archivedating advice

Your dating profile – or the bio on whichever app your fingers are getting busy with – is your storefront, your prime advertising space. Sure, a picture tells a thousand words, but as anyone who’s spent more than a minute in the company of a  boyband can tell you, hot looks are no guarantee of a great brain or a good time. Given that most people are only a swipe away from dating oblivion, you’d think that guys (and girls, of course, if that’s your thing) out there might try...

The supermarket can be a boring and depressing place at the best of times, let alone if you’re single. Couples snogging in front of the very shelf you’re trying to reach – lasagne for ONE – or, much more likely, arguing about being organic in front of the tenderstem broccoli. It’s a nonstop misery-fest, from the very moment you pick up your basket – complete with someone else’s scrunched up receipts in the bottom of it, the bastard – to the awkward hunt for your loyalty card as your cans...

When you are growing up a future gay, you learn very quickly that your relationships with straight men are never going to be anything other than complex. Whether you’re trying to explain to your dad for the eightieth time that you’re not going to kick that football back at him no matter how many times it flies over your head, or enduring the weekly terror of “Backs against the wall, lads” in the showers after PE, it can be difficult to make yourself understood. So alike, but oceans apart. Many...

When you’re dating you hear a lot of talk about ‘soulmates’, ‘the one’ or the perfect match. Even the singles website where I met most of perfectly willing – but not always able – victims was called Soulmates, as if everybody on it were hopeless romantics staring at the sky with mooncalf eyes, waiting for Mr Right to swing off a star and drop into their arms. Quizzes, algorithms and your own ridiculous preconceptions help you decide who this person is likely to be, this ‘other half’ of you, and...

1. “All his photos were taken from quite far away. I hope he’s not a horse-frightener.” 2. “I hope he was joking when he described himself as a flâneur. Because seriously.” 3. “Does my stomach look fat while I sit like this?” 4. “Should I stand up when he gets here so he can see I’m actually quite ripped?” 5. “Should I get a drink while I’m waiting, or hang on until he gets here?” 6. “What should I drink? What will make me look more desirable?” 7. “Maybe I...

Kissing is vital in any relationship. While a gentle squeeze on the arm or the arse can remind your partner you care, a kiss on the lips – even if it's a quick peck in the supermarket – is the internationally understood shorthand for intimacy. And you have to really mean it, or your lacklustre kiss gives you away. You may think that relationships live and die on sex, but for me, the real test comes much sooner. If a guy is a bad kisser, it doesn’t matter how he...

I get asked a lot of questions, both on Twitter and over email. Usually it’s things like “Is that your real eye?” or “Who’s that famous person you mention in this blog?” and other times it’s women in America trying to get me to link to their blogs about nannies, or contraception, or gay marriage. And then, very occasionally, it’s even more random than that. Sometimes, it’s just a question, like: “Is it OK to wear shorts on a date?” Well, it’s a valid question. Thank you to the shy...

As I always say, your dating profile is your storefront, your big shiny window display that you use to get the punters in. But in just a few short sentences, you can turn your gleaming emporium of you into a rundown old convenience store, with dirty canopies, smeared windows, and nothing of interest inside. All of the following are based on actual openers from dating profiles I have perused over the years. "I’m kind of like a Charlotte in the daytime and a bit of a Carrie on a night...

Before princes, come frogs, and it seems Mr Right stands at the end of a long line of Mr Wrongs. You’ve done well in swerving the first 25 men you should never date, and deserve a gold star for saying a polite “no thank you” to another 25 I brought to your attention, but you’re not out of the woods yet. If you want to take a short cut to that idyllic relationship you truly deserve, here are 25 more suitors you should consider giving the slip. You should never...