Simple Rules for the Rebound

We all deal with disaster in different ways. It depends on how we were brought up and how much heartache we can take before we’re ready to cash in our chips. Whether you’re a guy or girl, and whether you were involved in a relationship for a week or for five years – splitting up and realizing that it’s over can be a damaging thing.

Some people will shrivel up in a corner and allow one failed relationship to destroy their lives, at least for the foreseeable future. Others, however, refuse to be deterred from happiness and immediately dust themselves off and jump back into the dating pool.

It’s a lot easier said than done, of course. Not everyone can automatically open themselves up to the idea of more potential rejection. But if you are amongst the men and women out there deciding to date on the rebound, there are a few things you should know before you dive in.

Rebounding Rules for Daters

Trust Your Instincts

You have to do what you feel is right in any situation. If it doesn’t feel right – if it feels too soon or like too big of a risk, then avoid the situation until you can find the right level of comfort. But if it feels like the right thing to do, even if it’s only weeks removed from the break-up, you should follow your gut in the direction it’s taking you.

Shoot for a Different Type

The odds are great that your “type” of guy or girl is the same “type” that things didn’t work out with. And if you go back even further, you might find that things have never ended well with this particular “type,” so what good is it? Date outside of what you believe your type to be. If you haven’t found happiness yet, then it’s obvious that your type is wrong. You’re probably working on attraction and not on reaction, and that’s the wrong approach.

Believe in the Word

Even if you feel you’ve completely lost your faith in men or women, never lose faith in love as a tangible destination you will one day arrive at. You can kick and scream and give up on dating until you’re really ready to rebound, but don’t believe that love is a myth or that love is unobtainable. Believing in love will help you rebound in the right way and not simply grab the first single you see.

Search the Social Circles

Many men and women ultimately realize that their true happiness was a little closer than they suspected. Millions of people coming out of failed relationships realize that their friends make better partners, or at least that their friends’ friends are ½ of a happy relationship. It’s a funny thing, but the more we mature and face heartache, the more we realize that having a friend as a lover—as opposed to a lover as a friend—is a great recipe for dating success.

Avoid the Fling

Many of us just want to feel good when we rebound. We’ll look for superficial romance, a one-night stand, or a quick little week-long fling. And we’ll ultimately sully any opportunity for happiness before we find it. Never go into any type of relationship with your mind made up on what it’s going to be. Never try to get involved in a fling. Stay open to the idea that this may be the start of a lifelong love affair.

Rebounding can be very tricky. What starts out as a way for you to forget the hurt and to experience joy can end up doubly disastrous if you’re not careful. Use these simple rebounding rules to stay on track.

Reasons You Should Be Dating Geeky Guys

If you’re one of the many millions of women out there chasing the muscle-bound, great-looking guys of the world, don’t feel bad. On many levels, it isn’t your fault at all. The process of natural selection hard codes us with a genetic predisposition of what we think the best mate is.

Then there are society’s standards. After being preconditioned to believe that the strapping, bronzed male with a good hairline is the best choice for you, it’s hard to look at a skinny guy with glasses and believe you can find happiness.

And it’s not that you wouldn’t be happy with him. You know in your heart that you probably would be content with any guy you shared love with. It’s more that you worry society won’t allow you to be happy – your friends will balk at the idea of dating a geek.

Well, here’s some news you may not have been suspecting: Women dating the proverbial “geeky” guy are often happier than women who chase around those J Crew catalog hunks. And here’s why.

Five Reasons to Date a Geek

The Worship Factor

Trust me: this guy has also been conditioned to think that he can never land a hot girl. Not only will he inevitably worship the ground you walk on, catering to your every need, but he’s also far less likely to cheat on you with some floozy who just comes along. He won’t be going out to bars or clubbing. When he says he’s going out with his friends, you can be that they’re talking about biology and not women’s bodies.

The Memory

Geeks are typically smart, and this means they have great memories. They know what Captain Kirk said to Spock in the third season of the original Star Trek, so they’ll definitely remember your birthday and your anniversary and every other date that’s important.

The Money

Yeah, we just got through saying it – they’re smart! This means most of the guys you consider geeks will ultimately land a good career, having gone through college and received good grades. What’s that former high-school quarterback doing today? Oh, he probably changed your oil last week. The geek, however, probably helped to design the computer system for the car you drive.

The Emotional Melding

If you need a guy who can sympathize with you and understand when you’re going through some drama, the geek is where it’s at. This type of guy is able to emotionally meld with you like few other guys on the planet. They feel your pain because they feel a lot. They’re empathetic characters.

The Quality Time

Face it, ladies. After it’s all said and done and you’re through with trying to show off some arm candy, what you really want is a loving, caring guy with whom you can hold down a conversation and actually spend quality time without hearing the line, “Hey, baby, let’s go do it.” The geeky guys of the world can actually carry on a stimulating conversation by using words larger than two syllables. They’ll also cherish the time with you and allow you to call the shots in the bedroom.

Dating a geeky guy isn’t for everyone. Some women have allowed society’s image of a man to penetrate their psyche on such a strong level that they actually take on the role of playing a bully, being mean to the geeky guy and shunning him in every way.

This is not only childish; it’s also detrimental to your overall happiness. If you think the jocks of the world are going to love and respect you, you have another thing coming. Those guys we all call geeks are actually at the top of the food chain, we just never realize it until it’s too late.

Example of a Bad Online Dating Profile

It’s often difficult to tell people about yourself if you’re not in an actual conversation with them. Although one in five relationships today begins online via a dating website, it’s still a little bit tricky to sum your life up in words and through texting. How can you ever know if you find the right person?

Your dating profile is going to tell the tale, more than likely, so you need to make sure you take your time to create a winning profile. There are many ways to do it correctly and also many ways to do it poorly. In this article, we will take a look at a live profile and tell you exactly why it’s “bad.”

The idea, of course, is to learn how not to do it so that you can create a pleasant profile that will attract quality people to you. Any guy or girl with an attractive photo and a tag line of “single” can draw some attention, but you’ll never find your proverbial Mr. or Miss Right by shooting at fish in a barrel. Instead, you need to attract the right type of fish – the keepers in the world.

So, before we go any further, let’s look at the example of a bad online dating profile above.

Now, at first glance, this looks like a young woman who has taken the time to craft a profile. And she has. She has uploaded quite a few photos, which is always a good start. She has taken her time to fill out a lot of her options instead of just breezing through it without answering. These are steps in the right direction. However, she completely misses the goal when it comes to describing who she is as a person and what she wants out of a partner.

Of course, we could have used some Johnny or Jane-come-lately, whose efforts were totally absent in the process, uploading no photos and failing to fill out any information other than some “asdkfdalajdua” and “blah-blah” nonsense. But we thought this profile to be a better example. It’s actually almost a complete profile. It just completely misses the mark.

First and foremost, she makes absolutely no effort to divulge information about previous relationships. And while that is understandable, you will notice that it turns into a trend when she is prompted to tell people about her interests. “Lots of stuff” is not an engaged answer.

Why is it important to list your interests? Well, you need to attract likeminded singles if you’re serious about a relationship. A girl who likes to hike and bike might not hit it off well with a guy who likes to loaf around and watch sports. People need to know about you, who you are, and what you do and what you want out of a relationship.

When you get to the “About Me” section, she completely misses a golden opportunity to say anything meaningful. A song lyric from the Meat Puppets and an over-punctuated pirate squeal hardly constitutes as pertinent information.

Take a lesson from this profile. If you are actually going to take the time to create a profile and upload photos and fill out your answers, then make them deep and informative. You do not have to spill your soul out, but you still want people to know what type of person you are and what you expect to get out of your time on the dating site.

If you cannot do that, then perhaps you shouldn’t be using dating websites in the first place.

Creating a Good Online Dating Profile

Looking around for love via a dating website can be a tricky thing. First and foremost, you really have no clue exactly what type of person is on the other end of the screen. Is it a nice, caring, gentle guy or gal, or is it someone like Ted Bundy!? Judging from a picture or a tag line alone, you can never be certain.

That’s why having a well-constructed profile will always help you land dates with honest people. It’s hard to explain your entire life or personality through a profile, but actually making the effort to do so will go a long way to letting other people know that you’re a trustworthy, serious person.

Think about which person you would trust more – the one with a blank profile or the one putting forth some effort to explain his or her intent? The profile with more information on it comes across as friendlier, more honest and more open to a real relationship.

Let’s take a look at some of what makes a dating profile a good profile. There is no one set formula to creating a good online dating profile, but there are steps you can follow to ensure your profile is the best it can be.









In the pictures above, you can see that this profile is thorough. The first thing you will notice is that there is not many “N/A” or “I’ll tell you later” options selected. This individual woman is seriously looking for a partner and is willing to take the time to lay out what she wants.

It may seem trivial, because these initial options are so easy to check, but taking that extra 30 seconds to be honest will really help a reader gauge what type of person you are. Your education, your marital status, your habits, whether or not you want children, etc – it is all painting a picture of who you are.

The “About Me” and “First Date” sections (they will be titled differently depending on which dating website you use) are really what sell this profile as being “good.” As you can see, Jennifer is not aloof or tip-toeing around what type of person she is. She doesn’t get into a novel’s worth of information about herself, but she does a great job of summing up what she wants out of her entire experience on a dating site. And that’s what people should emulate when creating a profile – tell people what you are after instead of leaving things up in the air.

In the “First Date” section, you can pick through what Jennifer writes and deduce that she is an honest online dater, serious about meeting a great guy she melds well with. She isn’t simply dishing out some ad hoc, stereotypical dating ideas. She lets it be known that her “ideal” date depends on the type of guy she meets.

From this entire profile (not all Jennyjack1’s photos are shown here; but a good profile also contains pictures), you can tell that Jennifer is a girl taking online dating seriously and has taken the time to construct a good profile.
Keep this structure in mind when filling out a dating profile. Be real, be honest, be open, and be serious about dating.

How to Start Up a Conversation

It’s tough sometimes to find the right things to say, especially if you barely know someone. Check out these great conversation starters.

The ability to communicate is something we’re all blessed with. Most of us can speak or wink or let our body language clue people in on what we’re feeling. Communication was an important part of our evolution. But just because we can do it does not mean we’re any good at it.

Some of us have a great deal of trouble attempting to spark up conversations with strangers. In a perfect world, things would work out rather easily. Guy sees girl. Guy says perfect funny thing. Girl smiles and laughs and accepts date proposal. Couple lives happily ever after.

In this world, however, things do not always work like that. Guy sees girl. Guy panics and stutters. Guy says something ridiculous, possibly even spraying spittle on girl’s shirt. Girl cringes in disgust. No one gets through the next five minutes happy, much less forever.

Making conversation is all about starting conversation. Once you get over that initial hurdle and actually break the ice, continuing to communicate is something that takes over naturally, like running after learning to walk.

We’ll go over some ice-breakers in this article that should help you to strike up a conversation with someone, no matter who they are.

Breaking the Ice in Conversation

1: Point out the Parity

Parity, not to be confused with parody, can be described in this context as something you have in common. If you want to break the ice, it always helps to seek out what you share in common with the person, making the proverbial “small talk.” This could be the same iPhone, the same lunch item ordered, the same type of clothing, or anything else you find has immediately similarity.

2: Genuine Intrigue

Sometimes a “cheesy” line is not that cheesy at all if you truly mean it. For example: if that girl across the room has the most beautiful eyes you’ve ever seen, she’ll know that you’re not just saying that. This type of ice-breaker is a little harder to deliver, as you may feel more embarrassed to shoot someone a compliment over something you find intriguing. But it does work.

3: Killing with Kindness

More often than not, the simplest ice-breakers are the best ice-breakers. You might read those self-help books and try those elaborate setups until you’re blue in the face and still won’t be able to spark up a genuine conversation with a stranger. But by simply smiling and saying hello, you’d be surprised at just how effective that really is. Being nervous can even be seen as an endearing quality here.

4: Current Events

Now, you want to stay away from anything political or religious these are hot-button issues that people are very passionate about. But something like a reality show or the royal wedding – you can sneak in there and break the ice by asking in a Seinfeld-like way “What is the deal with ____?” It’s funny, very nonthreatening, and most are receptive to it.

5: Census Worker

Unless you’re trying to speak with random people in the street, you’re probably in a building or at an event of some sorts. Asking people what they think of the place or the event is a great way to spark up a friendly conversation.

These five ice-breakers are great. Why only five? Well, each category gives you a limitless number of possibilities within. The most important thing isn’t what you use to break the ice but rather how you approach the topic.

You should always be warm and friendly, making sure to smile without looking like a creepy person. Keep your tone soft and keep things like flirting and touching far, far away from the conversation.

What you’re looking for here is something that’s called a “feeler bet” in poker. You want to put the ice-breaker out there to see if the other party is receptive. If so, you should keep the conversation moving along with more small-talk niceties and other general comments until you can ease into more of a conversation. Once the rapport settles in and you’re comfortable in the conversation, that’s when the real progress is made.

 

Top 10 Bits of Dating Advice – For Men and Women

Meeting someone online can be a great way to start a relationship, but transitioning from the Internet to a real-life date can be a tricky situation.

Thanks to the Internet people from all across the world can meet, regardless of culture barriers, class, religion or any other obstacle that may have presented itself only two short decades ago. Online dating is so incredibly popular, in fact, that one in five new relationships formed now start online.

That is a huge number when you consider the seven billion people on Earth and the millions of new relationships starting up every single day.

In terms of what to expect from online dating, how to approach dating websites in general and how to present yourself pleasantly enough to attract the flies to your honey, you can find countless tips and keen advice on the web. But what about for individuals who have just met their (maybe) special someone and want to take that next step and plan a real-life date – what about them?

We’ll cover the top ten pieces of dating advice for both men and women in this article, going over some of the more obvious tidbits of wisdom and perhaps some you never saw coming. Some may be unisex. Others may be specific. But they’re all helpful and relative to the genre.

Top 10 Dating Tips for Women

1: Do Your Detective Work

This is where you should really buckle down and find out if the guy’s safe to meet. Sure, at this point, you probably do feel comfortable enough to meet with him, but like the old adage suggests, you should measure twice and cut once. Run through the motions to be sure.

2: Be Picky about the Locale

You might not mind driving miles to his place or meeting him at a dark diner someone at 10pm, but the location should be neutral and welcoming. If anything, this takes the pressure off the idea of a “date” and allows conversation to be much more free-flowing without the awkward pauses and both parties wondering if they should push for more.

3: Develop Your Game-Plan

Maybe it seems a bit cheesy to have a list of things you want to talk about before meeting up with someone, but going from a dating website into the real world can be a shock for anyone, especially if it’s been a while since you’ve been on a “real” date. Going over some things to talk about, what to wear, things to eat, etc, is how you play it safe.

4: Don’t be so eager

The thing about online dating is that your first real-life date is technically about your 20^th date sometimes, so it is quite common that the two of you will share really strong feelings, already know a lot about each other, and perhaps even have that four-letter word looming on your minds. But no matter how much you’re into him, you shouldn’t come across as too eager for anything “magical” to happen.

5: Have an Out Prepared

As we touched on previously with the whole “you might already like him” thing, you need to know that none of that may matter when you meet. Unfortunately, some people are not as advertised. A 25-year-old personal trainer online can turn into a 50-year-old, unemployed, beer-gut-sporting creeper in the real world. Having an “out” standing by, whether it’s a close friend to call or a few bucks for getaway cab fare, is a wise backup move.

6: Don’t “Act” at all

A lot of tips tell you to “act naturally” or to “act calmly,” etc. But this is a bad idea. Whenever you attempt to “act” anything, you aren’t who you are – if that makes any sense. The more “natural” you attempt to act, the calmer, cooler and more collected you’re attempting to be, the crazier you’re going to drive yourself. Realize that you already know this person enough that the jitters shouldn’t play a role. If they begin to, simply remind yourself of all the things you’ve talked about with your guy.

7: Be Ready to Listen

This is your first real date with the guy! You’re excited! You have a million things you want to say! Don’t. Seriously. You should arrive at the date ready to participate in conversation. You don’t need to steal the floor; you’re not the president. Cut out the long stories—you’ve had plenty of time to tell those and will have time later—and aim for back-and-forth convo.

8: Don’t Seek a Crutch

There are two main reasons here that you might end up a little wasted on the date. One, the nerves get the best of you. Two, you feel comfortable enough with the guy to let your hair down and to indulge a bit. A glass of wine is okay, but don’t go overboard with the boozing.

9: Appropriate Dressing is a Must

Like any first date, you want to make a good first impression. Just because you already know the guy doesn’t mean you should let your style lapse and it certainly doesn’t mean you should show up in stripper attire. Dress casually and do not worry about “impressing” anyone with your assets. You already know the man and you obviously already like one another.

10: Don’t Forget the Hygiene

A lot of women forget the makeup, forget to brush their teeth, and forget other hygiene essentials. This date isn’t like a “normal” first date per se, so your mind can be racing a mile a minute and you may let the simple things lapse. Take your time to make sure you’re put together.

Top 10 Dating Tips for Men

1: Let Her Choose

One thing women seek out more than a man is a feeling of safety. You may know that you’re a gentle guy, sensitive and nonthreatening. But she doesn’t necessarily know that. Allow her to choose the meet time and location so that she feels more comfortable. If that means you have to do the traveling, so be it.

2: Be a Full-On Gentleman

You definitely want to be a gentleman here. Show her that you’re a respectable person by pulling out her chair, complementing her, paying for the date, and all those other things proper gentlemen do.

3: Don’t Expect Much

Since the two of your already know one another from the dating website and are just taking your relationship to the next level, you may think that it’s time to level-up instantly without having to put in any more work. But don’t expect to get lucky, and certainly don’t push for it. You might freak her out.

4: It is Still Your “First”

As stated previously, the two of you already know one another, so this isn’t like strangers meeting, obviously. However, it is still your “first” date and technically your “first” impression is still at stake. Who you are online is now who you were online, and who you are in real life is how she’s going to see you. So always remember to pay attention here and make sure you’re making a great first impression.

5: Be Talkative

Your date wants to feel as if you’re interested. Guys historically have trouble speaking to women they already know, and odds are you’ve spoken to her a lot online before the meeting. You might not have much to say. It doesn’t mean you’re not thrilled to see her, but it will come across that way. Find a chatty bug somewhere and let it bite you.

6: Go Easy on the Guy Stuff

Some guys have trouble getting into the flow of conversation, whether it’s the first date or the hundred and first, so they resort to raunchy humor, sports talk, putting on the “tough guy” routine, and other caveman-like forms of communiqué. Cut out the guy stuff and take it down a notch.

7: Turn Your Phone Off

One of the biggest fears—legitimate at that—women have about meeting men on the Internet is that they’re going to be “players” – guys attempting to date multiple women. Having your phone ring, whether it’s your friend Bozo or your dear old mother, may send the impression that your other lady friends are calling. Eliminate the suspicious minds by simply cutting your phone off.

8: Focus on Your Body Language

Your body language is going to say it all on a date. If you’re overly interested in that one thing, it’s going to show. If you’re bored, she’s going to know it. Pay attention to what your gestures and movements are saying about you. You may only be thinking it, but your body’s going to show it.

9: Easy on the Cologne

This is a little more trivial than an outright must like some tips, but guys often have a habit of slathering on the cologne before a date. The market out there today is shoving body scents and deodorants and scented hair gels down guys’ throats. Well, it’s having more of an effect on women’s throats, as it burns through their nostrils into their esophagus. Just take it lightly with the stuff.

10: Move in for the Kill

Now, this doesn’t mean to attempt to get her in the bedroom. But since you do already know one another, that goodnight handshake or cheek peck or soft hug can be replaced by a real-deal kiss here. Go ahead. Don’t be shy. Move in and plant one on her lips when the date is over with. You only live once.

The list of first date tips can go on and on for hundreds of articles. There are many ways to have a successful first date and many things you can do to improve your chances. In terms of rankings, however, these ten, for men and women respectively, are the best.