Who should pay for the first date?

This morning I had the dubious pleasure of having to wake up much earlier than normal to be interviewed on the radio. The matter at hand was the age old question: who should pay for the meal when dating?

I followed a bitter-sounding man who said women should pay for their half because “men end up paying for everything once they are married”. The presenter asked me whether I thought the matter of who pays for the meal at the beginning can be an indication of how things will pan out during the rest of the relationship. I said yes and that if a man is problematic about paying for a date with a woman at the beginning of the relationship, it does not bode well, although many women prefer to split the bill to avoid feeling indebted to a man they have only started seeing.

Continue Reading 3 comments October 30th, 2007

The best online dating site

One question I keep getting asked is “what is the best dating site?” The short answer is, of course: there is no such thing.

Where is the best place to meet the love of your life? Ask any person who’s happily married and they’ll tell you the place where they met their husband/wife. This could be a particular club, the supermarket, the chess club, a resort in Ibiza, or practically anywhere else in the world. If you went to the same place as person X, would you meet the love of your life too? Who knows? There is absolutely no guarantee.

All we have going for us are statistics: increasing our chances of success. Sure, you may well meet the love of your life on the bus or on the beach, but you are far more likely to meet him/her somewhere a bit less random. While miracles obviously do happen, you can’t live your whole life sitting at home, passively waiting for one to happen for you.

So the first step is to put yourself out there, go out, date online, etc. Doing this increases your chances already, so how do you increase them further?

Continue Reading 2 comments October 17th, 2007

Online dating profile: don’t assume prior knowledge

This may seem obvious, I know from my own experience how hard it is sometimes to forget that you are writing to an audience that may not know anything about the subject you are writing about.

I’ve seen quite a lot of profiles where people seem to almost write in code. They seem to almost be writing for themselves without clatrifying potentially ambiguous points.

When you are writing about yourself, then you are writing about a subjet you know a lot about, so it’s easy to forget to fill in the details you think are pretty obvious.

While sometimes it’s OK to not over-elaborate (If you’re into house music, for example, there’s no need to spend lines upon lines explaining what type of music that is) some things may require a bit more detail to be properly understood.

Saying you are into “travel” or “dancing”, for example, would not make you stand out from the crowd and will definitely not tell your readers that much about you. Most people would say they enjoy travel but one person’s idea of the perfect holiday could be another person’s total nightmare.

Remember that what is obvious to you (‘travel” meaning adventure travel to exotic places or “dancing” meaning ballroom dancing for example) may be completely misunderstood by others unless you elaborate.

Think about all the things you would like to know about your potential mate and come up with a list of questions (you can even write them down if that helps). Then answer all those questions in your own writing about yourself.

1 comment October 16th, 2007

Just realised I haven’t written anything in a while

You know you’re working too hard when you have to take a break from your own blog.

Normal service will resume shortly.

Add comment October 8th, 2007