How many times has this happened to me? Every thing I say suddenly needs explaining. The simplest thing has a double meaning. This is weird stuff and it continues with ‘were you looking at that girl’ and ‘what did I just  say?’. You are with a paranoid my friends and my advice is to say bye bye fast unless you are a masochist or enjoy looking over your shoulder.

The kids are grown up and the grandkids are great. You have time and money to enjoy yourself. You still shop at TopShop and not at the indoor market. You hate Mantovani but love Ian Dury. You are over 60 but who cares because you have decades to go and lots of living to do. The only downside is you would look a pillock hanging around the local pub. Guess what? Dont do it and join an over 60 dating site and enjoy the hundreds of opportunities waiting for you?

How do you show your other half that you love them? Is it flowers and chocolates or perhaps a special meal out at MacDonalds (joking). Now I am not belittling anything that you do because there are many of us out there who don’t receive any appreciation at all. What I would consider are the many other ways that you can show how much you care.

How about cleaning up or changing the sheets when it isn’t your turn? Why not make a phone call for them when they have not got the energy or fetch an aspirin and glass of water when they have a headache? If these are not gestures of love then what the heck are they?

Try To Do Things You Don’t Have To

Not being perfect is fantastic news

If you are not in a relationship right now which is a fair bet as you are on a dating site, it is tempting to blame your looks. Perhaps, it’s your weight, hair, complexion, figure or teeth.

Welcome to the real world where nobody is perfect but lots of us would like to be. Shoot me for this but women are more guilty of this than men and can appear (as can a guy) egocentric  and superficial.

Worse than being over indulgent about your own looks is tying up with someone who want’s to change your looks. You can visit the dentist, lose weight or buy a new wardrobe at Harvey Nicholls but some people will not be happy and still find fault.

There are men out there who bully their partners not in a physical sense but by undermining their confidence in themselves and worse in front of friends and family.

Thats why not being perfect and embracing that fact is fantastic news for you because it will allow you to filter out those potential partners who will make you feel bad in the long run. My own partner wears oddcoloured  gloves and usually looks like she has just tumbled  out of bed and I love her for being different and confident enough to not try too hard. As for me, I carry a bit too much weight and have a dodgy haircut but she looks past this at my nature and life is sweet.

Life can be sweet for you too but my advice is not to try too hard for perfection and avoid those who would want to change you too much.

The sooner you realize this sad but true fact, the sooner you can get on with finding Mr. Close-Enough-To-Perfect. Prince Charming, riding on a white stallion, lost his way or found Princess Charming and got married on his way to your castle. Get over it and get on with it. You ARE going to have to actively seek the man of your dreams and you won’t find him hiding under your bed. You already know that he isn’t among the men that you are acquainted with so, now what? Online dating is “what”.

It’s true that online dating, while in its infancy, was only made up of perverts, sexual predators, nerds and weirdoes but that is no longer true. It has become the main tool of the single person in every developed country in the world. Forty million people can’t all be wrong. Ask your girl friends if they have ever used online dating or are using it now. If they are honest with you, most of them have or are now members of at least one online dating site and maybe more than one. It really is the way to go to meet eligible men who want to meet you. It doesn’t matter what any of your numbers are…like age, height, weight or income either. Somewhere out there in the big wide world there is a man who will like you…..then love you….and think that you are beautiful and desirable. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is true. What is considered beautiful in one part of the world is completely different from what is considered beautiful in another part of the world. It’s even different from one part of this country to another.

Find an online dating site that fits your needs. Write a great profile and post a flattering picture. Start contacting eligible men on the site. Mr. Close-enough-to-perfect could be a few mouse clicks away.

If you are an emotional wreck after your last relationship, it might be an idea to lick your wounds and get over it before dating again. If you don’t you might not be able to show the real you and focus on your new date without being preoccupied with yourself.

The additional problem is that you might end up at the end of another bad experience and be more bruised and battered than when you started.

If we start a relationship as a needy person then we may be happy to begin with but then, as we become more independant things may change and your relationship suffer.

So why not do yourself a favour and book yourself a holiday, enjoy your family and friends and wait until you are emotionally recovered before trying the dating scene again. When you do move on, try to pick someone who has also put the past to bed becausethis works the other way round too.

This way you can both see each other for the vibrant, happy people you are rather than the down in the mouth person who might have come to the party.

When you join an online dating service, you are looking for a girl that you can like…even come to love.  That girl is looking for a guy that SHE can like or even love.  What you aren’t looking for is a girl who would like your best friend or your idea of what the perfect guy looks like or talks like or thinks like.  So, in order to find the right girl for you…and she IS out there…you need to be completely honest with yourself about yourself when writing the online profile, during the dating process and beyond.

The best way to begin writing your profile is to carefully analyze your past relationship (s).  What was right?  What was wrong?  What things really made you like the last girl?  Which didn’t?  Don’t assume that just because you hated that your last girl was so totally self-involved that she couldn’t see anything else, you’ll be able to overlook that quality this time. You won’t.

If you aren’t 6’1” with a six-pack to be proud of, don’t claim to be.  If you are a bar tender, don’t claim to be a lawyer with a six figure income. If you are 40 going on 50, don’t pretend to be 30 something.

Remember, the idea here is to find a girl who will like you exactly like you are. If you have lied in your profile, the first face-to-face meeting will remove all her doubt that you are a liar…and probably a cheat, as well.

Lastly, once you have found a girl that you believe can be the one for you, for goodness sakes, cancel your membership to the online dating service.  After all, you know and she knows that online dating services are intended for those who are looking…not those who have found or been found.

For me personally, this is the most important thing in all relationships including my own. Looks will fade, fortunes fade and health suffer but a sense of humour remains constant.

A sense of humour is a very personal thing and someone who laughs at your jokes and who makes you laugh also is the one to marry. Assuming they are the right gender, you will almost fancy them and vice versa even if physically you are not what they were anticipating.

Now, I am lucky in this regard as I find my own jokes hilarious but unfortunately cannot marry myself the last time I checked.

My friend’s wife died a couple of years ago and he told me that one of thing he misses most is the ability to laugh at him. He never realised how grounded his wife kept him by not allowing him to become too serious.

Now he is back on the dating scene and guess what? Looks are not as important as they used to be to him and he wants a lady who will make him laugh again.

So the next time you are with that Brad Pitt or Michelle Pfeiffer lookalike, don’t fall for them straight away. See if they can engage your sense of humour before they engage you physically.

Dating: You’ll know them straight away.

OK this doesn’t work for everybody but for some, love at first sight on a date is a reality. The secret when you do fall in love straight away is don’t take a gamble on being right and reveal your feelings immediately. If you take a bit of time and you are right then what have you lost by waiting? If you take a bit of time and realise you may have been wrong then you have saved yourself a lot of heartache potentially.

A new partner may reverse the situation on you and declare their undying love for you very quickly but don’t allow them to pressurise you before you are ready to commit. In a way it’s understandable that someone would fall in love with a beautiful person like you but no one will benefit from you making the wrong decision.

Once you are on the slippy slope, you may find yourself in your wedding dress or suit and thinking “how did I get here” and just hoping that things work out OK, rather than being sure.  Take a bit of time and take things easy and have a happy life till death us do part!