The Ditch or Snog blog - dating tips and dating advice

Mother Teresa said “The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread” and rarely have truer words been spoken.

Unless you have been crushingly lonely you don’t understand just what a strong and self destructive emotion it can be.

I am not talking about the level of loneliness you can feel when you fancy a night out but your friends are all busy.

I mean the level where you feel consumed by your loneliness, even when you are in a room full of people you are chatting to.

The trouble with this depth of loneliness is you can become convinced that only a romantic relationship can relieve your lonely feelings.

Dating can actually add to the feeling of loneliness, as your emotions become virtually tangible and your dates will pick up on this desperation, frightening them away.

The chance of meeting “the one” in the first person you date is less likely than winning the lottery, this means rejection is a certainty and rejection is not going to lift your spirits or build your confidence.

Another negative when dating in this emotional state is the possibility of entering a relationship with someone totally unsuitable in order to simply deal with your lonely emotions.

The only healthy solution to this depth of loneliness is to recognise that dating is not the immediate answer, that is not to say you should avoid dating but see it as a lower priority.

Your first priority should be to recognise that feeling lonely and being alone are two very different things. Being single is not why you feel this way, plenty of married people suffer from loneliness. This is so easy to say but not as easy to do, if necessary get professional help to separate these issues in your mind.

Once you have recognised the difference you can begin to work on changing your emotional state. If lack of company causes your loneliness you can learn to be happy in your own company, to enjoy time without being in a relationship.

When you are busy it is more difficult to feel lonely, your mind is on other things. If you are bored with nothing to physically do then finding a love interest can become of paramount importance, adding to your lonely feelings because love rarely appears in an instant.

The web now provides an outlet to lonely people, with forums on almost any topic and online dating sites where people can not only meet people to date but can also make new friends to stave off lonely feelings.

If you are lonely and considering joining an online dating site then first look to see if they have an active forum, if they don’t then do not join. The ‘meat market’ side of online dating will simply add to your feelings of emotional isolation.

Join a site with an active community and try to focus on making new online friends, if “the one” turns up it will be a plus but once you find new friends you will soon realise that finding a partner is not the only solution to your current emotional state.

Mind have a booklet on how to cope with loneliness and Web of Loneliness provide a number of website links for information and self help for loneliness.

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I was searching through blogs today and came across an article called speed dating sucks which says “There is nothing more pathetic and… alien… than a pre-menopausal aging childless woman throwing herself headlong into the chaotic vagaries of dating. When a woman doesn’t have children to nurture and raise by her early 30s she morphs rapidly into a sad and tragic creature — a shell entity of raging cynicism that can do no more than go through the motions — that no one wants to be around.”

I simply didn’t trust myself to leave a response, what a dreadful generalisation and more than a little bigoted. However, it did spur me on to write a post I have been meaning to write for some time.

Newslflash ladies, not all men are cheating, inconsiderate, only after one thing, fibbing barstewards!!

Having gone from online dater to online dating website owner I have had a chance to sit back and observe. It has been an interesting learning experience and I feel just a little ashamed of myself (not a lot but a little).

Many men that join my website complain that dating websites have simply become forums for women of a certain age to man bash. This is not really too surprising, many sites are full of men who have no intention of doing anything but playing the field, some are also married looking for adulterous fun but the same can be said for some women on dating sites. Perhaps they are trying to recapture the fun they had dating in their younger days, when people they dated were fun and not ‘interviewing’ them as potential life partners.

It seems ironic that women objected for so many years to sexist remarks and being labeled by our gender, style of dress or hair colour and yet we appear to have simply turned the tables.

In the same way that jokes about boobs and blondes were usually in fun, our jokes about men and their “small brain” are equally not intended to offend. However, remember the days of sexist jokes ladies, we found the first couple funny but they wore thin after ten minutes and an hour of unrelenting sexist jokes later we took the huff.

Men no doubt feel the same way but once we get the bit between our teeth we usually don’t know when to stop. I now watch men join in with the joke for the first ten minutes, then go quiet and then start to show signs of offense. As a woman that likes men to be men (whatever that means these days) I find it a little strange but do accept we, women, have spent the past two or three decades instilling this attitude into men.

Women wanted men to find their feminine side, to understand that it is offensive to generalise about us and treat us as equals. It seems we simply lowered ourselves to their level, we now take the jokes too far because we enjoy the banter. Some women now actively seek out one night stands, have affairs or verbally bash men at every opportunity, making assumptions about what they are looking for.

Confession, at times I am as bad as the rest of the 40 something women that “man bash” and assume all men think with their small brain. Whilst I certainly don’t agree with or fit in to the quoted description above of women in their 30’s or 40’s, I do see a grain of truth of in it, I have indeed become cynical.

To be fair to myself, I am fully aware that there are some nice genuine men out there but rather than give everyone the benefit of the doubt I approach every new person I meet with the attitude of “prove me wrong”.

This attitude has come from over a quarter of a century of dating (gosh it’s frightening when you say it that way), with my share of players, liars, cheats and all round nutters. Yet to be fair most men my age have been through exactly the same experiences, with money grabbing, cheating, lying women.

Perhaps it is time for a ceasefire and we accept that while we do not like being generalised about, neither do men. I declare an amnesty between the sexes, I shall now stop jumping to conclusions about people based on their gender and hope they will do the same for me. I also hope men will begin to understand that jokes generalising about men and their inability to be faithful or think about anything other than sex are exactly that, jokes.

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