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.

The Wrong Guy

Confession time. I went on a date and ending up sort of chatting up someone else!

Of course now I feel a bit bad, but to be honest the date wasn't going all that well and I was finding it hard to keep the conversation going. After about an hour and a half I happened to spot someone I know, and between you and me, quite fancy! There would never be anything going on between me and this fancy man, he's not the type to get involved with if you know what I mean. But he is always good company and I was in certainly in need of that! I popped over to say hello and then stayed a little longer than was formally polite. By which I mean I was blatantly flirting with him.

The thing is, rotten as I feel, I'm trying to figure out whether what I did was really all that terrible? Impolite, yes but terrible? I was really having to work hard to stop the conversation from grinding to a halt with this guy, he was hardly putting in any effort in at all and I was beginning to lose the will to carry on. Everytime I stopped talking in the desperate hope he would take the hint and say something he looked at me as if there was something wrong, like I wasn't fulfilling my side of the deal. In fact now I think of it, at one point he really did say, "You've gone quiet". I simply couldn't resist the temptation for a bit of light relief.

So, final conclusion. I know I was wrong to leave the poor guy sitting there, I was wrong to indulge in a little flirting - but do I regret squeezing a bit of a laugh out of the evening? Got to say, I don't think I do!

The Advantages of Being Single

The advantages of being single are frankly not taken seriously enough. More likely to be seen as platitudes or ‘keeping your chin up’, reasons for enjoying the single life are actually life enhancing, good for the soul and blissful respite for those recovering from a difficult past relationship. So let’s here it for the advantages of being single!

1) Being free from arguments, other people’s moods and the silent treatment. You are free to enjoy any mood of your own choosing! It can actually be revealing to find out what you are like temperament wise left to your own devices. And if you’ve been through a tough time, now is the time to let your poor nerves heal.

2) Not always having to worry about what you look like or having a bad hair day.

3) Watching what you like on TV. And the main TV of the house as well!

4) Having the time to have a life of your own. Always had a hankering to learn how to scuba dive? Do it. If you fancy something a bit more sedate then check out your local evening courses. You can salsa, crochet, appreciate wine or cook soufflé until your heart’s content. It’s your time! I should probably also add start up a blog to that list. :)

5) Doing things on the spur of the moment. I’m guilty of not making the most of this one actually. But if you want to do anything from taking yourself off for the weekend to just giving up on the housework and settling in to a DVD and a glass of wine, why the hell not?!

6) Daring to be different. Sometimes it’s hard to believe this seeing as other - well meaning enough - people seem to feel so sorry for you. But daring to be on your own, to not succumb to the pressure to rush into the next relationship, any relationship, is the braver choice.

My Market Value

I honestly don’t think I’m that shallow when it comes to finding someone right for me. My past boyfriends have not been the most handsome guys in the world and that never mattered to me. But sometimes it is disheartening to come face to face with how someone views you, where they see your ‘market value’ being these days. By someone, I mean a friend. And by market value, I mean realising that because you are in your late thirties and single, any old guy will do. I’ve been introduced to a guy a few times now (not very tactfully either) who is the last person in the world I’d ever consider going out with.

I’m shocked, genuinely shocked, to find myself put in the path of someone who, 10 years ago I would have raised eyebrows at going out with! And in case you think I’m dismissing a lovely personality, all this has been taken into account - I’m really not.

The Disadvantages of Being Single - My Top 10

The disadvantages of being single are surprisingly well known to those in a relationship. Or so it would appear anyway as I am seemingly constantly reminded of them. It’s why I have become so fond of social gatherings! Here are some of my favourite disadvantages of being single. Feel free to add some of your own:

1) People thinking your ‘love life’ is an acceptable topic of conversation without boundaries or limits or respect for your private feelings. Having to answer the question ‘why?’ regarding your single status - as if you’d know.
2) Being approached by married men but given a wide birth by single men. Not just odd, but also great for the self esteem!
3) Going to weddings on your own. Talk about rubbing your nose in it.
4) Not being able to go to the pub/a movie/a restaurant pretty much when I like.
5) A disadvantage of being single that confuses me more than anything is how you suddenly become regarded as having always been single. I noticed this happening within weeks of my last major break up and it was like I may as well have been 5 years old for all I knew about relationships.
6) Not having as much money as those in couples.
7) Having no one on your side when you’ve had a bad day. Or anyone to run big, life changing decisions by.
8) Being used to bolster the self esteem of women who are in a relationship. They do this by endlessly going on about how lovely their partner has been to them, safe in the knowledge that you have no come back. An abuse of your friendship at worst, just plain boring at best.
9) The big, fat question mark that hangs over your future.
10) Always having to do the washing up.

Actually aside from the emotional aspects, I’ve made the disadvantages of being single all seem pretty trivial! Next post, let’s see how immaterial I can make the advantages of being single.

Cooking up a bit of Romance

Believe it or not, Jamie Oliver has branched out into the dating market with his new venture. Apparently he wants to help those who love food to love each other. Despite how that sounds, it’s not dating for the overweight but is in fact bringing those with a shared interest in cookery together, a dating site for foodies. Personally, I can’t think of anything worse but this is because this is yet another area that I’m an incompetent idiot in.

But that doesn’t stop me wondering how their conversations will go. And how far do they go on a first date?? Would it be considered too forward to share family recipes? I reckon that’s a third date matter.

I doubt I’ll ever found out the answer to these fascinating questions. I’m afraid this is another aspect of the dating game that will exclude me - and no doubt from the dinner parties that result from them getting together as well!

Ed Byrne and Weddings

I went to see Ed Byrne last night and he was predictably absolutely hilarious! It may be a cliché but laughter is the best medicine and I’m feeling pretty chipper today.


While he had a kind of theme around class and where to place yourself these days, a lot of the biggest laughs were for his piece on his wedding and the ridiculous amount of fuss that surrounded it. If this was truly to be the happiest day of their lives, he argued, shouldn’t it be the one day when tiny details would matter the LEAST?! Now , he claims, he wakes up to marital bliss every day - all down to knowing that he doesn’t have wedding to organise.

I’m even more convinced than ever that all you need for the perfect wedding is a plan to elope and a couple of bottles of champagne :)

EHarmony gets a ticking off

Ok, I’ve been looking at the news for online dating again so you can guess that things aren’t too exciting around here. I came across this a couple of hours ago - online dating company eHarmony have been rapped for misleading ads in their bid to take over the UK market for sad singletons (I‘m paraphrasing). The idea that a large company was being accused of false advertising is hardly surprising. I don’t believe anyone bolted upright in their chair at the mention of the statistic that “2% of US newly weds met via the site”. I find it more surprising that anyone fought their way through the fog of inertia to complain to be honest.

But there was something that struck me. Towards the end it mentions that it fails to point out in its advertising that in 20% of cases, they failed to find a match! What does that mean?? I’ve never looked at the service so I don’t know how it works but is this saying that 20% of all people who sign up are not fit for love? For relationships? For human interaction? I’m not remotely surprised that they fail to mention it, it’s got to be one of the scariest concepts I’ve ever heard of. And reason enough to stay away. That’s something about myself I don’t want to know.