archivenot entirely serious life coaching

It is National Coming Out Day*, the day when the collective force of a zillion closet doors being thrust open is enough to knock you off your feet. If someone stares intently at you and clears their throat, or puts their latte to one side with the biggest case of 'serious-face' you've ever seen, there's a good chance they're about to tell you they're gay – or they have a peanut stuck in their throat and are unable to speak, silently willing you to decode their desperate stare. Before you...

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...

I have a love-hate relationship with travelling on the Tube, London's dog-breathed series of arteries which carries us all safely around the place, while we moan about how long it takes to get anywhere and how far away everyone lives. Buses can go fuck themselves, frankly; dull as they are with their stench of fast food and myriad teenagers playing generic hip-hop through tinny speakers. Buses are unsociable and unsexy – everyone facing forward like they're at the world's worst cinema. In the sexiness stakes, there's no getting away from...

Getting a first date is fairly easy. Or so they tell me. But getting a first date and going on a first date are nowhere near as big a deal as the ultimate prize, the holy grail of dating, the BIG ONE: securing date number 2. So many of us miss out on the follow-up date. They say sequels can never live up to their predecessor (mine certainly don't), but lots of debuts fail to get a second chance to try. Is there something you can do to smooth the...

My recent post on dumping someone by text proved to be pretty divisive. It seems that many people prefer a face-to-face break-up or, at the very least, a phone call. It’s a common fallacy that bad news like this is better in person, or coming from a disembodied voice at the end of a telephone. Perhaps it seems more personal, or means more, because it’s perceived that tapping in a few digits, then delivering a knockout blow over the phone and waiting distractedly for the stunned reply, in some way...

Imagine at what distant depth of ebb you’d have to be to ask a friend to set you up with someone. To be plundering your friends’ friends for potential dates, like Google with a stiffy, you must have truly run out of options. People may scoff at online dating or even picking someone up in a bar, but to cast your incestuous net only as far as the puddle next door shows a lack of pluck and imagination. Agreeing or volunteering to set mates up with each other is the...

What's in a name? You don't know the half of it. The one thing they forget to tell you when you try online dating is that you have to pick a name for yourself. Yes, not only do you have to fret about whether your pictures make you look pretty or the quality of your babbling blurb, you also have the added trauma of coming up with a profile name. It has to encapsulate everything about you in one easy line. It will appear alongside your picture and could mean...

Dating can be a drag. You never quite know what you’re going to get next. Back off with your “life is like a box of chocolates” shtick, Forrest Gump – we’ve never had a box of Milk Tray with this many nasty surprises. Well, we know you’re the perfect date, don’t we, and we know to give a wide berth to the first 25 men I very kindly alerted you to, but there are still some romantic buzzkills out there just waiting to spoil your fun, break your heart and...