The 40s chick guide to being the new girlfriend

Amidst the deepest darkest aloneness of being newly single, there is always a tiny. splintery, glittery spark of hope that you might emerge from this status and become someone’s new girlfriend.

We want this, right?

We know that yearning to start afresh with all mistakes and regrets cast aside constitues a reinvention akin to Drew Barrymore’s transformation from troubled wild-child to serene baby mama.

Well, rejoice and clap like a deep south gospel singer because no matter how remote you think the possibility may be, it CAN happen.

Yet like anything that is new and great in the realm of dating encounters, sneaking out of the FB single status has its perils. And here, joyfully, I lapse into something that I am drawn to as fervently as a single chick to vodka….using D-list celebrities to illustrate
how not to do things

(I must apologise at this point to my blog readers outside Australia who don’t have a clue who I am talking about. But look at the pics and you will get it…)

Let me introduce the ‘new girlfriend of the moment’

Gabi Grecko

 

Unremarkable if she was the girlfriend of a

• Anonymous DJ
• Hairdresser that is still practicing how to get brassy out of blonde
• South Eastern Suburbs bogan

More remarkable as she is the new girlfriend of australia’s most oddball bachelor.

And that she supecedes his last model

..by seven years, thereby establishing an age difference between the two new lovers of a mere 47 years.

Here are the lessons we can all learn from the GG

One – Take a moment to QA your social media history

We can all learn from this. For us:

• Ditch the 1980s Contiki Tour Greek Islands Toga Party pics
• Delete the compilation of cute kiddie pics that your Dad threw together for your 40th birthday
• Take a digital sledgehammer to your recent pinterest obsesson with Channing Tatum, Ryan Gosling and Ryan Phillipe. Apply the lens of sheer unavailability (to you)

For Gabi

• Delete the weird yoga bendy poses.

• Understand you are not Lady Gaga

Get the name right

One of the perils of the modern digital age is that you may not actually speak verbally for a period. You may read screen names, attributes, positive qualities and backstory to the point where you feel you may be indulging in a book review rather than lining up a squeeze on Tinder.

Given Gabi likely snagged AussieGeoff$$$Guy101 on Sugar Daddies ‘R Us.com there was no handy prompt to remind her that her new prospect was actually pronounced ‘Jeff’ and she unnecessarily endured a short period where she unwittingly pronounced his name Gee-off.

(she actually fessed up to this little snafu)

Nail the first outing

The first time you emerge in public is a pivotal moment.

I don’t mean the period where you skulked around Starbucks trying to be anonymous, where you kept it all on the down-low, where you kept your new love protectively hidden from the public eye…or away from your parents while you tried to figure out how to explain that a) you met online and b) the other party is not a serial killer/Nigerian scammer.

It’s the first outing IN PUBLIC

If there was a 40schick guide to first public outings, my tip would be that it not involve

a) a funeral. (let alone a funeral of a much loved football legend) AND
b) you wearing an outfit that involved unrestrained cleavage overflow

 

Be dignified in the treatment of the ex

I’ve already blogged on the topic of exes. It warranted
a good 700 odd words in its own right

But here, I reinforce that you don’t go all big-time slander on the ex.

ie

“I want to make it clear I’m not trying to be her lookalike. I’ve had so many articles say I’m a Brynne lookalike. It’s so repetitive,” she says.
“Brynne’s style was trashy, mine is art. That’s the difference.”

I’m sure that if I had the interwebs-ability to construct an online poll, complete with flickery bits that indicated who was in front, that the audience would be completely unable to distinguish GGs style between trashy and art (something tells me that her throwback to the Madonna lace gloves might lean to trashy)

Beyond this she hashtagged a pic of her kissing her new aged-squeeze to her ex’s mother (if there was ever a rule that need stating out loud, it is that you would not do this)

Messy all round peeps.

But let it just serve to give you hope…that if you are poised with mesh-gloved fingertip above the keystroke that broadcasts to FB that you are ‘in a relationship’ that there is a bunch of missteps that you can bypass with all the finesse of a delicate tip-toe cha-cha.

Beware the tale of how Gabi Grecko got her Gee-off.

(I’m totes #TeamBrynne)

If you are taking your online dating a little more seriously than this blog, check out this website for fabulously simple online dating advice.

Single @ The High School Reunion

I’m here to tell you friends, that you WILL encounter many pitfalls in navigating through the process of being single in your 40s. The early stages, the rookie mistakes and the perilous mid 40s makeover.

But you will prevail. I promise. Onwards and upwards.

However there are a few things that can set you right back, hurtling you back into the vodka-as-a-food-group mindset of the newly bereft.

A stellar example would be your ex getting re-married. This will no doubt have you scuttling to Adele and trilling ‘I heard that your dreeeeams came true” Often. Emotionally. In the shower (which is like space – where no one can hear you scream)

Not quite up there, but certainly unsettling….

Being Single At Your High School Re-Union.

Odds are, that at the moment that you finally congratulate yourself at having achieved a level of stability, the demon incarnate that is Facebook will poke you with a stab as pointy as the shiv of the incarcerated with a little prompter about your upcoming High School Reunion.

But like the wingwoman that I am, I’m here to tell you….

….you’ve got this.

Here’s the 40schick guide to surviving the high school reunion as a singleton.

One – its not the 80s anymore

Take a moment to revisit the horrors of fashions past. You are not going out in public garbed in:

• The horrors of taffeta
• The insanity of lace gloves (amped up exponentially if they were fingerless)
• A slick of blue crème eyeshadow that gummed up your eyelids like an intense case of conjunctivitis

Instead you are quite likely to rock a skinny jean with a slinky top, a pair of Milanese suede boots that cost about half of your 1975 first-car-Torana and no doubt an improvement in hairstyle.

Single or not, you are going to feel way better about yourself than you did when rocking a bad 80s home perm.

Two – the hot guy has probably deteriorated

When you were the geekster with glasses and an embarrassing ability to analyse Shakespeare, you no-doubt had a teenage yearning for the football jock who grew tall, filled out and sauntered through the school with all the model-bagging confidence of a young Leonardo DeCaprio.

Shortly after arrival at said reunion, you will be doing an internal happy dance to realise that he’s experienced an early onset pattern baldness and an Achilles injury that has curtailed a potential career and has had his beer carbs redirected to his belly.

Three – the cool girls have plateaued

The girls that smoked brazenly in the girls toilets? The girls that had the ability to crook a Cutex-home-manicured finger and reel in the top-percenter guys in class? They’ve become an unwitting poster girl for the effects of smoking for thirty years, are experiencing the logistical challenge of navigating the child-support arrangements that result from the spawn of multiple partners and somehow their life seems a little more complicated than yours. (if that is possible)

Four – you can count the bullets you escaped

Oh yes, you could be married at this point.

You could be married to the moody musician that became a life-long stoner.

In some alternate universe you could have had your crush on the Phys Ed teacher turn into reality – in which universe you would now be married to someone 60plus that was now well instituted into the wearing of polyester tracksuits.

Five – there is alcohol

…and unlike the late 80s, where your access to alcohol relied on:

• swiping swigs of your beer-drinking Dad’s unloved Christmas-present-bottle of Johnny Walker
• that manipulated birth certificate, artfully mocked up on your Olivetti then bathed in a wash of blue food dye (80s kids know precisely what I mean)

this time round, its perfectly legit, and this time round you are unlikely to end up in the school sick bay after the year 12 social, claiming migraine-induced projectile vomiting.

Just sayin…..

 

If you are taking your online dating a little more seriously than this blog, check out this website for fabulously simple online dating advice.

What Your Celeb Crush Says About You: Robbie Williams

May is a tricky month.

As a resident of the southern hemisphere it is a dismal time, a moment where we plummet towards winter, a time where you realise that persisting with peep-toes in the office will signal to your colleagues some kind of desperation ie

• You can’t afford a closed-toe shoe
• You are hanging on to summer with that same level of denial you had when you clung to your battered Nokia when everyone else went i-Phone

Neither are desirable perceptions.

In the greyness of a May day in Melbourne, I was fortunate to be in the company of my besties. This is a crew who can turn around even the most potent seasonal affective disorder given that their stellar company is exacerbated by virtue of being accompanied by carbs and chocolate. In good company, I let loose with a plaintive cry.

I need a blog idea. Anyone?

A little bit of *crickets*, a little bit of chomping down on some excellent Vietnamese food, a little proffering of material from an acquaintance recently relegated to single. (but a little too recent to blog about given my rule that the singleton needs to be able to smile about it before I blog about it)

So I moved back into fertile territory, a place I can always probe for fodder without angst. Celebs.

And, lo, it spawned not just a single blog but something I can translate into a series of blogs with all the spin-into-a-franchise potential of the ‘New Housewives Of’ brand (with only slightly less commercial viability)

Here goes…

The ‘What Does Your Celebrity Crush Say About You’ series.

I should point out at the outset that this is not about what any given celebrity might SAY ABOUT YOU in the event that they met you/knew you/tweeted about you (because, lets face it, unless you are Lindsay Lohan and you featured on her back-of-a-napkin conquest list that ‘accidentally’ got into publication, this is not vaguely mutual)

This is a bit like as astrology in that ‘if you are a Pisces, this is what’s going down for you’ ie if you have a crush on Robin Thicke, this is what it means.

Let me put it all on the line and throw out a case in point.

 40s chick has an extreme obsession with Robbie Williams.

If you don’t understand how deep this obsession is, you should ponder this anecdote.

40s chick has a serious day job that involves major corporations. A major corporation recently introduced a new person into 40schick’s world that caused a little jolt, in that his first sentence was uttered in a such an authentic Robbie Williams Stoke-On-Trent accent that 40s chick whirled sideways, thinking that a rock star had entered her midst rather than simply a mid-level software geekster with a rather compelling tone of voice.

.40s chick now listens to status reports on recent software improvements with her eyes half-closed because the voice is the same is what she’s heard on her oft-replayed DVD of Robbie at Knebworth.  (the gentleman in question looks nothing like Robbie)

Moving right along…

Here is what you can discern about yourself if your celeb crush is Robbie Williams

You know that first impressions aren’t everything

Simply put

• Bad, bad hair highlights
• Untamed eyebrows
• A jumper over a soccer top, and
• God-forbid, a fob-chain

doesn’t preclude a pop-star obsession far beyond that youthful period where you realise that Froot Loops aren’t really breakfast, vodka isn’t really lunch and a toasted sandwich isn’t dinner.

You can wait out an addiction

I can distinctly recall a Christmas family gathering where somehow Robbie Williams came up (perhaps it was a little chit chat about Robbie’s Melbourne December concert) and I took advantage of the food-coma-lull between main course and dessert to declare

‘but Mumma, Robbie doesn’t do drugs anymore’

This was done with tremendous conviction as if I had fronted the pop-star to sit alongside Aunty Janet and needed to smooth the way.

Shortly after, the Rob-ster celebrated his 33rd birthday in rehab.

You are insightful enough to picture ANYONE as a daddy

This is about foresight. This is about belief. This is about optimism.

This is about a belief that the right woman can convert a man.

(unfortunately the right woman wasn’t a 40schick who grew up in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne but was a famous American soap-opera star with a lovely smile and excellent, excellent hair)

In any case, the bad-boy became a daddy.

The upshot?

• Robbie is still touring and hasn’t had to delay concerts in favour of rehab stints
• 40s chick has tickets to his Melbourne concert in September with some besties
• 40s chick can hear software updates delivered in Robbie-like tone on any given Wednesday

Therefore, all is good.

Your turn. Tell me your celeb crush and I will tell you what it means……

George Has Left The Building

It was less than 12 months ago.

I was in a veritable Magic Faraway Tree of topsy turvy worlds.

Why?

George Clooney had been ditched by his girlfriend

#stilldontgetit

This week, the media is awash with tales of how the seemingly-eternal bachelor has been nabbed/tamed/snagged by an uber-savvy brunette who has already earned the moniker of HRH (Human Rights Hottie) and at every opportunity is flashing dark locks and some seriously chiselled cheekbones

Amal Allamuddin

All the while:

•  single women the world over, regardless of the likelihood that they would have ever crossed paths with GC, let alone done any snaring), and

• every gay man who believed George’s procession of girlfriends was a carefully choreographed ruse

sighed…. just a little.

Let’s just put aside our feelings that WE might have been that ONE, and consider here what it would have taken to snare the world’s most eligible bachelor.

The Good News

1.  You don’t need to be blonde. Since 40s chick has a long history of the relentless pursuit of blonde in an ongoing battle with my genetic predisposition to mousey, and to the detriment of my credit card balance, this is cold, cold consolation.
2. You can have a major shoe shortcoming.       This will include inappropriate combining of short boots and beige stockings, (who does peep toes with stockings?)

.

 

and a very clashy approach to flats

The Bad News

1.  You need to be Oxford educated and speak three languages (and the Braille/lala-speak that comes out of you after 1.5 bottles of Veuve does not count as one of these)
2. You need to have clients that include Kofi Annan and Julian Assange, you need to have a role advising the UN and you might also need to be the legal adviser to the King of Bahrain. Being an occasional letter-writer to the Herald-Sun and a protester to the local council on the topic of inappropriate suburban medium-density housing (hello, City Of Boroondara!) may not count.
3. At the tender age of 36, when 40s chick was still trying (and failiing) to nail that pivotal decision point where you walk away from Tequila shots, you need to be capable of representing the interests of the entire population of the Ukraine.

Which only goes to prove, that instead of George being the one who got nabbed, it might just have been the reverse, that Amal was the uber-catch of the singleton world and that it is GC that is counting his lucky stars that he planted an ethically-mined sparkler on someone with slightly more ambitious life goals than a blonde lady-wrestler.

Just sayin….

If you are taking your online dating a little more seriously than this blog, check out this website for fabulously simple online dating advice.

 

SATC for the Uninitiated

This weekend, 40s chick was on a running camp weekend.

Running camp weekend is dominated by females and is therefore also known as

• Eating cheese and crackers weekend
• Supporting regional wineries weekend
• Jaffas-as-breakfast-food weekend
• Sobbing over chick flicks weekend

With our ‘bunkhouse’ comprising 7 females, with *Donald (*name suppressed for many many reasons) being the lone male soldier and valiant partner of one of the other females (and somewhat north-facing in terms of the age demographic) he was always going to find it an interesting sociological foray. From about the South Gippsland Highway turnoff when Donald realised he was about to spend the weekend housed with 7 women, he was probably wondering how it was going to go down (as well as looking for the nearest haven of testosterone for some kick-to-kick and sports talk).

Instead, Donald found himself in the company of some endorphin-fuelled, carb-loaded females perusing a chick-flick selection that included When Harry Met Sally, 4 Weddings and a Funeral and Love Actually amongst others. (at this point, despite his running program not calling for it. I would have been unsurprised to see him flee at speed for the hills)

Instead, when the consensus was that the first Sex and the City Movie was the obvious choice, he looked mometarily startled, but, separated from his partner who had gone off for a solo short run hit-out or some such, accepted a glass of chilled sauv blanc, took a seat by the cheese platter and settled in for the afternoon.

Here’s what he learned:

Even a proposal can be too pedestrian

 Knowing what we knew, except for the one SATC Movie v1 virgin amongst us, we all understood that Big’s pragmatic proposal to Carrie was not the stuff of which NYC dreams were made.

 

Big: Would you want to get married?

Carrie: Well, I didn’t, didn’t think that was an option.

Big: What if it was an option?

Carrie: Why? What? Do you want to get married?

Big: I wouldn’t mind being married to you. Would you mind being married to me?

Carrie: No, no, not, not if that’s what you wanted. I mean, is, is that what you want?

Big: I want you. So, ok.

Carrie: So really, we’re, we’re getting married?

Big: We’re getting married. Should we get you a diamond?

Carrie: No. No. Just get me a really big closet.

Despite the mention of extravagant clothes-storage-real-estate, this does not reek of romance.

 

40s chicks have baggage, or at the very least a bunch of stuff that requires storage or removalists.

So much so that ‘it took four friends, three days to put twenty years into thirty-eight boxes’

So if you think that you can just spare three shelves and a metre of hanging space in your bachelor pad….

Think again.

The most sensible woman can go all Bridezilla

Somehow, in the space of about 17 minutes, albeit with Vogue Magazine and a bunch of couture designers egging her on, Carrie’s sweet little vintage dress (cue Antony ‘the bride wore no-one’) got kicked to the kerb by a coffin sized container of silk courtesy of Vivienne Westwood.

 

However unlikely this is to happen to your everyday 40s chick, be very very aware that the arrival of the dress-in-a-box will jack your intimate gathering into full scale nuptial-ganza and mean that your ability to name every guest sharing your dream-day is about as likely as Lindsay Lohan correctly listing her hookups (even non-chronologically) whilst sober.

Chicks will always cry, at random

In the manner of the best of running-camp-esque-relay, we all managed to turn on tears rather sequentially (no point in shedding hydration simultaneously). For some it was the Brooklyn Bridge scene where Miranda forgave Steve’s cheating, for the broody ones it was when Charlotte moved from apparently-barren to unexpectedly-pregnant, for others it was when Samantha gained a belly from emotional eating (hey, we’ve all been there right?)

The collective tears shed that afternoon over fictitious characters, if harvested and recycled would have rendered all our long-run-day electrolyte drinks redundant.

Hell hath no fury like the bestie of a woman scorned

After Carrie’s jilting, she was shrouded in a sea of tulle-clad bridesmaids, in the form of her three besties, who all plotted ways to ease Carrie’s pain and wreak revenge on Big in whatever form they could muster.

Kudos to Charlotte who taught our hapless observer Donald that upon ditching someone’s bestie you could expect a well-rehearsed ‘I curse the day you were born’ from a pregnant ally followed by the depositing of an unexpected dose of amniotic fluid on your lovely leather loafers.

 

Needless to say, Donald has signed up for the blokey-bunkhouse when 2015 camp rolls around.

 

If you are taking your online dating a little more seriously than this blog, check out this website for fabulously simple online dating advice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The 40s Chick Guide to Footy Dads

If you are still in the depths of despair or trapped in one of the four stages of breakup grief, be supremely confident of this fact.

You. Will. Date. Again.

It WILL happen.

From the combined knowledge of a Glo-Mesh clutch of 40s chicks (now there’s a collective noun if ever I’ve coined one) I’m told that a 40s chick rite of passage is to date one of the following:

•   A Hipster

• A footy dad

If it’s the latter, and this is new territory for you, there are a few tips for the uninitiated.

The kiddies ALL look the same

 Even if you have navigated the first six months of dating a dad, just as in ten years you are not going to pick that kid out of a juvenile delinquent line-up, you have zero chance of cheering on the right kidlet in a game of under-9s.

They all look the same. Scruffy. Muddy. Unidentifiable.

40s chick tip: ask what number the kid plays under so you have some chance of ‘Whoohoo’ing at the right moment.

Write it on your hand if you must #highschoolthrowback

Sunday Morning Coming Down

Kids’ footy involves Sunday mornings. Yes. Sunday Mornings. Google them if it’s been a while since you’ve seen your last one.

Your previous life: you’d be shaking off a hangover and checking facebook to fill in the gaps about what went down the night before.

New life: you will be squinting into lacklustre autumn sunlight trying to feign interest in a small kid running round after a footy.

40s chick tip? Everyone carries a travel mug or takeaway coffee cup. Good? Maybe a Gwyneth-esque lemongrass and ginger tea in your travel mug. Better? A Bloody Mary with a little extra vodka to mute the impact of 36 humans yelling (and that’s just the parents).

The Chicks Frock Up

This is incomprehensible.

In an environment which screams you best layer up, snuggle a scarf and slide into Skechers, the chicks are rocking Sass and Bide, cashmere-merino blends and suede boots.

Suede boots, I ask you!?

Dust. Mud. The likelihood that a red-Gatorade-fuelled kiddie will step on you and imprint footy studs on your suede. None of these are a place where you parade a light-coloured suede item of footwear.   A lamb has donated its life and the underside of its skin for your footwear and you take it to a local football field, subjecting it to unpaved paths and random spatter?

If there was a PETA equivalent for the protection of animal by-products once they have left the animal, they’d be ALL OVER these chicks.

There is no logic, as far as I can see, in frocking up for kids footy.   It’s a desperate attempt to have a WAG moment, with nary a Brownlow Medal red carpet nor Beckham in sight.

Yet still they do.

Canteen food

There’s a chance that you have not yet shed your 40s chick lifestyle and there is indeed a Bloody Mary in your travel mug. This is the ONLY scenario that would see you appreciative of footy canteen food.

On the upside, you can get a hot dog, a bucket of chips and a drink for less than the lunchtime CBD prices of a ham and cheese toastie. The downside? You will have to wait behind a couple of 8 year olds who ONLY want a red/green giant snake, causing Meg from the canteen to madly sort the blue/green, orange/yellow and blue/purple gelatinous rejects with grudging precision to get to the coveted red/green ones.

During this time one of two things will happen:

• You’ll have moved on to a craving for a banana fritter which will have you sneaking off to the local suburban chinese restaurant

• You’ll be devouring the reject snakes

Either way, your BMI will not thank you tomorrow.

It never ends

Whilst you think your obligation is over by midday, you will have only bought yourself time for lunch and a nanna nap, as you’ll be right back there at 5pm for a curious phenomenon.

‘Match Report’

Yes. This is a thing. One where the under-9s coach, fuelled by an unrequited desire to be the next Mick Malthouse, will be silencing the room with a look, then imparting the benefit of his decades of football knowledge via the match report.

There are a lot of other things that you could be doing at 5pm on a Sunday. I know this as I realised long ago that this is the witching hour of the weekend, the border between weekend happiness and despair as the Pre-Monday blues set in. I’ve developed many a technique to stave off the malaise of 5pm Sundays. It used to be the window for ironing work shirts until I realised that this just brings on the malaise with a furious potency (I also discovered that the application of a hair straightener to the visible shirt elements – lapels and collar – was much quicker and just as effective)

Far more joie de vivre can be obtained from a glass of something chilled and an episode of Postcards.

Nothing joyous to be found in observing an under 9s coach relishing his 15 minutes of suburban fame.

40schick tip? Go all 50s housewife and offer to stay at home and tend to dinner. Whack something into the oven and give yourself the Postcards treatment.

Above all? Don’t worry. You’ve smashed glass ceilings, negotiated major contracts and nailed public speaking. You’ll be fiiiine. You’ll know this once you find yourself applying business transformation techniques to the operation of the sausage sizzle.

You’ve got this.

If you are taking your online dating a little more seriously than this blog, check out this website for fabulously simple online dating advice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Can You Reconcile With Your Ex?

If you have just exited a long term relationship, the concept of reconciling with your ex is going to cross your mind sooner or later.

The only question is when:

•  if you were the dump-er, then it will cross your mind six months later when you’ve been on 13 unsuccessful first dates, been stalked by an online dater, been shrouded by a waft of unfounded office gossip about you and the new intern and you are feeling that somehow what you had before appears now to be a much simpler life to where you are now
• if you were dumped? The thought will emerge about 3 miliseconds after the event.
• if you claim it was an amicable separation? About 6 milliseconds after you were dumped.

However it went down, the question will still come up. Its there any chance you will reconcile with the ex?

Much depends on what went down in the interim.

Whilst you can emulate that grand US military tradition of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’, there are some post-break-up events that will shatter the dream of reconciliation faster than Kim Kardashian exits a marriage.

There cannot be a love child

Nothing will crush a reconciliation hope faster than the insertion of a miniature human into the mix.

We could consult Hugh Grant, King of the Love Child, having fathered a child born to a Swedish TV producer, somewhat awkwardly book-ended by his first and second child with partner Tinglang Hong, the latter Grant-sprog happening along only three months after the love child.

But with an unmatched ability to demonstrate a hang-dog,’Geez, at least I’ve moved on from Divine Brown’ face,

….I suspect that life may have gone on and that the only fall-out is the need to tightly choreograph an ongoing set of kiddie birthday parties.

However I think that we mere mortals would struggle with this fallout.

No one goes to jail

 Readers, you can take great cheer that one of my non-negotiables is unlikely to apply to you unless you’ve been in a relationship with anyone who has featured in the Underbelly franchise.

However this could unwittingly happen to the best of us (and I’m pretty sure Anne Hathaway could be regarded as the best of us)

Poor Anne became embroiled with a slightly shady real estate developer that ended up entangled up with the IRS and the FBI and henceforth experienced the messiness that goes with shenanigans with any of the three letter acronyms of the US government.

We’d applaud Anne for her statement ‘I broke up with my boyfriend, and two weeks later he was sent to prison for fraud. I mean, we’ve all been there, right, ladies?’

So feel free to consider reconciliation unless you find yourself consistently lurking outside the Dandenong Magistrates Court.

Else, run.

There’s no tryst with your bestie

There can be absolutely, positively NO co-mingling between your ex and your friends. The point of no return is any kind of contact with your bestie. Whether it is lobbying for support in his sneaky tactics to have you return or a Facebook campaign to defame your image, this is NOT ON.

What is beyond NOT ON is hooking up with your bestie.

Just ask Heather Locklear – whose ex Richard Sambora moved on to her bestie Denise Richards in a rockstar-groupie-heartbeat and caused her to utter the most curious of statements like ‘yes, I got together with Heather’s soon-to-be ex-husband, but no, I didn’t have an affair with him’

Statements like that have L’Oreal revisiting the concept of a new kind of serum to apply to split-hairs.

No embarrassing re-invention

You cannot consider reconciliation if, in your absence, your ex goes through a complete image makeover and thenceforth bears no resemblance to that person with which you had a long term relationship. This includes but is not limited to

• transformation into a hipster.,
• re-invention on par with Shane Warne

It needs to appear as if nothing more untoward occurred than an innocent press of the PAUSE key on the remote, which means NOTHING like the full midlife-re-invent-enchilada.

Anything less than this set of transgressions? You can entertain the idea of a reconciliation, on the offchance of whatever that thing that split you is no longer likely to freak either you of you like the equivalent of the toothpick under fingernails that first caused you to divvy up belongings.

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If you are taking your online dating a little more seriously than this blog, check out this website for fabulously simple online dating advice.

 

 

 

 

 

Consciously Uncoupling, the Most Zen of Break-ups

A couple of weeks ago, I observed the first ‘we’re in splitsville’ announcement on facebook. Not by any rockstar, supermodel or reality TV D-lister, but by an everyday person. It was written in the style of a celebrity breakup, minus the ‘request for privacy at this difficult time’, and inclusive of a statement that the message was not posted in a call for sympathy, but just to avoid having to tell everyone one by one when they next met. A momentary quandary ensued as I contemplated whether pressing ‘like’ was appropriate. But there’s something efficient and appealing in this mechanism, and having been a person who announced her marriage breakup to her parents by text message some three months after the event, I can relate to delivery of news in that fashion.

What is far more tedious is the procession of celebrity breakup messages, and this week they were all topped by Gwyneth Paltrow announcing the end of her marriage to Chris Martin. Now I find Gwyneth particularly loathsome at the best of times, and on more than one occasion have wanted to inform her what she could do with her authentically-ancient rustic earthenware bowl of quinoa, hand-roasted grain by grain and nestling meditatively in a nest of shredded kale, but I have a general philosophy not to stoop to twitter trolling. She topped it this week by trying to out-zen every celebrity breakup that has gone before, describing it as a decision to ‘consciously uncouple’. In a week bereft of any kind of humour this proved to be fodder for every radio station, comedian and commentator as we all tried to understand if this was gluten-free-speak for divorcing.

From someone who has named her website after nothing (Goop) and her child after a fruit (Apple) we should be unsurprised to note new phraseology emerging from the Paltrow camp. However it seems to be very Gwyneth-esquely grounded in its origin from a term used by two divorce specialists in LA who aimed to bring ‘wholeness to the spirits of both people’ during the process (which is about as LA as you can get)

I’d imagine Gwyneth has had some time to contemplate (whilst inhaling bergamot essential oil and pondering the perfection of a lotus flower) the best wording of such an announcement, with the benefit of reviewing the announcement content alongside subsequent behaviour on the part of the couples in question. Here’s what she could have learned from those who inhabit the celeb-stratosphere.

Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries

From Kimmy,

“I had hoped this marriage would be forever” (cue collective groan as we all understood that it had been 72 days, which meant at flat-line amortisation rates the grotesquely OTT engagement ring had cost close to a lazy $28,000 per day)

“We remain friends and wish each other the best”, slightly at odds with Kris’s ‘I’m devastated to learn she filed for divorce” and comprehensively at odds with their subsequent behaviour which included him suing her for a divorce based on fraud whilst Kim worked simultaneously on a new handbag line and becoming impregnated with Kanye West’s child.

Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher

From Demi:  ‘there are certain values and vows that I hold sacred, and it is in this spirit that I have chosen to move forward with my life’

ie – you cheated on me, you SOB, and its going to be messy. And expensive.

Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt

I realise we are going back to the archives here, but there was a nuance in this breakup announcement that was a little unique ie ‘we would like to explain that our separation is not the result of any speculation reported by the tabloid media’, said media being in a frenzy much like a Western Australian shark population circling a coconut-oil-basted clutch of surfers.

Sure, it was not a result of that speculation but a more fact-based scenario where Mr and Mrs Smith were taking their conjugal duties seriously off-screen.

For the record and in the interests of full-disclosure?

I’m #teamaniston.

Marc Anthony and J-Lo

J-Lo…the roots of the Anthony downfall were grounded in the fact that she ever ditched Ben Affleck in the first place (actually, that whole thing was incomprehensible to me…)

However once the Anthony era was done, her statement that she had ‘come to an amicable conclusion on all matters’ seemed to only have the tiniest discrepancy – that the scope of the amicable conclusion was unlikely to extend to her installing boy-toy back-up dancer as boy-toy back-up daddy to the Lo-Anthony twins.

As for you Gwyneth? My predictions are these:

One – You will shortly understand that immediately after conscious uncoupling you will undergo a period where

• your blender moves away from green smoothies to hi-octane margaritas, and
• shortly thereafter conscious uncoupling becomes unconscious coupling

Two – You and Russell Brand will be swapping yoga mats and harem pants in a Hollywood heartbeat.

Mark my words……

If you are taking your online dating alittle more seriously than this blog, check out this website for fabulously simple online dating advice.

Tough Breakup? Here’s Your Social Media Strategy

There was a brief moment when I turned away from writing fluffy blogs, spawned as they are by a glass of sauv blanc and characterised by overuse of celebrity references and hard-won dating stories.

Instead readers, as incongruous as it sounds, I attempted to focus equivalent energy on trying to be a grown-up and furthering my career in my day job (which is about as far removed from dating blogging as Jennifer Aniston is from a grandchild)

In that phase, about as long-lived as a double episode of The Biggest Loser, I subscribed to all manner of Female CEO/Business Chicks/Glass-Ceiling Busters/Lean-In Coaching sites in effort to educate myself on what was required (without having to invest time and energy in actually attending something in person)

What I understood from this, is that just as every gal in the 90s required a brick-like mobile phone, an embossed business card and a Holden Commodore company car,

the 2014 everywoman needs only this…..

 A Social Media Strategy

Unfortunately, I lost interest in this with similar speed to John Mayer dumping his latest chick-on-the-rebound.

Intead, I spent quality couch-time trying to define the following variant

 A Social Media Strategy For The Newly Heartbroken

I had a vague notion that this should resemble a 12 step program, until I realised that the current era has NO TIME for a 12 step program and I should try to nail the description of this baby in no more than 6.

Here goes….

 One – Unfriend

 Upon being ditched (lets assume this is how it went down rather than one of those ‘amicable breakups’ that really means that you got ditched and are being sooooo  brave) you need to immediately de-friend the ex.  You will reap an immediate sense of achievement if you are the first to execute the un-friend transaction.

Secondly, in those moments of Chardonnay-fuelled weakness, this will prevent you scrolling through his FB page analysing every event posted since the moment you broke up.

Hang on – who are we kidding?  You aren’t going to ONLY do this self-destructive trawling in alcohol fuelled moments of weakness, you are going to track that guy over morning coffee before tackling work email, on a lunchbreak over sushi and, if time-pressed, you will skip over those news feed articles that alert you to a cancer-busting diet so that you can scan the feed for entries that are any indication of your ex’s state of mind.  You may think this will only happen for a month, but there is a never-ending stream of trigger events ahead that will have you clutching at those facebook straws.

Tip: Don’t BLOCK the ex.  This will prevent him having any access to your carefully chosen procession of changes to your profile pic which will show you having a riotous time in his absence.

 Two –  Instagram peeping is taboo

 Don’t be getting all righteous about having executed step one while you continue taking sneaky peeks at his instagram account.  Unfollowing his instagram account is an even easier step than defriending on facebook, and equally important in severing that digital umbilical cord.

Don’t compromise the healing of your inner self by un-following him on Instagram and subsequently sneaking peeps of him and his new squeeze using the ‘explore’ function.

You may be just as culpable as the guy who first merged Vodka and Red Bull without realising, that on the whole…

NO GOOD CAN COME OF THIS

 Three – Twitter – unfollow

 Again, there is going to be a certain satisfaction in being the first to unfollow.

In fact, my brief entrepreneurial research suggests that if I was vaguely serious about pursing a life beyond my current day job I’d be working day and night on an app that was along the lines of ‘DITCHEM v1.0’ which would allow for instantaneous severing of all FB, Instagram and Twitter ties in a single transaction with an optional pop-up box that allowed for some commentary on dontdatehimgirl.com for a little review narrative just like you do when you’ve had some sub-standard service at a trendy new bar.

Anyhow (let’s count to ten while someone else reserves the domain name ditchem.com) unfollow immediately and try to resist the temptation to check hourly whether he has also unfollowed you.

Same rules apply as above – don’t then be checking his Twitter account manually.

I repeat – no good can come of this.

 Four – avoid the social media stalk of the new chick

 If you have ignored all of the above, you have no one but yourself to blame when, sooner (John Mayer) or later, your replacement makes her appearance.

At this point, you need to make EVERY POSSIBLE EFFORT to avoid doing the stalk on her.

There’s only the tiniest possibility of redemption in this, in the event that you find that she is less athletic, less blonde, less svelte or less accomplished (assuming you also sink to the depths of a Linked-In stalk) than you.  Only in a Nora Ephron movie  (and may the goddess of chick-flicks rest in peace) will this happen.

Even if you have a momentary thrill from the realisation of any of the above, it will be short-lived if your heart is still in a state where it will not be salved by any of the above because the fact is that he is not with you.

All this sounds kinda negative right?

Best that we devote our final two strategies in the half-baked version of the 12-step program to positive social media strategies that you can implement….

 Five – overachieve, very publicly

 If you’ve subscribed to the advice above, you’ve cut some cords.  However, in a strategy so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a rat (props to Blackadder), we’ve not disconnected you from your various mutual friends.

So this is the time to use your various social media outlets to

• Post pics at a hot new club opening (even if you are merely a photo-bomb participant with no more than a peep-toe on the red-carpet or fingertip on a velvet rope)
• Publish commentary on the new activities that you have taken up (salsa dancing, bikram yoga, crossfit anyone?)  Extra points if they are like the examples here and will result in the honing of a hot new body.
• Overachieve career-wise – talking blithely about your move into managing a team the size of a small suburb (with, of course, the support of a small entourage that you can now regard as your own)

Six – go silent

After doing the overachieve, there’s a distinct advantage in then disappearing entirely off grid.  It gives an air of mystery, of having moved on.

If you still living in the fantasy world of him keeping track of you, you can potentially assume this is giving him some pause to wonder what is keeping you so busy that you can’t even FB

If he has no concept of this because he’s stopped caring about you – as is likely if he did the dumping – then you still have the benefit of being off enjoying life without the compulsion to post about it.

Hint: akin to that tree falling in the foreset- a sunset is still beautiful sunset, even if you don’t get a chance to post it on FB.

So, tuck these hints away in case you even find yourself in the been dumped/need strategy scenario.  Better yet? If you want to hark back to that simpler time of Commodores and Brick Mobiles, go all old-school and don’t just bookmark this post.

Tap into your 90s Officeworks hardware and LAMINATE this sucker.

If you are taking your online dating a little more seriously than this blog, check out this website for fabulously simple online dating advice.

Tinder. No. Just no.

So.  I have this friend who feels like her early 40s single life has hit rock bottom.  Why does she believe this? Not because her dates comprise men with the looks of Sheldon Cooper, the intelligence of Joey from Friends and the relationship longevity of John Mayer.

No. She thinks she has bottomed out because she is trawling for love on RSVP.

But I have tremendous news.  It’s on a par with the glad tidings of comfort and joy that we celebrate at Christmas (and who doesn’t love a festive free pass for unlimited alcoholic beverage intake and a day-long calorific binge, punctuated by naps?)

It’s a short message. It’s going to be ineptly expressed. It’s scientifically and statistically unproven, but I am here to tell her that I have executed an experiment that proves that she has not in fact hit the true dumpster-diving low of online dating.

My dear friend, you have not hit rock bottom.  Why?

Because you are not yet on Tinder.

I can’t discount the fact that Tinder News linked to one of my previous posts,
which makes this one the equivalent of:

•  Kicking Zuckerberg  in the head in the playground then hoping Facebook ads will make me millions
• Holding out on Steve Jobs until the 4s in 2012 and then going all i
• Dissing James Packer , and therefore never getting even an entry level job in his media emprire.

But I do believe firmly in there being something a teensy bit more involved in finding true love than playing a version of ‘Snap’ online.

If RSVP is the equivalent of a fairly harmless one-too-many Sunday afternoon Sauv Blancs or a dabble into the lightest of recreational drug habits, Tinder is the moment that you look sideways at crystal meth and think that ‘heyyy…… that sparkly stuff ain’t all bad’

Why?  There are many perils my friend.

 One – its entirely about photos, not words.

I get the ‘picture tells a thousand words’, but I’d like at least, MAYBE, the 25 words or less that it takes to win a supermarket cat food competition in order to snag me. Tinder makes this entirely optional. In fact, in your haste to sign up, you can just throw in any old selection from your facebook pics and need not say a word about yourself.

So instead of scanning a written profile for your top 5 danger words?  You’ve got nothing.

You have, instead, a hastily, app-generated concoction of photos.

What will this mean?

In many of these photos, you’ll be unable to discern who the chap of choice actually is.  Is he that hot guy in the middle of the three? Or one of the two very average blokes serving as bookends? Although slightly more likely to be successful than Tatts, it’s still not the kind of odds that would have you dashing to the TAB.

 Two – he’s local

 If you don’t pay due attention, your Tinder settings mean you sign away your location rights as blithely as your Friday night check-in at Ponyfish Island.  So anyone you swipe in the affirmative knows the approximate location of your abode with all the potential menace of that regrettable fling that is now the subject of an intervention order.

So if you haven’t taken pains to only post on Tinder your Masquerade ball pics or the brunette moment you had in July last year, you may very well be recognised at the local Safeway.

 Three – There’s no ‘I take that back’ button

The tinder universe is a minefield, just waiting for a rookie mistake,

You have to be on your guard and have military-sniper-like concentration to avoid pulling the trigger prematurely on the Heckler and Koch and SWIPING RIGHT ON THE WRONG GUY.

If you do this, please understand that if you fire without due consideration, there is no going back.

I now understand, that if your focus was momentarily distracted by a Sunday afternoon re-play of The Blacklist, or a lunch where carbohydrates were outweighed by Cab Sauv that your Tinder hotlist now comprises of a guy:

• in full Gene Simmons Kiss makeup
• wearing a beanie with bear ears
• who has no visual identity and has chosen to portray himself as a cute Whippet

If you do this, be aware that the Tinder gods give you no ‘Undo’ button to allow you to STEP AWAY from the consequences of your inattention.  Gene Simmonds guy is now going to pursue you to the ends of the earth.

At first glance, there is no unfriend button on Tinder

 Four – Shared Friends

 In some ways this might be good, in that the guy where you squint your eyes, look sideways and take into consideration the cuteness of his whippet makes you think that he’s worth consideriing…then heyyyyy… he knows someone you know!

Instantly there is an avenue where you can validate his single status, his lack-of-stalker-ism and his level of prior baggage.

Alas, this is only useful if your friend in common is someone with whom you are in recent contact as opposed to someone you might have shared a West Coast Cooler in the 80s whose opinion was only valid when it came to the social validity of white-ankle-boots in high school.

But there’s upside………….

But hey, there is always an upside! You can revert to semi-content-rich RSVP, or the attraction-algorithmically charged e-Harmony at any time.  And if you are feeling down about yourself?

Just swipe LEFT at will and plaster a big fat NOPE on all of them until you feel better. You aren’t at rock bottom if you are dispensing rejection at will…..

If you are taking your online dating a little more seriously than this blog, check out this website for fabulously simple online dating advice.