|
Learning To Date Again - PART 1
You are single again. You may not have expected to have to deal with that again but that is how it is.
One thing is for sure you don’t want to be single for ever, waking up in the morning by yourself is ok, having a whole bed to yourself can have its up sides at times, but really it is second best compared to waking up next to someone you care about.
So how do you go about finding a girlfriend or a boyfriend, someone you want to wake up beside in the morning?
Are you even interesting or attractive to anyone of the opposite sex, let alone someone you will be attracted to yourself!
Of course all your friends assure you that you are lovely and sexy and handsome and fun and great to be with, but they would say that wouldn’t they!
You have to believe it yourself first, and how do you do that?
Well you could go to a Buddhist retreat on the side of a mountain somewhere and uhmmmmm to yourself for a year, and that will definitely put you in a new frame of mind, and for some people that is the answer. But not many of us are able to take that road.
A great first step will be to get some independent confirmation of your attractiveness. In other words go on a couple of dates. I am not suggesting that the best thing to do after a divorce is to hang out in bars night after night and have a different one night stand 7 days a week, but there is nothing like the realisation that someone of the opposite sex is interested in you to enhance your self esteem. It may not be a cure-all, but it definitely helps and is a good place to start.
There are many ways to meet single women and men, I am not going to describe the myriad of options, there is another article on this site which discusses some of them, from singles events to bars, sports, and social clubs, enrolling in a cooking class or friend’s social networks, not to mention at work. But what I want to discuss here is how to be successful and not feel like a complete idiot when moving into the dating world.
One thing to remember first and foremost is that everyone is in the same boat. It is an incontrovertible fact that the majority of people who are single would rather not be, that most people who are at a bar or social event or party without a partner, are single and would rather not be, and that everyone at a singles event is single and would rather not be! You don’t stand out, there is no sign hanging around your neck saying: “I am a sick desparate weirdo, because I am single and I would rather not be, so please laugh at me!”
Ok assuming you take that message to heart (and it will take you a little while before it sinks in, but believe me it can!) what does make you stand out from all the other sick desparate weirdos? What makes a girl or a boy go hmmmmmmmmm when they see you or talk to you? Whole libraries have been written about attraction and really it is anybodies guess, but there is one theme that recurs more than anything else, and that is confidence.
Great, that is a great help….NOT……, how do you display confidence if that is exactly the one thing you don’t have. The answer is twofold:
Little steps
And
Fake it till you make it.
Click here for New Perspectives Coaching. |