4 Reasons Why You Won’t Find Love At Bikram

When you’ve got Tinder-fatigue and are tired of rejecting online dating candidates with the handle CheerfullySporty who are the antithesis of either cheerful or sporty, you’ll be casting about for a niche venue to meet vaguely interesting men. If your couch-bound viewing has included late-night ESPN you may have considered Cross-Fit, if you have any remaining faith in Pete Evans you’ll be googling your local Paleo café and if you are on a desperate quest to find a single, dateable bearer of XY chromosomes you might have considered perennially on-fleek Bikram yoga.

40schick has taken one for the team, done the research for the sisterhood and is here to tell you that Bikram is NOT THE PLACE to meet a life partner.

Whilst there is a promise that sweating out every last toxin whilst contorting a body that is about as bendy as a chunk of 4 x 2 might provide you a sweaty selfie that you can plaster on Instagram with a triumphant use of #fitspo, its not going to be the place where you meet someone that you are happy to split a green smoothie with over breakfast into your later years.

Here’s why:

Men in Lycra

I realise that you may be immune to the travesty that is men in a shiny faux-fabric given over-exposure via the weekend cyclists that invade beachside cafes with their barely-sheathed manparts on display like the rear-ends of lady baboons. If they are going to be there where you are slipping into your local to get a long black to accompany a read of the Sunday papers, you are unlikely to go all deer-in-the-headlights at the prospect of finding one in your local Bikram studio.

But it’s going to be tops-off girls.

And there’s no vanity here.

It may be that inner-city Bikram studios are filled with lithe male specimens who can totally own the baring of a shiny torso, but my suburban-based research exposed only dad-bods and a misguided Geoffrey Edelsten lookalike – none of which would ordinarily have dreamed of strutting shirtless, but feel that an overheated room provided adequate licence.

The breathing

There are 26-postures that are going to unveil everything you need to know about your male Bikram counterparts, but none are so telling as the very first breathing exercise.

If you did spot someone who might be an eventual housemate, any ideas of peaceful Sunday sleep-ins will be dismissed when you hear them attempt the breathing drill.

As a newbie, if coming grips with just where to point your elbows isn’t tricky enough, any thoughts of spending slumber time with any of your fellow uber-sauna-inmates will be quashed by the disconcerting throat breathing that is not just encouraged, but is mandated on the out-breath.

You can’t see what everyone looks like on their out-breath, given you are encouraged to bend all the way back to the point where you can count the tiles on the back wall but what you are hearing sounds 100% Voldemort.

Assumed intimacy

In the same vein that internet dating and snapchat seem to have implanted in the male brain unwritten licence to send you pictures of their favourite bits, something about being barely clad in an overheated studio seems to permit men to give you the complete up-and-down go-over in a way that would seem heinous in your normal social environment.

Sweating together appears to provide a permission slip for assumed intimacy, which just goes to show why so many Bintang-singleted Aussie males think that Bali is the natural home for lame-o pickup moves.

You’re not at your best

Assuming Bikram Choudhury himself has taken a beneficent view of your contributions to humanity and gifted you someone that is worthy of tops-off mini-lycra wearing glory, you are unlikely to be able to whip out a stunning example of your best-self to take him down. Why? As a Bikram newbie you will be:

•  Sweating into your hair at a rate that will render you drowned-rat before you can even say Trikanasana
• Wobblier than a night on Vodka and Red Bull during your attempt at emulating a Balancing Stick
• At extreme risk of projectile vomiting during the Camel pose
• Praying for Savasana
• Leaking mascara

None of this is attractive.

Probably better off cruising the sidelines of local footy looking to snag a Dad-bod.

 

 

BeLinked. The Dating App Based On Linked-In: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

So some smart techno-boffins in the backblocks of Bangalore have come up with BeLinked, the dating app that draws upon your Linked In profile and pairs you up with allegedly like-minded professionals.

It’s like Tinder for the grown-up and employed and allows the swipe-righters amongst us to trawl the urban professionals with slightly less risk of ending up on a blind date with a taxi driver.

In theory it all sounds great. You are connecting with those in your industry, presumably also your socio-demographic and likely someone with the credit-card balance necessary to foot the obstetrics bill as your baby-daddy.

But it has all the inherent perils of mixing business with pleasure. Here’s a few.

The photo

It’s a headshot. It’s the ‘you can trust me with your $70milliion project’ not ‘I’m totally able to go shot-for-shot with you in Tequila laybacks’. In reality the answer is somewhere in between. My linked-in photo is one taken upon exit from a seven day stint at a health-spa. I’m all fresh faced, sparkly eyed and eminently capable, not the girl that wakes up dusty after a few too many sauv blancs after a night on the tiles. In the photo, I’m just far too Gwyneth and not quite enough vodka lime and soda. No fun.

The fakers are still out there

Ironically, the unemployed amongst us have the most time on their hands to craft a fake Linked In profile. When your only commitment is a once-a-week appearance at Centrelink, you have ample time to select great pics and craft a creative backstory complete with a procession of roles within the Top 100 companies. The irony is that if you claim to work for any of the top 4 banks, the tier-one consulting companies or mining magnates, due to sheer weight of numbers, no one will ever figure that you are faking it.

The Missteps

If you do date within your industry, the consequences can be less than desirable. Someone you frivolously swiped, who seemed interesting and engaged when you chatted over lattes in South Melb may in actual fact turn out to be the mailroom dude at BMW Head Office and slightly less than the captain of industry that you might have imagined.

Dating the Competition

There’s a natural order of things. It’s fine to have a desire to connect with someone on a similar wavelength. It’s problematic to place yourself in competition with someone who will fight you to the death to be the one to capture the action points from last week’s board meeting. Its one thing to find someone who has similar goals, it’s another to find someone who will shred you mercilessly for a chance to curry favour in the boss’s eyes.

Embarrassing the Big Guy

There’s a chance that your married boss, smart enough to navigate the requirements of running a listed company, has not been clever enough to anonymise his appearance on a dating app. This leaves you with the Sophie’s Choice of the interwebs. Out your superior for playing away? Or stay mum and capitalise on the fact that someone is eternally grateful for your discretion.

 

There has to be some advantages? Really? Call them out in the comments.

 

 

 

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.

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.

Valentines Day – Step away from the Selfie

And it’s rolled on by again.

The yearly ritual of Valentine’s Day.

Someone coined the alternate phrase ‘Singles Awareness Day’, which earns itself an unfortunate acronym and succeeds in making it sound like some kind of disease for which we should all raise money.

There’s nothing like Valentines Day to bring out the insecurities in the single woman. Despite career achievements, physical accomplishments, travel adventures and cultural intelligence there’s just that teeny feeling inside that you’d just like Simon from the mailroom to call and say there’s been a delivery for you.

In the feelgood blog of the V.DAY weekend, I’m here to point to the ‘have-it-all’ celebrity women who are twice as insecure as you are. We know this not by tell-all interviews or heart-wrenching blogs. How do we know this?

By their selfies.

These selfies are on a scale from the most innocuous to those that scream shrilly for likes like a fishwife screams at a deadbeat husband.

The everygirl selfie

This is the selfie that aims to demonstrate that the celeb is tremendously normal, dateable, quirky and loveable. Relatively harmless, it will see the celeb posing with an everyday prop, undertaking regular-world activities or being, well, just normal.

Take Taylor Swift for example. Being photographed with a donut is really like being photographed with a bestie isn’t it? Every single chick surely has a carbohydrate of choice right?

I’m yet to front up on instagram posing with a plate of Spaghetti Amatriciana, but I can kinda see where she’s headed. Love me, love my carbs / refined sugars?

The ‘Clayton’s’ Selfie

For the non-Aussies in my readership, Clayton’s was a non-alcoholic beverage that tried to pretend it was as good as booze. The catchphrase was ‘the drink you have when you are not having a drink.’

For those 40s chicks who find that anachronistic, bear in mind that it was hip in the 70s and 80s and now has faded into inevitable insecurity.  We have no time for fake booze.

So the Clayton’s Selfie is the Selfie you have when you are not having a Selfie.

It’s the celeb selfie where you are pretending its about something else other than you. Case in point was the recent Kylie Minogue pic. Artfully disguised in a series that illustrated her ah-mazing shoe collection, she posted this.

40schick was totally sucked in.

I saw those red soles, thought: Louboutin.

I saw those coloured sparkles, thought: Arnotts 100s and 1000s biscuits.

Every man in the world, thought: Kylie still has hotpants-butt at age 45.

I’m fairly sure, with her heart still suffering its recent puncturing at the hands of Andres Veloncoso, that she was aiming for the latter.

The Ralphie

Ralph is a fairly icky Men’s magazine. Hence the Ralphie is the Selfie where you’d like to think you are just a moment away from featuring on the front cover.

It’s the selfie where you apply the best instagram filter you can find, where you secretly sneak your pic off to photoshop to lop off some arm fat, fill in some stomach creases and apply an all over tan that even your fave tanning salon can’t nail. You do your best work in a bikini, find a great background and then post it for all the world to see.

If you are Miranda Kerr, there’s no need for this fakery: you get the real deal.

If you are the Kardashian matriarch, this is what you get.

Honestly. If this is what Gran is up to, I fear for North West.

The Kardashelfie

Shorthand for the Kardashian selfie, everything about this reeks of the need for validation. Even in your darkest Valentines Day, vodka-infused, chick-flick watching despair you are by no means as desperate as this. This is a posting that is all about likes, about going viral on the interwebs, about being talked about: good or bad.

In Kim’s case? I want to try to explain it but I just can’t.

Nope. Just can’t.

Its potentially post-partum hormones gone wrong (of which I have no experience) or the need to keep Kanye on his toes (of which I have no experience)

Demi Moore has been guilty of similar.

In Demi’s case, I guess its just “Damn, I paid a lot of money for this body and I may as well post it”

The moral of the story? By this time next year we need to come up with some kind of singles ribbon badge to proclaim singleness with pride and join forces with the other ribbon-wearers.  Over cocktails and war stories about Tinder.

Anything to keep us all off Instagram.

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 missing link in online dating profiles – vices

There’s a gaping hole in the configuration of online dating profiles as far as I can see. No, its not the presence of a lie detector test to flush out the cads that are in fact still married and seeking a fling (although a little x box that glowed a little red light about that fact would be a welcome addition)

It’s a little section that would allow you to elaborate on your vices.

For your vices give a glimmer of insight into your personality far greater than anything that you could verbalise within your written profile. Vices give insights that demonstrate baggage far more vividly than a veiled reference to a desire to live a drama-free life, compassion more instinctive than the profile pic with your World Vision sponsor kid, and a diversity of character far greater than what you can conjure up by vomiting adjectives such as fun-loving, compassionate, caring, genuine, honest, fair etc etc zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Vices give an insight into the areas where you see yourself as slightly less than perfect but can easily transform into something more endearing that this week’s best cute kitten video on youtube. Every vice has a silver lining.

Try these for example. I’m not saying these are mine. Ok, yes, they are mine.

Vice #1 Lockdown for weeks while the Biggest Loser is on

Like a Kardashian drawn to a body-con leopard print, I am dragged into this reality sob-fest drama year after year. After an anxious orientation period resembling to the first term at high school, I will spend at least the first three episodes seeking a couple of champions to cheer and will be sucked in by reality-TV selective editing to feel scorn for a contestant akin to the need to boo-hiss a panto character. I will watch from the couch, usually downing carbs, (see Vice 2) issuing forth a verbal version of #biggestloser twitter feed to no one in particular as my slightly overfed new friends suffer at the mercy of the trainers and the elimination episodes.

Cue gratuitous Commando pic.

But from this you will gain an insight into my softer side. I will cry for their history of being bullied, their banishment to the bigger ladies fashion department, their beaten-down lack of confidence and the brutality of the episode where it is revealed that their lifespan is shortened to a point that it is more likely that Lindsay Lohan will grow old than they will.

Vice #2 Carbs

My name is 40s chick and I am a carboholic. My addiction is selective – confined as it is to the white carbs – the emptiest, glycaemically-overloaded, nutritionally void, overprocessed grains that bear no resemblance to anything found in nature. Present me with a wholegrain and I will sneer and toss my head like a purebred Persian cat rejecting house-label tinned tuna. Observe me after an ill-advised dabble in an Atkins or South Beach high protein diet and I will appear as crazed as a meth addict but seeking the embrace of a slippery linguine rather than a crusty crystal. If you try to show empathy when I’m on some protein-fest by eating an ostensibly healthy Caesar salad, bear in mind that all the while I’m mentally gouging out your eyes just to get at your croutons.

The upside? When I let go of the calorie count, you’ll share in my indulgence in risottos, *home-made lasagne (* but yes, with the béchamel from a jar), spaghetti slathered in pesto sauce and slightly over-engineered toasties. And I’ll indulge your child with Froot Loops – purely so I can filch a handful here and there.

Vice #3 Creams

Risk a glance into my bathroom cabinet and you’ll be suitably reassured by the lack of prescription pill bottles but in the same instance appalled by the oversupply of face creams. From AHA to BB to Zinc, they are all there. From my endless quest for an eye cream to dispense with puffiness, to the guilt-tripped purchases from the nice lady who does my eyebrows and casually makes reference to under-exfoliation, to my obsession with travel-sized kits induced by their sheer cuteness and portability.

The advantage? My every move I make will be improbably fragrant, there’s a chance I won’t resemble a croc-handbag once older, and you’ll be able to swipe a little Elizabeth Arden 8 hour cream if you are having a metrosexual moment.

Vice #4 Running

This and Vice #2 go hand in hand but not in the order you’d expect. I’d don’t carb so that I can run, I run so that I can carb.

It’s a tad unsocial in that my weekend schedule will revolve around training, that despite my terror at the prospect of sub-five-star accommodation I will ditch you for running camp in a heartbeat. You will find that weekends away will inexplicably tie in a rural running event before I can kick back with you and enjoy regional produce.

But it does allow a pleasant indulgence in event T-shirts which in themselves provide reassurance that in the case of nuclear holocaust we’ll be able to clad ourselves for days in fresh T-shirts without the aid of laundry. If I get sucked into one of my hell-hole periods at work, you can be assured that even if the fridge is barren of a scrap of milk or the pantry bare of bread, you will survive in my house via the supply of running gels and powerade.

 

So I get that online dating profiles are all about highlighting karaoke skills that are second only to Beyonce’s, your ability to bust a glass ceiling as if you had the power of Wonder woman’s bracelets and Masterchef-style skills in the kitchen, but its your vices that make you real. Just keep em a little less extreme than Mesdames Cyrus and Lohan and its all good.

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

Finding love (or carbs) in a self-help book

I’m at a health retreat, (and no, its not rehab) Health-retreat characteristics abound

• the superbendy yoga instructor who completely lost her zen trying to wrangle my runner’s hamstrings into something beyond perpendicular and sustained a kick to the forehead
• the chef who, in a nanosecond in the cooking demonstration, whipped up something resembling a rum-ball but with only coconut, lime and dates (and the only time those three things could go well together would be speed-dating over summer cocktails)
• that fragrance wafting from my pores that switched from an early-days tincture of vodka-and-potato-chip-sweat and eventually became redolent of asparagus and minted pea
• the diet that eliminates so many of life’s little toxins that you feel a bit guilty when applying your sticky strawberry lip gloss.

And no, this is not going to be a blog about how to meet a man at health retreat, as from my periodic stints I have observed that the male clientele is comprised of male-male couples and forlorn husbands who have enticed here on the promise of the relationship-renewal that occurs during the shared extreme carb-deprivation. Alternatively it’s the false hope that they’d escape the compound and get a round in at the tantalisingly placed golf course next door. Yes, I’ve seen them pressed up against the chain link fence, trying to flag down a golf cart for so long that the fence creates a faux-6-pack imprint on their stomach….. (if only they had the social-media savvy to instagram it as a little bit of merry retreat-pic-fakery like these pranksters)

What the retreat lacks in available male talent, it makes up for with a dizzying array of self-help books to assist you to snag / keep one. I was trying to prise myself away from the bath-bomb selection in the gift shop (given its not healthy to look so longingly at a bath product purely because it looks like moulded fairy floss and comes in flavours like chocolate and coconut ice) when I stumbled (and yes it was a proper too-much-running –before-breakfast stumble) upon the book selection.

This caused me to ponder and rate the relationship self-help books on offer.

One – He’s just not that into you.

A useful collection which became that bit more consumable in the movie version thanks to the concept of a assembling a stellar ensemble cast – first trialled in ‘Love Actually’. Fabulous by-product in that it got The Cure onto a sound track.

Points for that chilling lesson: that when he says ‘I’m not really into relationships’ he actually means ‘I’m not really into relationships’ which is exactly what those of us with an ‘I’ll change him’ gene needed to hear.

Two – The Secret

Leads with the tag ‘Everything is possible. Nothing is impossible’ I’m there with the theory that we create our lives with every thought of every day. However every thought of every day was not strong enough to manifest Ryan Gosling in a Santa suit bearing a chilled margarita and a chick flick last year and I’ve got very little hope that he’s going to appear this year either.

Ironically, I firmly believe that the mantra chanting may have been just enough to result in his breakup TODAY from Eva Mendes,which I don’t think means he’ll be boarding the first flight to Australia to get here in time for some mistletoe action but will simply serve in making him available to date other Hollywood starlets.  Law of unintended consequences.

Ryan and Eva take time apart

Three – Eat Pray Love

Whilst I’m not even sure this qualifies as a self-help book, the carb-fiend in me is happy to recommend it to anyone who is looking for a reason to hang out in Italy and repeatedly take on a skinful of pasta. Always happy to think, talk and read about carbohydrates, or in fact any other simple sugars. (right now, in my mid-retreat-week food hallucinations I swear I’d snort bath salts if I thought it would elevate my insulin levels)

I’d skip the India bit and move right along to the love part – hopefully sans Bali Belly and the obligatory Australian hooligans getting their Bintang-bogan on.

Four – Dr Phil’s ‘Love Smart – Find the one you want, fix the one you got’

Don’t even start me with the poor grammar in that tag line, and while we are on tag lines, what is about self-help books that require epic titles?     ‘I Need Your Love – Is That True? How to Stop Seeking Love, Approval and Appreciation And Start Finding Them Instead’ Even reading the cover is exhausting.

I already feel I know a lot about Dr Phil’s take on relationships via his TV programs ie

On online dating – ‘An Online Impersonator Faked Her Death and Sent Me Ashes’

On unhealthy obsessions – ‘Dr Phil Confronts My Stalker’

On relationship misunderstandings – ‘I Did Not Try To Blind My Wife’

…and his all-time classic documentary-esque examination of a healthy marriage and how to bring up well-adjusted children (who can rock a mugshot) ‘The Lohans’

Save your Dr Phil time for pure entertainment around Beauty Queens Gone Bad and Baby Mama Dramas.

In reality? If I bought any of these they will join their brethren (7 Habits of Highly Effective People and You Can Heal Your Life) and serve their greatest purpose as a replacement for the dodgy leg of the chest of drawers that dislodged itself some time back.

Sticking with my mum’s sage advice that practice makes perfect is probably relevant for all in the dating scene. In the meantime, I swear I’d fall for the first person to bring me a pastry.

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 Dating Downside of the Billionaire and the Supermodel

The Aussie trash mags were agog this week with the unqualified rumour / dead-set certainty that Miranda Kerr and James Packer were an item, nay, truly in love.

Miranda – Aussie model made good by being blessed with the revered Victoria’s Secret Angel wings who shortly cemented her celeb-status by marrying and bearing an heir to Orlando Bloom, only to have her marriage undergo dignified disintegration two years later.

James – spawn of famous yet aesthetically challenged Packer media-mogul family, he of a procession of brunette wives, an OTT superyacht and the taint of scientology via his friendship with Tom Cruise.

Associated hashtags trended up in the down-under realm of the twittersphere. Given the unnerving timing of Miranda’s split from Orlando and James’s de-merger from his third wife Erica Packer AND the fact they all already knew each other, there was an element of alleged chronological impropriety. Hose that down all you like and you are still left with

#rebound

As anyone who has tried to get back on the horse, so to speak, after even the most anonymous split, where there was no divvying up of superyachts, harbour-houses and LA-pads, will tell you that the first relationship post marital implosion is fraught. Even if all you are quibbling over is the meagre pickings of a couple of superannuation funds, a cream-brick house with an outdated kitchen and 1997 Holden Astra, the first relationship you dabble in after signing the documents is as likely to be successful as Lindsay Lohan’s next rehab stint.

Take a model and a billionaire and the rebound relationship has platinum status #firstworldproblems

Here’s how the difficulties of model- billionaire rebound relationship differ from your own.

One – the relationship nickname might not work.

My first recollection of this was Bennifer – the ill-fated pairing of Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, who in my opinion deserved to go down in flames after the production of the execrable Gigli which took 121 minutes out of my life that I will never get back.

The Oscar-winners of the super-couple nickname stakes undoubtedly go to Brangelina who after similarly dubious relationship timing vis-à-vis Brad’s marriage to Jennifer Aniston (#teamJen) managed a nicely multi-syllabic melodic combo that has precisely the number of consonants as the number of children they have.

Miranda and James? I’ve got nothing.

Jamiran – sounds like Jamiroqai’s unloved stepbrother

Packerr – entirely lacking in imagination and, depending on which way you look at it, reduces a Victoria’s Secret Angel to a single letter.

Miracker – which is their best hope but means they will go down in history as a misspelt Spanish percussion instrument.

Two – the tabloids know about your relationship one millisecond after you do

In your average suburban relationship, you can keep knowledge of your new relationship to only your besties and those who happened to be on FB in the 3 minutes where you drunkenly posted a premature couple pic (before the grown-up in you kicked that #nofilter pic to the kerb given the sense you had that it might not last until the next change of season)

If you are a model/billionaire coupling, you have less than a single heartbeat before your digitally welded picture is splashed on a mag cover, especially if its in an off-week for the Kardashians.

Three – everything that’s gone before is public

With your average suburban soccer dad, even your best online-stalking efforts will likely turn up nothing worse than some ill-advised lycra in a cycling/triathlon phase, or a litany of boring-sounding administrative jobs on Linked-in.

Google James Packer and you have everything from a period of overindulgence in pretty much everything that is high-calorific in life before he went through his recent body transformation,

a lifetime where he has not nailed a decent hairstyle,

and a hint of what might be instore in the unlikely event you grow old together – in the form of his father Kerry Packer.

Four – you become part of a cliché.

James is now known as serial modeliser, having dated

• Model Jennifer Flavin who had been ditched by Sylvester Stallone
• Model Jodie Meares who learned so much career-wise from their time together that she progressed from swimsuit model to swimsuit designer and her spiritual progression dictated that she reinvent herself from eastern-suburban Jodie to Himalayan-meditation-retreat-dwelling Jodhi.
• Model Erica Baxter who hailed from the same teeny country town as Miranda. Did both of them rate in the year-book as ‘most likely to snag a billionaire’?

Not on the same scale as Leonardio De Caprio, but unless Miranda is about to become a honey-blonde, there’s no danger of being enticed into his world.

So listeners, much as you might be balancing the edgy thrill of a rebound relationship with the ennui of kindy-drop-off, the weekly grocery run and the unenviable challenge of just trying to keep up a summer-sandal-worthy pedicure, bear in mind it could be worse.

You could be reading about your new relationship in media more permanent than an ill-advised instagram pic viewed through a suburban cut-price-vodka-hangover.

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

Festive season dating #fail

My chemist has gone early.  I’m not talking about a lax approach to closing time or his untimely passing, but that even though we have all barely moved on from October, he’s started with the Christmas wrap.

As joyful, jolly and goodwill-to-all-men as that might be, every currently-single person knows that nothing good can come of the festive season

If nothing has pried you off the couch thus far, the concept of spending ANOTHER new years eve at risk of a sob into your champagne or another Jan 1 resolution-triggered lash at online dating certainly will.

Get one of these family Christmas greeting cards complete with gushing account of a year full of wondrous adventures and a procession of successes from over-achieving kiddies and you are going to end up on a quest to ensure that this time next year you will have some loved-up coupley soft focus offering of your own.

However, December is not the time to kick off a new relationship.  Here’s why

It’s an edgy time

The festive season is rather unfortunately placed at the end of a working year, and if you are anything like me you are barely staggering over the line.  If accumulated fatigue doesn’t make you as ratty as a red-cordial-fuelled three year old then the horror of shopping for the ever increasing list of kids that your siblings are busting out certainly will.  As the TV stations start churning out ‘the year that was’ offal in the non-ratings season, you may find that this year’s set of natural disasters offer an uncanny parallel to your love life and the recounting of achievements in cinema, science and medicine only serve to make you feel you have contributed about as much to society as Miley Cyrus.

This accumulates in an insidious fashion until the next thing you know you are shouting at the checkout attendant for having the scanner beep switched up too loud.

Not conducive to offering up a sedate and chilled vibe to a new partner.

Tis the season for fashion fails

If you attempt to hose down your inner Grinch by throwing yourself wholeheartedly into the season at hand, amongst the persusal of gingerbread houses and Griswold-esque inflatable decorations you will find you are sliding down that slippery slope of festive fashion.

The first sign is Christmas jewellery

Nothing resembling a biscuit should ever be worn as jewellery.  Start there and you are one Christmas carol chorus away from something like this.

If you are a little on the short side you might get whisked off by Santa to join the toy-packing crew for next year but no other red-blooded man is going to find that attractive.

Unless they are prone to a few festive fashion fails of their own.

It’s a high risk environment

The festive season involves two of the natural enemies of a fledgling relationship – booze and families.  Strike up a relationship in the first breath of December and there are some inherent hurdles. Alcohol always features in the festive season night-out and you may negotiate many of these with tremendous grace and poise, but you can guarantee that the only one where you invite your new fella is the one where you throw back one too many mojitos and rock a bad santa impression.

If you negotiate this wrinkle and get past the mid-month, then choosing to participate in your respective family Christmas gatherings is about as safe as betting on the new Karshashian kiddie growing up humble.

Gift selection becomes perilous

When you attempt gift selection at a point in your relationship where you can barely recall the colour of his eyes or how he takes his coffee, you are going to freak yourself sideways:

a)      trying to choose something and

b)      agonising over whether the two of you have gift-value parity

Don’t believe me?  An entire Big Bang Theory episode was dedicating to exploring the latter  – google the ‘Bath Item Gift Hypothesis’ if you aren’t sure. Note: at this point you’ve followed every kind of crackpot dating advice so surely taking cues from a fictional, socially-inept physicist will feel quite sane.

But hey, this year could be different, and there’s always the festive staple of mistletoe ready to trigger some smooching.

O’ come all ye faithful.   And fast!