Dating Services

Anyone may be able to find sex in the city, but what if you're looking for a serious long-lasting relationship that might lead to commitment —no, not in a mental institution, but in front of an altar?
Most of us find ourselves looking for love in all the wrong places —the local bar, the office place and even the long line-up at Social Services.

We meet people who can't take care of themselves, are already attached, are scared of intimacy, are just killing time waiting around until they fall in love with the real thing, have to much emotional baggage, are alcoholics, drug addicts, or more interested in repeating some tragic, self-destructive emotional pattern.

Even if we "get lucky" at one of these places, we often end up optimistically mistaking sex for love, and place unrealistic expectations on a partner who is not willing to go forward with us into the future.

Then there's the matter of our busy schedules. Not too many single people have the time or energy to hang out at the libraries, laundromats or clubs where the old fashioned etiquette books have always advised us to go to meet someone nice.

Perhaps that's why more people than ever are using dating and introduction services. Using one of these services eliminates the fuss and muss of dealing with the modern inconvenience of recovering from a hangover after a long night of waiting around all night in a smoky bar hoping to meet Mr. or Mrs. Right.

Also, using an introduction service is much safer for women. Your best bet is to find a hands-on matchmaking service that screens their male candidates and checks their background for such things as marital status, financial solvency and a criminality. Using an introduction service is also much safer than meeting someone through a free dating service on the internet.

Your chances of meeting a jerk there are just as high as if you had gone into a sleazy bar, as anyone can lie about their history when they submit their personality profiles on-line. The bottom line, according to the dating service owners I spoke to, is: "You get what you pay for..."

According to a study called Dating and the Internet by Ian Nethercott, more and more of us are becoming disillusioned with such societal ills as alcoholism and infidelity and during the nineties turned to more and more to our computers to find a mate.

The failure of the internet to produce anything but even more illusions about love, has renewed singles' interest in old fashioned match-making services.

The wonderful world that is dating

Ahh, dating. It inspires such passion... and heartbreak. It's the subject none of us like to talk about. It's ugly, it's horrible and it's got a big face with a twisted look on it. It scares people off. No one ever likes to go through with it, yet we need the results. We need the results to help us get into solid and trusting relationships and eventually find love with decent people who we want to spend the rest of our lives with. The good news is that there is a ray of hope in internet dating.

With dating, you can take it all in different approaches. Whether it be online dating or the old fashioned way of being set up on a blind date, we've got our preferences to what way of finding love we chose and prefer. But for those wanting a head start in the dating world and are in need of some quick dating tips, we've got them for you right here. Here are some of our favorite tips for those wanting to tread water and meet new people in the dating world:

Join a comedy class. If he makes you laugh, then that means he's a keeper. Your average stand up class is a festival of testosterone. Those with the true talent to make people laugh tend to usually be emotional and self-centered, but if he makes you laugh anyway then you may be willing to put up with the occasional episodes of insecurity.
Car shows. Sure, you'd rather be out shopping, but just close your eyes and pretend that you're at the mall. Guys who are really into cars tend to be very capable and good with their hands, even if they sometimes provide you with more information about your car rather than about himself. A good and easy one-liner such as "Hey, nice car!" usually does the trick.
The good old bar. Skip the trendy bars with icy women with mile high heels and snarky men with neon-colored shirts and fake bottled tans. If you want to find a nice, laid back kind of guy that is a natural conversation starter, then your local firefighter pub is the place to be. Plus, those guys who weren't popular during high school make excellent boyfriends now. That is the best piece of dating wisdom we can bestow upon you.
Business conferences. Here you can meet good, ambitious men who not only look good in suites but are smart too. (What a combination!) Strike up a conversation around your mutual business interests then ask how they got to where they are today. You'll learn about his path of life so far, including education and goals. But before you jump into anything big, make sure you check his left hand so you don't end up getting yourself in a sticky situation with a man who is already in a relationship.

Feelings involved in attraction or relationship addiction

Many people confuse the feelings involved in attraction or relationship addiction, with the feelings involved in love. Attraction is the first part of growing toward a love relationship. I use the phrase "growing toward love" because the idea that any one "falls in love" is a fallacy. While attraction is an important part of a relationship it is only the beginning and cannot carry a relationship for a long time. We all change with time. Part of attraction is the adrenaline rush many confuse with love. That adrenaline rush can be addictive. A lasting relationship cannot be based on physical attraction or addiction to an adrenaline rush.

Our highly commercialized, capitalistic society has romanticized attraction to an extreme. When we buy into "their" music, TV, movies etc., "their" income increases. "They" are opportunistically trying to make money, while many (naively, sadly), believe "them". Yes, we know that, but are we always aware of how much we really buy into their psychological sales pitches and how deeply it affects us? Self awareness grows with practice.

Relationship addiction can easily be confused with love. A person can be addicted to another one without the awareness of being addicted. A lack of self awareness and self understanding leads a person into denial of his/her thoughts, feeling and behaviors. This can be misleading and confusing for the recipient of the addictive relationship behaviors. A few warning signs include;

*When a person seems to idolize the individual he/she claims they "love".

* If someone holds the person they claim to "love" responsible for their own life changing decisions. An example would be if someone quit college and then said it was because of the person they "love". This type of behavior is an abdication of personal responsibility. Its blame.

*When someone tries to fix or change the person they "love" physically or psychologically. They want the other to have plastic surgery to "perfect" their appearance or tell you, "I never want to see you without makeup on.", or insist they pick out the other person's clothes or tell them how to wear their hair.

*If the person believes that the other will change to be as they wish.

* When the relationship is very intense, dramatic.

* A person who defines ( and confuses), his/her wants with needs saying things such as "I can't live without you".

*When a person is unable to recognize the relationship has problems and that he/she is part of the problem. Often telling the other, "It's all in your mind."

*When a person is unable to be without a relationship at all, jumps from one relationship to another within a few months.

Dependency can also be confused with the love. When an individual feels that he/she cannot make it in the world without another person to help them, that is dependency. A dependent person usually has extremely low self-esteem and is very insecure. Indeed there is a mental health diagnosis called Dependent Personality Disorder. Any person with that disorder needs good therapy to help them recover from it.

Genuine love involves two relatively healthy people who are able to appreciate the attraction they have for one another, are aware that the attraction will fade and are able to do the personal work they need to do to nurture their attraction into love. This takes reasonable psychological health, self-awareness, and the ability make personal changes. Love is a choice and involves work that we choose to do daily.

Life often puts us in a position of having to make difficult choices. For instance, if two people who have been developing a love relationship, which began due to physical attraction, are in an accident and one person becomes maimed or disabled, the other person will have to make a difficult choice. A couple I knew were in an accident. The woman's face was badly disfigured. Although plastic surgery was helpful, she remained disfigured for the rest of her life. She and her husband were faced with the huge problem of whether or not they could live with this together. In the movie "Days of Wine and Roses" the man finally realizes that his wife is an alcoholic. He is faced with a painful choice and makes the decision to take their child and leave. Sometimes people need to choose to leave a relationship in order to protect themselves and others. Love cannot conquer all.

It is the healthy love of self that can help an individual choose to make the changes they need to make for themselves, in order to have a better life. When an individual is self-aware and working on their own personal growth they are more likely to attract others who are also working on themselves. Two people who are working on self-awareness and maturing as individuals, will be able to make a healthy decision about whether or not they can develop and continue a relationship.

What Do Women Want?

In the various lines of research described by Daniel Bergner in his account of investigations into female desire (Jan. 25), it is interesting that almost all of the stimuli presented to female subjects come in the form of photographs or film and video. Theorists of art and visual culture have long recognized that vision is not simply a neutral, physiological act, and that the act of filming or photographing encodes gendered forms of looking.

It may be, in fact, that the “narcissistic” form of desire described by Marta Meana is a response to the ways in which the female viewer is often made to identify with the object of desire (the object of the desiring gaze) rather than the subject of that gaze (the protagonist); this is an argument that has been made by Laura Mulvey in relation to classic Hollywood cinema, but holds true in a variety of other visual modes as well. Women may not, in fact, have an innately narcissistic form of desire, but may be offered only the position of narcissism by the visual culture that is called upon to evoke desire.

ARUNA D’SOUZA
Visiting Associate Professor
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, Calif.

I would never deny that being desirable is a turn-on for many women, but what one has to do to be “hot” in our culture fosters a double consciousness that might well confuse scientists about women’s sexual desires. For many women, it’s occasionally hard to know the difference between sexual agency and male-driven definitions of sexiness, which have the effect of regulating or reshaping women’s subjectivity. Twenty years ago the American feminist Catharine MacKinnon wrote, “All women live in sexual objectification the way fish live in water.” Despite the subtitle of Daniel Bergner’s article, we are not “postfeminist” yet.

How to fix a bad first date

Make them laugh
If you really must draw attention to what went wrong on your first date, do it with humour and brevity.
For example, if you accidentally sprayed a mouthful of curry across the table into their face, ask them if they fancy a vindaloo sometime – and let that be the last you say about it.
Get it right next time
A second chance doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get a third chance. So when you’ve fixed up another date, resolve not to make the same mistakes again.
Use your first-date mishaps as a lesson. If you talked too much, focus on being a better listener. Habits are hard to break, but practice makes perfect.
Do some non-date socialising
Is every weekend turning into a first-date disaster? Then take a break from dating. If you’re seeing new people every week, it’s no wonder you’ve worked yourself into a nervous, prat-falling stupor.
Go out with friends, release some pressure and turn those first-date mistakes into winning anecdotes.