Dating Articles

How Far Did You Get in 2008?

As we approach the end of 2008 amidst all the unavoidable holiday busyness, let's try to take a few moments to ourselves to reflect on the past year, and what it's meant to us. In our fast-paced culture, we tend to skip ahead without looking back, so before we start boldly proclaiming our New Year's resolutions, it's probably a good idea to think about how far we came in terms of our personal growth, and love-life, in 2008. Questions to Ask Yourself: 1. What did you learn about yourself this past year? Was there anything that surprised you about your own behavior? Do you have any regrets or things you wish you'd done differently? 2. Are you where you wanted/expected to be relationship and dating-wise at the beginning of this year? Did you spend enough time focused on your dating life to get positive results? Did you try new ways of meeting people or did you end up in the same routine as last year? 3. How was your overall social life - do you feel fulfilled? Did you spend enough time with other singles? 4. Did your friend circle expand or contract? Did the people you spent time with make you feel good about yourself, or did you end up feeling like you gave more than you received within those relationships? 5. Did you work on getting rid of old relationship baggage? Do you feel there are issues you still haven't worked out when it comes to past relationships? 6. Did you challenge yourself in your life and your personal growth? What did you accomplish this past year that you can say you're proud of? 7. Do you feel good about how far you've come in 2008?

Comments

My biggest lesson in 2008 was that most women don't want to date a man with children (I have them part time). I confirmed this by disclosing or not disclosing this fact which changed my results from several matches to 0. Why is this? I think it's very simple. Everything else being pretty much equal (how much can you know in 3 minutes!), why choose the guy with kids? Take the path with least potential problems and conflicts. Another interesting observation. I've NEVER been matched with another parent. I think this boils down to the same as the first observation, take the easier way out. When a fellow parent mentions they have kids, I've always said "me to" so they've always had this information whereas my disclosing it to all is a recent strategy (which gets 0 matches). This is the problem with both speed dating and on-line dating. The people with lots of choices have to narrow-down the choices based on simple criteria from a check-list. The check-list however may dismiss an otherwise great match. If they'd met the person in real-life, perhaps at work or a club, the choice would have been very different. We see things in print, such as the exact height, that we wouldn't know or care about in real life yet we make a yes/no choice based on 5'6 or 5'7". In the end, it's all a numbers game, meet more people, increase your odds so to those who feel like giving up, don't (that includes myself)!

justmeonthiskeyboard