archiverelationship advice

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...

1. “So having weighed up all the evidence and considering the fact that I was quite drunk at the time and I didn’t technically put it all the way in, do you think my ex was right to say that it was cheating?” 2. “I really like that you feel comfortable with your natural smell. I mean, you know, deodorants are really bad for the ozone layer anyway, aren’t they? And there’s something so primitive about a man’s natural odour. So sexy. Oh, you do wear one? Oh. Oh.” 3....

Mr Neat And Tidy Who is he? He’s never got a hair out of place and his flat is a monument to order and hygiene. Why you think you want him: A man who cleans up after himself is the rarest of beasts; to find one is surely the holy grail of dating. Imagine all those gleaming surfaces you can have sex on! Why you really don’t want him: If he’s that fastidious about himself and his environs, think how much control he’ll exert over you and yours. He’ll sneer...

“Let’s meet for dinner. 7pm.” As statements go, it’s fairly innocuous. No hidden agenda, no gameplaying. As far as you’re concerned, you’ll be eating, chatting and maybe worrying internally about how much wine you can allow yourself on a school night. But transport that remark to the run-up to a first date, and I run for the hills, stomach churning with a dread normally reserved for statements like “The PIN you have entered is incorrect” or “And next on ITV2, a four-hour Katie Price reality show retrospective”. Going for dinner...

There are so many good guys out there -- you almost need two hands to count them. But in among the gold, is the tin. The sand in your sandwiches, the rain on your parade. The world is full of men you shouldn't date, for every kind of reason. If only there were some kind of test, or a 'tell', so you could easily divine the dregs from the demigods. There's no magic answer, but if your potential beau is a 'yes' to any of the list below, it may...

Because society is obsessed with promoting the idea that being in a couple is the optimum way to live your life, being a singleton can be tough at times. Luckily, people who are probably already in relationships have invented lots of ways to make sure life’s soloists are never short of an opportunity to form a duet. Online dating, awkward introductions to friends and getting drunk at Christmas parties are just three ways of launching into a love match. There are also reams and reams of über-helpful handy hints to...

The dating arena is second only to its Roman gladiatorial cousin when it comes to viciousness. But rather than fleeing knife-wielding savages, daters find themselves fighting off the advances of unwelcome, pot-bellied irritants or, more commonly, trying their best to seem attractive to those who probably wouldn’t urinate on them if they were ablaze. Your dating profile, be it on a reputable dating site or a seedy phone app, is your storefront. It’s your singleton SOS to the slew of eligible bachelor rescue ships bobbing up and down in an...