Blind Dating |
The Dating Scene Today I
Here's a quote from an Andy MacCabe in the Daily Mail article 'Singles' 17th January, 2001, who likens the modern-day search for a partner to stepping onto an escalator:
'As you travel up, you see someone you like travelling down, but at the back of your mind you think: "Will I see someone I like better a bit further up?" Then, the further you go up, the more you start to panic about passing on that first person you liked, and you think: "Will I reach the top with no one?"
Your cards are already dealt. You start with a hand not much of your own choosing. Now it's up to you to use what you do have to your best advantage.
When either first introducing yourself to a prospective date, or when an agency does so on your behalf, there is a sequence in order of importance. If you fall at the first hurdle you don't get to move on to the second!
The initial move - the most important - is usually a printed 'profile', or a personal letter from
you - where you first present yourself. This may be in response to a letter or advert from someone else. It could be a telephone call.
Help and tips on how successful daters word their own written profiles are dealt with in the second part of this report. What members have said regarding the telephone conversations, and successful techniques.
This stage may be missed altogether, and your first contact with a person is....a telephone conversation (there may be several).
If you survive these hurdles so far, then the next step takes you to... the very first few moments of a meeting -
THE DATE ITSELF
After this the die is cast. The meeting will either go somewhere or it won't.
However much you would like to pursue this date, it obviously equally depends upon how the other person finds you!
'It Takes Two to Tango!'
We live in a consumer society. If the packaging is OK you may look twice, if the packaging is wrong you turn away.
It's all in the marketing. As far as self-presentation goes, some people are naturals, and others have to work at it.
As I said, your hand is already dealt - a combination of genes, upbringing and experience brings you to this point.
It is now up to you to play your cards as effectively as you can!
Nobody owes it to you to meet you!
You may have work to do. So, read on, and see the results of what others have said, along with what I hope you'll find are helpful conclusions and observations...
'If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten' - Anon
THE WORLD WE LIVE IN TODAY!
The workplace is not at all what it was even five years ago! People are increasingly working in isolation with computers, or having to move around with their jobs - or both.
Professional people may be flying all over the world with their work and some say they feel they have no secure home roots anywhere, let alone possibility of a relationship! Public transport in this country gets worse and worse (as we know!), which is resulting in many people not even going in to work at all.
With people relocating all over the country to chase careers and higher-paid jobs, they don't have the same community networks previous generations had...
One could paint quite a grim picture of life as it is becoming for many young single people in their twenties and thirties especially. Increasingly many are sitting at home with their computers networked into their businesses, drinking endless cups of instant coffee in front of their computer monitors, talking business over the telephone, eating microwave meals for one bought weekly from an impersonal supermarket.
They may end the day by going out to the pub, but perhaps awkward at socialising solo, may opt to remain at their computers and relate to other people via the internet.
Some may join a gym or health centre for social reasons as much as fitness - but would hardly be looking (or smelling) their best for bumping into a potential partner whilst lying with weights aloft, or panting through step-aerobics!
Hence the massive growth in the singles industry.
Solitude: A good place to visit, but a poor place to stay.' - Josh Billings
People who 'take the plunge' into the singles' scene have a wide choice available to them. Here, briefly, are some of them:
Dating Agencies and Registers (usually relatively low cost services using written profiles in list form for members to choose for themselves whom they would like to contact). Prices will range from about £25 to approximately £100.
Introduction Agencies (much more costly for a personal service where members are most likely interviewed and vetted, and the agency does most of the selection work). A good Introduction Agency (and also many rip-offs which have been exposed in the news over the past few years) usually costs in excess of £1,000 to join.
Personal ads or Lonely Hearts Columns - you will find pages in virtually every local newspaper and in many nationals, especially magazine supplements. Contacting dates this way can be more costly than it appears, because the response phone calls may cost £4 a minute, or the PO Box forwarding service could cost about the same per letter.
Singles Holiday organisations, some fairly costly because of the built-in 'singles supplement' and the profits made by the clubs. They organise holidays all over the world as well as weekends etc. in the UK.
Dinner Clubs usually are also quite costly as they build in a percentage of profit to the price of the meal, but worth considering for those who can afford it. The venues are usually smart and expensive. For this you should get a well-organised event with numbers fairly well balanced both men to women and age-wise. The host/hostess should also be experienced at putting people at their ease.
Singles Social Clubs, normally local and fairly inexpensive. They may also be run on a voluntary basis by members and offer bar nights, discos, weekends away, meals out, weekend walks, games evenings etc. etc.
TV Matchmakers, 'Late Night Love'
Chat shows, magazine and newspaper articles are constantly airing the very topical singles predicament. They used mostly to be cynical or critical, but no longer. There are even supermarket singles' evenings!
And finally there's Internet Dating which is now head of the list so far as numbers are concerned. Already every sizeable terrestrial dating/introduction organisation also does business 'online'. My own Singles Grapevine has an 'associate' internet dating agency www.singlesgrapevine-online.com
The internet is just the perfect medium for singles to meet. People can 'search' for themselves and see photos instantly. The downside is that, with such a large number of 'availables', people often don't take it as seriously as they used to. Potential dates become 'disposable'. There are always more. Many complain of the lack of manners and common kindness they meet when using internet dating sites.
One of the biggest changes in society is 'what's happening to the women'!
To quote Karen Mooney of the Association of British Introduction Agencies (ABIA) in the Daily Mail article 'Singles' 15th Jan 2001: "Sweeping social changes have left singles - particularly women - far more discerning about their choice of partner...It is predicted that in ten years' time, more than 40% of women in this country will be living alone, many by choice. Birth rates will continue to fall, the family unit is collapsing, and the way we socialise, including finding a mate, is changing fast.
A man aged 37 interviewed for the same Daily Mail article says, "since I started dating women's attitudes have changed enormously. They want to stay single; they have their careers and their friends, and they find it very hard to squeeze you into their lives."
The article sums it up. "While many women argue that what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, the result is, inevitably, a society where the fulfilment of individual needs - be they sexual, emotional or material - appears to have replaced co-operation and self-sacrifice for the good of the family unit.
In a remarkable reversal of roles, it appears it is now men who increasingly worry about being left on the shelf with nothing but a convenience meal for one and a couple of cats for company."
Career-conscious women are putting off having children to a later age than at any time in the past 50 years (Office of National Statistics)
The gentleman quoted earlier from the Daily Mail article also bemoans, "Where do you go when you are 37 and single to meet women? I don't feel comfortable trawling through bars and nightclubs any more, chasing women who don't want to settle down anyway"
I personally remember in my late teens and early twenties (back in the 50s and 60s!) when, at our 'dances' whether it was jiving, twist, ballroom, smooching or bopping, the men would ask the girls for a dance. They may have been told to get lost on occasion, but mostly the girls were eying up the lads they hoped might ask them to dance - and they certainly were not dancing together in self-sufficient, man-excluding groups!
Expectations have changed dramatically
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