Guest Blog Post – Would You Date Yourself?
If you’re single, or divorced, or maybe just out of a relationship and reading this, you are probably looking for useful information on how to improve your chances of finding a new partner. There are gazillion websites and self-help books out there offering their expertise. Therefore it’s surprising to me that not all resources have been exhausted for advice; that singles are still not sure of how best to go about finding that elusive mate. Instead of giving tips today about your appearance, behavior, conversation, etc. on a date, I want to ask you a question that may surprise you: Would you date yourself?
Step 1: Take a critical look at yourself from the perspective of somebody else. Get out the big looking-glass! And I don’t mean just for your looks or sense of dress. Look deeper: How does this person project herself? Does she seem to be a happy individual? Is she content with her life? Is she somebody I would like to get to know and spend time with? What are her strong suits? It’s not a secret that people see themselves differently than other people do. May I say through tinted glasses?
Step 2: Look at your expectations. What do you expect from a partner? Is your list of requirements a mile long and realistic? What are the non-negotiable necessities about a partner and what is merely the icing on the cake, sorry, I mean on a mate for you? Where would you compromise? Can the standards of this person be met without resorting to a magic wand or cosmic intervention? What can be changed about you? Maybe something about your demeanor and attitudes? If you cannot answer these questions honestly – and I admit it is not easy – I suggest you get some help; be that a trusted friend for a good heart-to-heart discussion or a professional consultant for a make-over. You need someone with an unbiased critical eye to assess what you have to offer, but above all, you need honesty for this to work. By taking this approach to dating, the perspective shifts away from an ever demanding me and instead, subtly focuses on your counterpart. Our “Because You Are Worth it!” generation needs a colossal shift in consciousness and become more aware of reality and what is achievable. This may not be what you expected; but don’t knock it until you have tried.
Siggy Buckley is a College teacher, emigrant to Ireland, Ex Farmer’s Wife turned business owner and the Author of NEXT TIME LUCKY: Lessons of a Matchmaker
The Valentine’s Day Hoax?
Valentine’s day is a tradition that began in the Middle Ages. It is done in recognition of St Valentine, a christian martyr. Who was St. Valentine? Quite frankly, no one truly knows. St Valentine could actually have been one of three individuals who were martyred between AD 197 and AD 269. Why was St Valentine’s name attributed to romance? Again, no one truly knows. To confound the issue, the Roman Catholic Church who martyred St. Valentine actually removed the Feast Day of St. Valentine from the official General Roman Calendar in 1969 for reasons unknown.
The fact is the true existence of a St. Valentine continues to be a mystery. Balza, a small village in Malta, has claimed that several relics of St. Valentine can be found there. Other wide ranging legends have persisted over the years. One of them lays claim to the fact or myth that St. Valentine was a priest who performed marriage ceremonies for young men against the wishes of Roman Emperor Claudius II. Allegedly, Roman Emperor Claudius II did not want young men marrying because he believed that unwed men were better warriors in his armies. St Valentine was consequently jailed by the emperor and on the day he was to be executed, St. Valentine wrote a final letter to the girl he loved titled, “From Your Valentine.”
Again, nothing has been proven. Not St. Valentine, not the relics and not this final, romantic letter from St. Valentine. So, for all intents and purposes, Valentine’s Day may be a hoax. The question is, “Who had us all bamboozled and why?” I can see where the Roman Church may have had something to gain with the theme of “love.” After all, isn’t love what most religions espouse? However, even the Roman Catholic Church distanced itself from February 14 to some extent when they officially removed St. Valentine’s Day from their calendar.
Perhaps, it was Geoffrey Chaucer who wrote the first poem that was attributed to Valentine’s Day in 1382 called “Parlement of Foules.” The famous phrase in the poem was, “For this was on seynt Volantynys day,
Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make.” For those not too fond of medieval English, like yours truly, the translation would be, “”For this was Saint Valentine’s Day, when every bird cometh there to choose his mate.” After this poem was released, everyone assumed that Chaucer was talking about February 14. But again, there was no solid proof of this.
There seems to be a familiar set of themes developing here: collective amnesia, aspiration, imagination and undying hope. I mean, the Roman Catholic Church suddenly developed a form of amnesia when they took St. Valentine’s Day off the official calendar. All of a sudden, they didn’t seem so clear on the man they had made a martyr of years earlier. Better we just take his day off our calendar and leave it at that.
The villagers of Balza imagine that they have St. Valentine’s relics without any real proof and won’t take no for an answer.
The legend of St Valentine writing his first “Valentine” to the woman he loved on the day of his execution aspires to what we believe love should be. Even at those dying moments, all St Valentine could think of was of the woman he loved.
And in Chaucer’s poem, we experience the undying hope that one fateful day we shall meet that mate who has come to share in our lives, and be our one true soul mate just like those birds.
When we are in love, we forget all that is wrong with the world and start living as though we have just been pulled out of our mother’s womb. It’s like we are experiencing “amnesia.” We start “aspiring” to life and the endless possibilities ahead with our mate. We “imagine” perfection and no matter what, we never let that “hope die.”
In the end, it doesn’t seem to matter whether St. Valentine ever truly existed. His legacy or lack there of is a testament to that emotion that most humans hold more precious than anything else, love.
As Facebook Goes Public, Online Dating May Take A New Turn
Facebook went public today to nobody’s surprise. The popular social app, “Are You Interested?” developed by Snap Interactive, Inc is built through Facebook’s platform. Due to this public venture, it is predicted that the popularity of online dating sites will grow even more as people continue to seek an easier and more convenient way to meet singles.
Seeking Alpha:
Snap Interactive, Inc. (STVI.OB) is the leading provider of social dating and location-based applications built on Facebook and accessible through the company’s website and mobile platforms for the Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPhone and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Android. Their core dating brand is “Are YOU Interested?” which has over 55 million user installations, 8 million monthly active users, and quickly received 675,000 downloads of its iTunes mobile application in Q3 2011. The company’s location-based social application is branded under “Who is Near?” and was launched in Q2 2011. The application allows users to access their social network for ideas on what’s hot and happening across the country; the app launch quickly garnered almost 700,000 downloads.
Read full article at Seeking Alpha
Be sure to read my article How Online Dating Can Fit Into A Busy Lifestyle for more online dating tips.
Is Beauty A Curse For Women?
We tend to believe that beautiful women have the world handed to them on a platter. They get the coolest friends, the cushy jobs, the leagues of endless male admirers, are picked out from the long lines at night clubs and given VIP treatment, have their way with little to no effort, and the list goes on.
Beauty may provide all these advantages. However, I have heard a fair share of complaints from beautiful women about their plight. Yes, you don’t want to hear some inauthentic “woe is me” plea for empathy from someone who has so many advantages. However, consider the big picture for some of these beautiful women.
Imagine if just about every one that wants to get close to you does so because of how you look. In fact, this can lead to the point where you simply become a caricature and not a human being. Beautiful women often complain about not being taken seriously. If they try to voice an opinion about something, people may make a halfhearted effort to hear them out but at the end of it all, some of those folks are just thinking, “Just shut up, sit there and be eye candy”. Beautiful women in the corporate world tend to experience this. What do you think stuff like this does to their self esteem? It knocks it down quite a few notches. A beautiful woman with self esteem issues sounds like an oxymoron, but it does exist.
What about the issue of beautiful women and their leagues of male admirers? Whether these beautiful women are on online dating sites, at the night clubs or some other public arena, they are consistently hammered with messages and men approaching them. I know what you are thinking. Why should we feel bad for someone who receives this kind of attention? Well, when people want a piece of you in every which way, it is not hard for these women to simply start seeing themselves as some kind of item at an auction being bid on by an army of starry eyed men. Have you ever truly wondered what it feels like to be seen as an object? It might be welcome at first but after a while you are probably going to be begging the auctioneer to cover you with a blanket.
Being beautiful gave her a special place in society until she got older or began to gain some weight. What happens to her when she is not getting those amorous smiles from men? What happens when she is no longer the one being singled out by her group of friends as the Alpha Female. Yes, as her beauty and body fades with age, she is now in a terrifying conundrum. What she has known her whole life is slipping away. To some extent, how she had defined herself as a person based on the eyes of others is indeed vanishing like the smoke from a vanquished candle. She is lost, confused and scared. She saw what happened to her beautiful mother before her and doesn’t want the same thing to happen to her. Hence depression ensues fomented by denial. Actions follow in the hopes of slowing down the process. Surgery, severing ties with some friends, crash diets, bold purchases, anger and jealousy to those women who are taking her place and so on.
This is not indicative of all beautiful women and their unique experiences. However, there can be no denial that beauty can have its drawbacks. So, the next time you see that beautiful woman walking down the street or through a building, understand that she is a living, breathing human being who may actually not be too fond of having the world at her feet.
Why Rejection Is Good For Men
There is something that scares most man even more than losing the controls to their latest video game and that is rejection. In fact, this has been something that has plagued him ever since he was a child. In grade school, when he was trying to be break in to his new group of friends, the last thing he wanted was to do something wrong and be rejected from the group.
Now, he is all grown up and single. He will tell himself everything from “the sun will not come up in the morning if I do this” to “this is too forward and I would be violating her space” to stop himself from telling a woman about his interest in her. So, again, he remains single.
Online dating sites are now a possibility in his mind, after all, it has to be easier finding a woman on there than in real life. Wrong! Online dating sites may be one of the best ways to find that woman, but the chances are still likely that he will experience, yes, “rejection” as well. Women on online dating sites receive so many messages that it is impossible to keep up with all of them. So they pick and choose the best messages and profiles to respond to.
Now, there is something to be said about what online dating sites can do for you. When your message isn’t responded to by a woman of interest, what do you do? What should you do? In fact, what should you have been doing from the moment you became a member of the dating website. Spreading your wings. Yes, that means sending messages to a good number of women. Most will probably, yes, “reject” you. So, what do you do now?
Online dating sites can actually give you good practice for approaching women in real life. The more women you send messages to, the more likely you will experience rejection. But here’s the thing. If you practice enough, you will get to the point where the rejection just becomes another day in the life of. Heck, you can even wear them with pride, like the badges on a general’s uniform.
Once you get to that point where you simply don’t care anymore, you will become a stud. Yes, that’s right. You will not be afraid to send messages to women on dating sites. You will not be afraid to approach women in real life either.
What do you see when you walk out there into the real world? How many attractive women do you see at the arm of an average looking guy? Lots. Your problem is not your looks, it’s your fear. When you get over that hump of fearing “rejection” you are well on your way to success in the dating game.
Look, this is the way I see it. If you do not take a chance and spread those wings while you are at it, you will be alone on your death bed one day wondering where you went wrong. Life is all about choices and taking chances.
Yes indeed, men, rejection is good.
Hedge Fund Manager’s VERY Long Letter After Rejection
Many people are afraid of rejection. However, even with that fear, some take it better than others. One of the reasons why online dating sites are so popular is because of the relative anonymity they provide. If a member turns down an invitation to have a conversation, no harm, no foul, you move on to the next dating profile with your ego intact. This Hedge Fund Manager who met a woman on a dating website however has a hard time dealing with rejection. You have to read his email back to the woman after she turns down his invitation to a second date.
Gawker:
Hi,
I will be sure to add you to the list of people who, after receiving an invitation to a second date, require extra time to write back (my internet was down! work was crazy! family business!), and then proceed to inform me of how great I am before insinuating that I have the attractiveness of a toad. I implore you, for the sake of whomever else you might do this to in the future, to simply be honest. It’s frustrating and, quite frankly, far more annoying to have rejection sugar-coated in any way.
Read the rest of the email at Gawker
Be sure to watch my video Online Dating – Why Women Are Not Responding to Your Messages for more insight on this topic.
Never Give Up On Love
If you find yourself single and wondering why you have not met that special someone, you are not alone. These feelings of loneliness and awkwardness may even be getting worse as Valentine’s Day draws ever closer. There is a reason why there is normally a massive influx of people joining online dating sites and gyms around this time of year. Perhaps, you have asked yourself why all your friends and acquaintances seem to be paired off while you always seem to be the odd one out. Whatever your politics, First Lady Michelle Obama gives some poignant advice that could shed some light on your predicament. It’s an older video but the words still ring true today.
Watch First Lady Michelle Obama Talking to Katie Couric about what Women Should Look For in a Date, here.
Also, be sure to watch my video How To Get A Boyfriend for more dating tips.
2012 Online Dating Summit Speakers Update
The online dating summit will be held in Barcelona this year and has already built an impressive roster of speakers. Just like the iDate Superconference that just concluded in Miami Beach, the online dating summit is an event where industry leaders can get together and exchange ideas that help boost the online dating industry. Due to the ever increasing popularity of online dating sites it was not difficult to get some industry titans to sign up as speakers for the event which will be held between March 02-05. Here is an updated list of the speakers:
Markus Frind, founder and CEO of POF.com
Dr. Robert Wuttke, founder and CEO of be2
Elisabeth Wasserman, co-founder and CEO of Mate1.com
Martin Bysh, CEO of Smooch
Lorenz Bogaert, Co-founder and CEO of Twoo
Ross Williams, Co-founder and CEO of Whitelabeldating
Gloria Diez, COO of Mamboo
Tanya Fathers, Co-founder and CEO of Dating Factory
Jon Dodd, Managing Director of Bunnyfoot
This list keeps getting updated so be sure to check back in for new additions.
You can visit Onlinedatingsummit.com to learn more about the upcoming event.
