1. A somewhat snobby guy who questions her on the meaning of the words he's just used. Nothing more romantic than a little test of the intellect is there?
2. Mr 'Brings-a-Little-Old-ashioned-Romance-But-Also-Brings-the-Smarm-Factor'. Very keen on valuing her friendship but gets irritated when she doesn't want to go to bed.
   
3. A guy who everyone thinks is perfect (herself included) but he just can't bring himself to make a decision about what he wants. He's just 'so confused'.
4. A guy she knew in the past but has had problems with alcohol abuse and isn't fully recovered as yet. He got a bit aggressive with her and then promptly followed this up by asking her out.
   

So, next time someone tells me that I'm being too choosy, I'm going to enlighten them to some of the pitfalls of the dating game in your thirties! Of course, if you're a guy, I'm sure you have your horror stories too. Love to hear them!

Holidays without tears

Whatever you do, don't look at the last date that I posted. I said DON'T look! If you are thinking that I have been hiding from my blog out of the shame and embarrassment of starting a blog on dating and then failing to do any, what's the word... dating, you'd be right. 

And I have also been to Cornwall on holiday. With my mum.

Now you may think that's sad but I had a conversation with a friend just after discussing holidays with a friend or Mum, versus holidays with boyfriends. Guess which ones came out on top? 

Uh Oh - 40

I spent the day with a friend yesterday who was celebrating her 40th birthday. Delightful though the day was, the elephant in the room was her singleness. Well, it was until we started to talk about it and it wasn't so bad in the end. But she has decided to put her skates on and give it all another try. 

So how possible is this? Because the more I talk to the single middle agers out there, the more it doesn't seem to be all that likely. Is it? Have you found differently? 

Love Is a Many Squandered Thing

I'm not great fan of Cheryl Cole - by which I mean that her contribution to the world of entertainment hardly registers in my world rather than an active dislike of her - but she certainly seems to be going through a hard time. Married for 4 years and cheated on for what seems like a minimum of 5 times. For someone considered so beautiful and is an official 'nation's sweatheart' marital bliss has eluded her.

I'm always surprised by infidelity. I can quite understand the odd mistake, drunken flings or moments of weakness when a relationship hits bad times. But calculated cheating is unfathomable to me as I can't understand how someone could possibly cope with the guilt. Lying is difficult when you have to do it. Why you'd consider it as a lifestyle choice is beyond me.

But I also consider it from a new perspective these days, being single. I've seen many a person lose someone they later claim they loved due to their cheating and I can't help but despair at how little they seemed to value what they had. They know afterwards of course, when it's gone, but that's too bad.

For those who would love to have someone special in their life, there is a recognition that love is not a right or a guarantee in this life. That people who have it and squander it is kind of sad.

Dating News!

Ok, I've been on a date! Not a successful one but hey, at least I did it. Now all I need to do is keep it up! It was actually a very pleasant evening and I had a lot of fun. Only trouble is - I didn't fancy the guy. I'm not even sure why seeing as he ticked quite a few of the right boxes (just a figure of speech, I do NOT have a check list in reality). He was interesting, funny, clever and totally absorbing when he talked about something he was passionate about. But ultimately, he'd make a great friend and I just can't envisage things going any further.

Oh well, at least it's given me my faith back - there are still nice, single guys left out there!

Valentine’s Day - I Know How To Show a Girl a Good Time

I’m beginning to think this blogging is bad for my dating drive. I’ve hardly had a date since I started! So I was very disappointed at myself this Valentine’s Day to find I had not secured so much as even a sniff of a date. But immediately after decided that this would not hold me back from enjoying a little champagne and watching some chick flicks. Actually, it wasn’t so much a flick as a TV series, Lost in Austen - which is this if you haven’t heard of it. True indulgence!

There’s a great line near the beginning where Amanda (the main character) says to her mum that what she loves about Pride and Prejudice is the manners, that it’s become part of who she is - that she has standards. Her mum replies that she hopes her standards helps her on with her coat when she’s 70. Note to self - stop becoming a character in a drama based on a character in a book!

40% of Adults Are Single? Really??

I have no idea if this is true, seeing as I couldn’t be bothered to research it further, but apparently the percentage of single Americans in 2008 was above 40% - I read this somewhere. On the basis that I don’t even know if this is true, I also cannot be expected to know what the criteria is either. Is this just talking about people who are not married or co-habiting? Or does it also include those who could class themselves in a long term relationship?

If includes the latter, then I’m definitely living in the wrong country. It really doesn’t seem as if there are that many single people around, I certainly don’t meet too many. That said, most of my friends are also single but it just doesn’t add up that most of the 40% are women! So come on guys, where are you hiding??

Actually, what I’d quite like to hear about is the reasons. Are they people who have been hurt and can never face love again? Is it because they are chronically shy? Because they think you can never have too much of a good thing and never stick around long enough for a relationship? I’m always interested in the reasons why someone is single, I kind of hope they’ll come up with one that I can steal. I suspect most of them however, like me, would fail to come up with an answer.

Snow Dating

Apparently, sign ups to mysinglefriend.com have surged with all the snow we’ve been having. Stuck in and hindered in their attempts to nip off to the pub, I guess the single people of Britain have had too much time to ponder the state of their love lives. That said, I thought that this site’s ‘USP’ was to get a friend to recommend you and to big you up in that special way that only a friend can (call me a cynic but you’d have to choose your friend wisely).

So turns out, these sign ups may well have been stuck indoors thinking too much about their single friend’s love lives! This would not surprise me in the least seeing as I am almost permanently enraged by the fact that friends/family/everyone else likes to get so involved in single people’s love lives. Getting them to go on dates against their will would be the next logical conclusion.

But I doubt that’s how it works, I’m guessing you have to be involved in some way. I hope that these people have thought it through though. God knows when the snow is going to bugger off and I’m sick of dicing with a smashed coccyx every time I pop to the shop - I doubt I‘d risk it for a date. That’s a price I won’t pay for love!

Online Dating Sites - Looking for Love? Or How About a Casual Fling?

How many people use dating sites for a casual fling? Impossible to say I’m sure, they’re hardly likely to own up to it. This week I’ve had an unusually high number of emails asking if I’d like to meet up in a hotel room and have anonymous sex. Normally they’d irritate me - and irritate is precisely the right word seeing as I’m not offended by them, it’s just their pathetic need to shock and/or exploit that rankles - but I’ve had my suspicions about some of the other types of emails that I get for a while now. They are rapidly beginning to irritate me more. You can tell them apart because they are usually pushy, way too forthcoming with certain facts and suspiciously cagey about others. They are the casual flingers!

Be it because they are already in a relationship or just because they are not looking for anything serious, there are people (although obviously I’ve only encountered men) that cruise dating sites looking for people to lie to. They would put it differently no doubt but I don’t care, this is exactly what they are doing. If you are single you will have come across, and been frustrated by, society’s view that you are somehow weak, sad or pitiful because of your relationship status. It may or may not be true but it’s an odd viewpoint and one that I have rarely got anywhere arguing against. To me, being single is something that you just are. And far from being odd those who are ‘looking for love’ are following a basic human need - striving to be happy. It’s all very simple!

Except it’s not is it? When you are young, dating is one of the biggest occupations of your life. The choices are plentiful and you move from person to person without getting too upset about any failures. Emotionally speaking, you’re practically bullet proof! At least this is how it was for me. If you’re lucky, you’ll be with someone at that point in life when you suddenly realise you’re a grown up, they’ll realise it at about the same time and you then marry, set up house, start a family or all of the above. It is these people that would flail around like non-swimmers in a dingy with a puncture if they were to rejoin the dating pool. Dating in your thirties is a VERY different game.

As someone who is ‘looking for love’ I’m useless. I lack motivation and am very un-Bridget Jonesy. Yet even I feel exploited. If the sad, tragic stereotype of the singleton that I mentioned above were true it would make the vultures circling us even more heartless but to be honest I suspect we are not all the social misfits we’re portrayed as being. Very often we’re just people who haven’t had the right opportunities at the right time.

The advice of friends - that you need to be more open and less afraid of getting hurt - is well meaning enough. But it’s hard to know how to cope with the idea that around every corner there is someone who is prepared to diminish your life, feelings and desires for the sake of spicing up their life. To go ‘once more unto the breech’ suddenly seems utterly foolish!

Beautifulpeople.com - Dating Eugenics?

Further to my piece on eharmony the other week, another dating website has made the news for its apparently special blend of dating and eugenics - beautfulpeople.com. The clue is in its name, I guess and they can't be criticised for being hypocrites. They specialise in introducing the genetically blessed amongst us and have been going through a post Christmas crisis. It seems 5,000 of their members were dobbed in by the others because they posted pictures of themselves having some festive fun and piling on a few pounds. They were thrown back into the lion's pit and put through the humiliation of having to be ranked by their fellow members once more - many of them failing.

Sounds pretty much like a mini version of real life in many ways but the first thing that struck me is that these people must be pretty dull to discount someone - the someone they may well spend the rest of their lives with - on the basis that they like enjoying themselves. How do they picture their future Christmases with their chosen beautiful person - a succulent, slither of turkey and a slim line tonic? Is this what they want or have they failed to think it through? I don't know, I'd hate to judge.

Members would no doubt defensively justify their decision to be on the site in the first place by the now clichéd idiom "I'm just being honest". I hope they're honest enough to put 'sense of humour not required' on their profiles.

But leave them to their ideals I say. I'd rather they were kept out of normal people's way!

'Who Loves Ya Baby' Syndrome

God. I was out this evening and bumped into someone who I haven't seen for a few years. I was subjected to what I have recently been calling the 'Who Loves Ya Baby' syndrome where your interrogator grills you for information on your love life - their reasons for doing this are known only to them and certainly lost on me. First comes the question about whether or not you have a boyfriend. When that draws a blank they start to move down the list towards your inevitable humiliation. Eventually, and you know it's coming, you're going to have to get to get it through to them that there is no one in your life - no boyfriend, no casual date, no one at all.

No amount of distraction, no talk of your other achievements, no talk of a great line up of fun, social events on the horizon will deter these courtship Kojak's in their mission to make a 'normal' of you! It was as ever a pleasure to disappoint :) I will, I have no doubt, revisit this subject.

New Year, New Dating Drive?

Ok New Year, new dating drive right? Wrong. At least it’s wrong for now as I haven’t got a lot of time on my hands in January. That and the fact that the several hundred mince pies haven’t done much for my self esteem. I would of course embark on a doomed fitness regime along with everyone else but like I say, I’m busy for the next 3 or 4 days or however long it will take for everyone to start slumping back into the sofa, watching The One Show.

But that DOESN’T mean that I’m not planning on getting back out there. I had a bit of a pep talk from a friend on Christmas Eve and it’s really buoyed me up actually. It wasn’t that I was feeling particularly down but I had started to get used to the idea that I would stay on my own. I was beginning to have a singleton’s air about me and unfortunately I found it suited.

However, after one of her characteristic morale boosting speeches - which really do deserve a round of applause - I remembered that there are things I miss about having a boyfriend. Namely, someone to drink expensive wine with, someone to share the cost of drinking expensive wine with, weekends away looking at castles, someone to discuss the crapness of the rest of the world with and the obvious but all important romantic meals out. I don’t ask for much really do I? Watch this space because I shall be starting again soon! And if I don’t, please feel free to give me an online kick up the backside.