From stiletto’d single to suburban stepmother…

Finding myself suddenly single in my 40s, this blog became a way of documenting, sometime graphically, every pitfall, every bad choice and every unusual thing that happens when you are a rookie in an online dating world. For light relief and reassurance that it can happen to anyone , I threw in the occasional examination of single celebrities that were being just as foolish as me.

After a year or two in a slick city apartment, creating the Aussie version of a SATC lifestyle,  regressing to the cereal-for-dinner diet of a uni student, I met a Dad.

Here’s what I learned…..

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.

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.

 

 

 

 

 

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.

Why you can’t be friends on Facebook

So many conundrums exist today that didn’t exist when you were last single that you are going to spend a certain amount of time, tears and tequila navigating rookie mistakes.

Amongst those myriad questions … at what point in your fledgling relationship do you become friends on Facebook?

If it were me, I’d only be handing over the keys to the Zuckerberg kingdom of my digital history after the prenup was inked, the formalities executed and we are tootling off into the sunset with the tin cans and shaving cream indicating we’ve successfully navigated the  nuptials.

i.e.  once its too late.

Why?

So many perils, friends.

Your history

Open up your profile to your new flame and you give them access the national gallery of your recent history. Unlike your friends, who have gradually negotiated your many transitions in facebook from:

Some key anniversary with mandatory hashtag #soblessed (just so few consonants away from #sobfest)

Some obscure saying about letting go to find love

Some term about the joys of unhindered single life

Something spiritual that tries to give the impression you are now a grounded, non-intervention-order-requiring individual able to function in regular society.

Seeing it unfold in one hit could be unnerving.

Beware – Just as the vague feelings of embarrassment and instinct-to-apologise fade after a big night out (in about the same timespan as the accompanying hangover) you will forget that there was ever evidence posted by you and your friends on FB. If you do not have a robust policy of reviewing and archiving your weekend’s boozy adventures, you need to bear in mind that they are STILL OUT THERE.

So unless you are going to create an entirely fake FB profile that reads like Gwyneth Paltrow’s insanely organically balanced blog, complete with a convincing number of fake FB friends, you do not want someone trawling your entire history. Especially not the one male who was game enough to move on from your carefully chosen online dating pics, handcrafted profile and witty online repartee and thinks you are an extraordinarily grounded and accomplished female. They’ll figure out that you are human eventually, no need to reveal it in one click.

His history

Although you will, as soon as digitally possible, have stalked to the ends of the interwebs your new squeeze, there are certain things that even the most thorough digital exhumation of publicly available information will not reveal. From the entry-level view presented by Linked-in right through the depths of your trawl through the first 25 pages of google search results, you are unlikely to reveal anything near as illuminating as the chardonnay-fuelled scan of the first five albums you have access to if you two become facebook buds.

Things like

• a predilection for posting pics of tattoo models that indicates an obsession with something to which you have no insight, having never approached artificial coloring anything more permanent than having your eyelashes tinted.

•  an ex that has either arms/abs/cheekbones/ankles so perfect that you feel obliged to bury your head under a pillow and sob at your poor form by comparison

•   a collection of mates that indicates he is part of a rebel outlaw motorcycle gang the subject of a current police crackdown

A new and unnerving source of paranoia

As sure as the fact that Lindsay Lohan will again make a mugshot appearance is the fact that once you become FB buddies, you will monitor every new female friend addition with microscopic scrutiny,

If he dare go on a work trip and run into a second cousin, cementing the family reunion via a FB pairing with the noble intent of bringing lost family connections together, you will note this on your daily scan. Following this you will secretly subject her name to CSI style internet forensics to determine WHO ON EARTH IS THIS NEW FEMALE. This will continue to the point you will be executing a drive by of every location evidenced by her blatantly unprotected FB check-ins before your partner even has his car out of the airport car park.

The conunudrum of declaring your relationship on FB

From the moment you link up, you’ll hear a ticking that sounds like low chime of the doomsday bell. Its not your biological clock or throb of the vein on your left ring finger yearning for a Kardashian style rock to crush it into silence.

No.

It’s the heartbeat of facebook waiting for this first of the two of you to falter in the gigantic game of chicken that is updating your relationship status on FB.

I’ve never done this, so I don’t know if someone goes first in saying xxx is in a relationship with yyy and if there is any element of consensus required as there is in the friend request step (or in fact in your generally accepted marriage proposal process).

Perhaps it is a matter of the most digitally-adventurous going first with the declaration and the absence of any objection by the other being accepted as a ‘yerr, alright’

But if you do this, its there forever, until such time as you FBily disentangle yourself and restore yourself to single. Although this is less expensive and requires far less paperwork and judicial intervention than a divorce, it does place a gigantic heartbreak symbol update in the newsfeed of yours and every one of your friends.

FB is democratic in this scenario, caring not which party created the digital disconnection and therefore never knowing whether you feel heartrbroken or not. This will cause all your friends to offer you pitying comments, the unedifying digital version of the cheezels, wine and DVDs that real friends brought over last time your heart was in jeopardy.

It also allows your less charitable acquaintances to pore over your history and declare that they saw the seeds of doom were sown from the beginning and be infuriatingly smug – but in this case at least you can unfriend them

.

In short, your FB friendship is gold, don’t just give it up.

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

Dodging the Wrecking Ball

The recent train wrecks amongst our more junior celebrities has caused me to ponder the advice that I would now give to my 20 year old self about to who to date and how to conduct myself.

Although there’s plenty to learn from in my own history, learning from one’s own mistakes is nowhere near as much fun as indulging in celebrity disaster stories. Besides, mine aren’t plastered across the interwebs for google to find (and my facebook account only goes back to 2008)

Dear 20 year old version of 40s chick, 

Have vision

I know you have no apparent psychic tendencies, but you need to be aware that what is appealing now can turn bad as quickly as you can say Disney starlet meltdown.

…..

There’s a theme here – it’s the talented clean-cut ones that seem to go horribly wrong. Pick a Mr Average and they are unlikely to do a Bieber on you.

Resist the bad-boy

Just as every head of lustrous locks could be sheltering inner demons and beneath glossy sparkling skin there could lurk a layer of festering rebellion, there’s no reason to go the opposite direction and date the out-and-out bad boy. It might seem like dating the unapologetic damaged rock star or your local recreational weed smoker at least means you know what you are up against, but no.

Take Pete Doherty, lead singer of a band that no one can remember, proven to be even too rock and roll for Kate Moss in her hard core rock chick days. Largely credited with Amy Winehouse’s downfall. You don’t want this.

You might find your local equivalent of a Charlie Sheen, refreshingly upfront about his womanising tactics, to be a known quantity and consider a dabble on a light hearted basis. Consider his philandering ways as an inbuilt safeguard which will eventually grow tiresome for you, hopefully long before he starts to look like someone you’d report to the police if he was hanging round a primary school when the kiddies are let out.

Never overlook the power of a decent wardrobe and a haircut

Even with the beer goggles on, there are some candidates you would never give a second glance. I don’t want to be all Nanna about judging and books and covers, but remind yourself that it is ALL ABOUT THE RAW MATERIAL.

Poor Jon only needed to tone down the animal print and barber the bouffant.

Even George was in trouble whilst he was dabbling with polka dots and a mullet and benefited greatly from letting go of the eyebrows and indulging in some stubble.

Recognise that a moustache is disposable – just know there’s a risk they’ll re-grow it in the 2013 hipster craze

Dear younger version of 40s chick – I promise you, someday the 80s will end

For you? Here a are couple of words of advice.

No vodka before lunch

Much can be learned from the tribulations of Lilo. Most notably, that booze before lunch is a slippery slope. Start early knocking off the vodka and OJs, everything starts to resemble your favourite tipple – orange tan, orange hair

orange jumpsuit

Above all, embrace your inner Disney Princess

Bear in mind that there is nothing wrong with hair extensions, a friendly smile and some prom style fashion.

Shiny polyester in a nude colour does no one any favours and the only person who thinks Miley Cyrus looks better in the second photo is Miley Cyrus.

Good luck!
Love 40s chick xo

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