The curse of Dorian Gray!

Following on from earlier posts (particularly the one on personality vs looks), this graph shows the folly of marrying someone for their looks. The trophy wife/husband might look great for a decade or two, but as sure as God made apples, the looks will fade. Then, all you'll be left with is the personality, or lack of same. Sure, the inevitable can be delayed with cosmetic surgery, but too much of that and you end up as a grotesque caricature of your former self.

Personality, on the other hand, stays more or less constant through life. Barring any severe emotional trauma, if you marry a vivacious, positive, considerate person, that's what s/he will be until the day s/he dies.

I know which road I'd go down every time!

Dutch courage

Even though it is the 21st century, it is still predominately men that make the speculative moves on women in a pub or nightclub. In any event, this kamikaze activity involves a high amount of courage/recklessness, a dollop of self confidence and/or a smidgen of arrogance. The rare ability to take rejection like water of a duck's back is also invaluable. As noted in the post on pub/club dating, practitioners of this brown trouser inducing activity often need Dutch courage.

Many people have never gone to a nightclub sober. Without the aid of a self-consciousness disinhibitor (e.g. alcohol), many men suffer from "gynaeparalysis". This debilitating condition describes an overwhelming fear of approaching women that renders a guy unable to move in the direction of the target female. Severe cases involve uncontrollable drooling, but mercifully, this is quite rare. Despite restricting movement in the direction of the women, this unusual condition also increases the speed at which the sufferer can move in the opposite direction. There are unconfirmed rumours that the object of Justin Gatland's affection was standing behind his starting blocks when he set the world record for the 100m!

Luckily for lovelorn Lotharios, a cure is readily available in the nightclub (albeit at an inflated price). The elixir of confidence known as alcohol acts as a temporary magic bullet for this condition. However, it must be taken with care. Too little and it doesn't work very effectively, too much and you begin slurring your speech and slobbering over your victim, thereby blowing your chances. The important thing is to get into "the zone" (marked on the graph above) before approaching anybody and limit your intake thereafter to prevent yourself from leaving it. You know that you are in this zone when you feel a pleasant buzz and you suddenly think that you are THE MAN! All your nagging insecurities and self-doubt disappear and the world is your oyster.

Stay in the zone and there will be no stopping you!

Spanking the simian

This is the graphical version of the "95% of guys masturbate; the other 5% are liars" joke! Call it what you will (and there must be hundreds of phrases for it in English related to poultry, mammals, monsters, religious ranks, dance moves and musical instruments among others!), it must be the most popular/regular pastime for

• The single male
• The male whose partner is unavailable for more than 5 minutes
• The plain insatiable!

Eunuchs aside, I'm sure there are a few male beings existing on a higher plane who don't partake in this enjoyable endeavour (e.g. the pope, dalai lama etc), but their number are insignificant among the 3 billion odd males on the planet. And boy, are they missing out!!!

It just goes to show that the old wives' tale is a lot of nonsense, otherwise all us blokes would be like Stevie Wonder (except without the unbelievable musical talent!).

Apologies for the gender bias, but I'm not aware of any similar joke statistics for the ladies! I don't think the girls are quite as enthusiastic in this department as us testosterone overloaded males, but I am open to correction. They reckon they don't fart either, so maybe they are just more discreet!

Where to meet people

Well, if the Internet is full of pervs, desperadoes and psychos and the nightclub is full of arrogant posers, where are you supposed to meet a decent old skin? Well after much thought, I'm come up with this very subjective chart! It shows the possibility of possibility of meeting someone nice in a range of different scenarios:

• P/C: ye olde pub/club.
• Net: Internet, the new frontier.
• Work: Err, at your place of work.
• F of F: Friend of a friend. The auld reliable!
• HG: Hobby group. Some club that you are an active member of.
• Shop: Well everyone says the supermarket is a great place to meet people!
• WD: Walking the dog. Hell, even a leash will do (see Eddie Murphy in Boomerang!).
• WB: Walking a baby (mainly for guys).If this doesn't have the broody chicks eating out of the palm of your hand, nothing will! Just don't steal the baby - borrow a friend's/relation's.

It's not exactly rocket science, is it?! You stand the best chance of meeting someone decent in a scenario in which you spend a lot of time together and have a common interest (be it hill walking or bitching about the boss). This obviously significantly reduces your chances of meeting a gobshite or someone you don't have anything to talk about with! If you do still manage to hook up with a gobshite in any of these scenarios, then you only have yourself to blame!

One of the only good things about your friends being snapped up one by one as the years pass (besides them living happily ever after, of course) is that their partner usually has a number of singleton friends. If s/he likes the cut of your jib, then introductions (subtle or otherwise) are guaranteed. I rate the shop slightly above the pub/club as women in particular are likely to much less on the defensive there and also not likely to be surrounded by a posse of friends!

I'm open to more suggestions on this matter!

Traditional Pub/Club Dating

While Internet dating can be like buying a pig in a poke, no such problem exists in the much shallower arena that is the pub/club. Here looks are paramount and personality a bonus. Who cares if she hasn't got two words to say for herself, if she's pretty and has great boobs! And I'm sure that handsome devil hasn't delivered those well polished lines before either. In this environment, no one flourishes except the shallow, the vain, the arrogant and possibly the mildly drunk. If you fit this description, you know where you should head to meet people.

How many "nice" guys have left the club empty handed, ruing their luck while the obvious asswipe saunters by with yet another woman in tow? How many women head home wondering why they can't meet a nice guy out for a change? Well it's pretty simple really; the nice guy is the wallflower who has been eyeing you up all night from across the room, trying to work up the courage to make a move. Ultimately, he will chicken out, usually with some lame excuse to mask his fear of rejection. If he consumes enough alcohol, Dutch courage may finally propel him across the room (albeit in a zigzag fashion), but by then he will usually be too incoherent to mount any sort of a successful campaign. Besides drunk guys, the other main bunch of guys that would typically approach a woman is the arrogant, full of themselves type. These guys love themselves and think you should too. These are the type of guys most likely to cheat on you if you are foolish enough to entertain them in the longer term.

In the pub/club, you could be the nicest guy that ever lived, but if you're not making any moves, you're going to be unsuccessful 99% of the time. Occasionally, a woman may hit on you or even you will fall into a situation conducive for romance, despite yourself. Generally speaking though, the club is not really for you. You could be the nicest gal that ever lived too, but unless you're dressed like a hooker or look like a model, you're not going to get much attention from sober individuals. And no woman is going to get much attention from decent, sober guys in a club environment!

From a dating point of view, I think it's best to leave the clubs to the arrogant and/or drunk guys and the vain and/or boring Barbie dolls. They probably deserve each other anyway!

Internet Dating

The internet is the opposite of traditional pub/club dating. On the internet, you like the personality and hope you will be attracted to the person physically. In the pub/club, you chat up someone who you find attractive and hope they have a personality*.

On the Internet, personality is king. Assuming that you have managed to enter a discourse with someone via a chat room or dating site, you have to prove yourself as some combination of charming, debonair, witty, sensitive, caring and considerate (if male) or horny (if female!). This list of attributes is not easy for a guy to fake on a long term basis. In the beginning, communication was via email and you had time to deviously craft and sculpt your replies. Nowadays, with the proliferation of instant messaging programs (e.g. MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, AOL etc.), you don't have the luxury of time. This means that to be funny, your mind has to work quicker than Robin Williams on speed. It also means that if you lie or have several people on the go at once, you're more likely to be caught out!

In the early days of romancing the web, there were no digital cameras, only scanners. These were not widely available, so usually all you had to go on was the personality coming through the emails. Even nowadays, photos aren't always helpful as invariably the pictures displayed are the "best case scenario", i.e. before going off the diet, after airbrushing in Photoshop or exhibit cunning use of light, angle and shade etc. Web cams do solve this problem so it is best to find someone who has one (note: women should be very careful here!).

Over a period of time you can really get to like the personality of your Internet buddy. In your early days online, you sub-consciously begin to project your idea of the perfect man/woman (physically) on this brilliant personality that shines through the ether (assuming no cam or clear pictures). Then you eventually meet and there's nothing, nada, zilch, nowt, zip between you. Those days/weeks/months/years of loving/funny/exciting correspondence disappear instantly in a puff of intense disappointment. The realisation of a complete lack of chemistry/fireworks/je ne sais quoi with someone you thought you clicked with is a swift and brutal return to planet Earth. Of course it doesn't help if the guy a woman had been chatting with claimed to be tall dark and handsome and turned out to be short, fat and bald!

As someone who has spent a least a decade (with only very modest success!) trying to meet people using the Internet, I recommend a strategy of cutting to the chase quicker before the above process kicks in. Get a picture (or better still, view their cam), no matter how grainy, as quickly as possible. If they are not to your liking, try to make a courteous, phased exit and move on without wasting everybody's time. If they pass the picture/cam test, try to organise meeting up at the earliest appropriate time.

The Internet has the advantage of being anonymous and allowing shy people to make moves on others without fear of rejection. It also opens up your dating opportunities beyond the local boozer and chipper to the whole wide world. You have a thing for tattooed Patagonian midgets with one leg? The Internet is your only man!

The Internet has the disadvantage of being anonymous and allowing perverts of all persuasions to openly tout for action. Women and kids are particularly at risk. I believe most opening gambits to women in chat rooms involve some sort of crass sexual remark. Do men think this is going to work with real women? Funnily enough, the "women" it is most likely to work with are those saddo blokes masquerading as women online!


*Note: some guys don't particularly care if a woman has a good personality or not, as long as they get some action. These, err, gentlemen are best avoided.

Beer goggles

The graph above highlights another well known dating phenomenon - the potentially catastrophic beer goggles. For any Mormons or Muslims reading this, beer goggles refer to an insidious side-effect of alcohol: people seem to get more attractive as you become more and more inebriated. How many men have woken up the next morning wishing that they could saw their arm off in order to make a quick and painless getaway? How many women have woken up wishing the guy did in fact gnaw his own limb off?

In theory (as shown in the graph above), any person will become beautiful given enough of your favourite tipple. Luckily, nature has some safeguards against this heinous effect; medical science prevents a normal sized person from drinking enough alcohol to tackle the most "aesthetically challenged"!