Dating Tips for Over 40’s Men
Online Dating Tips
A recent survey conducted by researchers at Oxford University found that the heaviest users of internet dating sites were not young people but the over 40s and that the numbers visiting such sites had gone up from 6% to 30% of the population in the past decade Roughly half of those who had used this method claimed to have been successful. In fact dating sites, clubs and agencies have become so prevalent that the subscription fees have recently been included in the retail prices index along with such things as smartphone apps.
The findings point to the fact that more people are now making relationships through the web than by the more traditional activities such as dinner parties, clubs and well meaning friends.
In a previous article on internet dating for the Magazine (Nov 2007) I urged participants to be bold and optimistic but advised that in a competitive market you do need to have a sound technique which you arrive at through trial and error. When I first started dating many years ago I remember it taking quite a few contacts to even get a response let alone an arrangement to meet and I messed up that first meeting as well!
Dating Tip 1 – Don’t Listen to Pessimists
In my former article I asserted that being tentative was unlikely to lead to success but I counselled against being influenced by the pessimists who complained about having to pay as little as £10 to register or who had met one person who was less than perfect and had then given up. As these people have been unsuccessful, by definition, they are not likely to be the most useful role models. It is a bit like someone who has sent off one job application and after not being appointed concluding that there are no jobs available.
Dating Tip 2 -Keep Applying
As with job applications expectations need to be tempered by a little dose of realism but if there was a metric for how many meetings would be needed to secure a worthwhile relationship and my entirely subjective assessment would be to work on about fifteen, who would not persist on the grounds that the sooner I have met the fourteen hopeless people the better? Of course, we must always remember that we are all someone else’s hopeless person.
Dating Tip 3 – Find a Successful Colleague
Now things are moving on rapidly and there are likely to be more unattached older people who are in some way active in the market than not. Once someone has found a colleague who has been successful they will quickly be keen to swap stories and become emboldened.
Speed Dating Tips
Recently I was introduced to Speed Dating for the over 40s. How superficial, I thought. Having slots of just five minutes to make an impression. What can they possible know about the lovable old me in that time? Nevertheless, however counter intuitive it may have been, I quickly learned that Speed Dating is remarkably efficient.
Previously I pointed out that there is absolutely no point in meeting someone with whom you are unable to strike up an interesting conversation on line or later on the telephone. I also said that it was far better to undersell oneself so that the eventual meeting turns out to be a pleasant surprise rather than a bitter disappointment but however much one may genuinely undersell, by the time of the first meeting both of you are likely to have built up some kind of fantasy that is impossible for the other person to fulfil. Even so, many such meetings do turn out successfully even if the start has been a bit shaky.
With mature speed dating you get the opportunity to evaluate and be evaluated by a dozen people which in itself is a bit more immediate than having to spend a dozen separate evenings in the local trattoria. People, mainly women, talk about there needing to be “chemistry” and whereas with web dating you get to establish intellectual rapport before a meeting where you then discover whether the two of you have or do not have the necessary chemistry, with speed dating it is the other way round. You get to tick the people on your list who you would be pleased to see again and if any of them also tick you, you will be given one another’s contact details. Of course, in the cold light of day there is no guarantee that things will work out but at least you are much further down the track and there is not much point in persisting without at least a whiff of chemistry. For every woman who finds me to be witty, stimulating, charming and challenging there are likely to be several dozen who would regard me as being a pretentious nobody. Yes, really!
Dating Tip 1- Try KC Dating
One inescapable conclusion for the over 40s is that there are a lot more interesting women in our age group than there are men and why this should be so would be for another article. Nevertheless, if you do happen to be an older man who is not yet ground down, cynical and pessimistic, this is the market for you as these events are necessarily gender balanced and bookings for women sell out far more quickly than those for men.
At present there are many more speed dating events for younger people but mature speed dating is catching on rapidly. This is not the same as mature dating which are just focused web sites. The firm that has given me so much joy is called KC Dating. It costs £55 (drinks included) but as there are always more women wanting to attend than men (why are men so pessimistic?) it is well worth it for men to try a bit of bargaining and attempt to get two meetings for the price of one. After all chaps, it our younger days we had to put up with many years of women getting free entry into clubs, didn’t we?
Dating Tip 2 – Talk About the Other Person
Finally, I would suggest that men will usually need two shots to get the hang of it. On my first outing I met a lot of very nice women who I ticked on my list but was disappointed to find that none of them had ticked me! My mistake was thinking that I had just five minutes to talk about myself but what I quickly learned was to use the five minutes to ask and talk about the other person. There are usually about twelve couples and since scaling my steep learning curve, I have never since come away with less than three matches and I really, really am an ugly, even though quite interesting, old frog.
