My LuV LiFe SuCkS

5 Gosh-Honest Reasons Why Your Dating Life Sucks

I get a lot of emails and tweets from people engaged in a “Woe is Me” pity party about how they’re forever single and nobody – “and I mean nobody” – wants to date them. Being a believer in “Life is what you make it,” I hereby offer the following slap in the face to wake you up if you’re one of those people.
If you DO NOT WANT(!) a slap in the face, please click here.

5 Gosh-Honest Reasons Why Your Dating Life Sucks

1. You don’t have a social life.

If your idea of a social life is chatting with coworkers by day and your WoW guildies by night, then it’s no shocker that you’re not meeting anyone who could be a potential romantic partner. While it is true that people dip their pens in the company ink, it’s generally a very bad idea. And yes, people do occasionally meet the love of their lives via WoW or Xbox Live, but these stories are few and far between.

The Fix: Find an activity that gets you out of your house at least once a week.  Join a Meetup group on a subject that interests you, take a dance class (most social dance classes – swing, salsa, etc – do not require you to have a partner!), take an adult education class at a local community college or learning center.

2. Your expectations, well, they’re a bit too lofty.

We all have dreams of meeting someone who looks like our favorite movie star or has a chiseled, god/dess like physique. And of course, they’ll be well-educated, extremely bright (but not smarter than us), wealthy (but only within certain parameters), and always smell like the dew from a Spring flower. Anyone missing even one of those qualities just isn’t good enough.

The Fix: The next time you want to reject someone, think about the exact reason why you’re rejecting them. I’ve worked with lots of single guys and seen them reject woman after woman after woman for petty reasons:

• “Her eyes are too close together.”
• “She’s too tall. Tall women make me uncomfortable.”
• “Her arm hair looks a little dark.”
• “She makes more than I do.”
• “She’s too lovey-dovey about her family.”

Really? You’re about to dismiss an entire person for that one little thing?  There’s a whole list of similar reasons why a woman could reject you – but you’d be the first to pipe up and complain if she admitted to one of them. Be a little more open-minded, give people a chance and you’ll find you like some of these people more than you’d expect.

3. You’re throwing a pity party.

Do you know what’s totally not sexy? Someone who is constantly down on himself. Pity party organizers are always looking at life as if it is drenched in piss and vinegar. No matter what is going on, they’re going to find a way to spin it so it looks horrible.  They’re exactly the opposite of a good public relations professional.
The worst part about you, pity partier? You always LOOK like you need help, you’re always SOLICITING help, but you don’t actually WANT the help. You just want to get people’s advice and then use that as reasons why it’s just “too hard” to get in the dating game.

The Fix: Sadly, most pity partiers don’t leave the party until they realize they’ve driven away absolutely everyone in their life. If you recognize yourself as a pity party attendee, don’t just get help, TAKE IT.

4. You don’t want to work on yourself.

Take an honest look at yourself – your body, your clothes, your hygiene, your career, your social life, your attitude. Would you want to date you? If there are parts of your life that you don’t like, how can you expect another person to fall in love with you?
Now, realize this is coming from a curvy girl, and by curvy I do mean fat.  But y’know what? I’m fat-tastic. I love who I am for so many more reasons and I’m working on my healthstyle and losing weight slowly but surely. I consider myself to be lucky and blessed to have the life I do and the people who are in it.

The Fix: If you’re not happy where you are or with who you are, the only person who can change that is you. You can find people to help you along the journey (like how Darya coaches me on eating better), but the drive to be a better person each day has to come from inside you. Do what you need to do to love yourself and you’ll put out a glow that will draw the right people into your life.

5. You expect dates to come to you.

So many guys expect that they’ll put a profile and some photos up on a dating site and women will come to them. Sadly, this isn’t how it works. The only people who have it work that way are conventionally attractive women and (to a certain extent) gay guys. If you’re an average-looking girl or a straight guy, you’re going to have to do some legwork for online dating to work for you.

The Fix: Be sure you have an engaging, well-written profile and recent, quality photos.  Set up your custom searches, find ten people a week who really interest you and write them personalized first contact emails that are short and sweet and invite a reply. You will get rejected by lots of people (no matter what you look like), but all you need is the one perfect person for you to say yes.

No excuses, geek friends. If your dating life sucks, there are things that you can do about it. Now get working!