Dear Breakup Girl,
I’ve broken up from my one-year relationship with my girlfriend last April. However, I can’t seem to be able to meet ANYONE single at the moment. It feels like a statistical phenomenon, although I go to parties, clubs and all…everyone I meet is in a relationship, engaged, married or worse. What’s going on? How can I break this vicious cycle?
— Patrick Loveless in Paris
Dear Patrick,
What, do you work for the Rome Tourism Commission or something? Mon dieu, you’ve completely dashed Breakup Girl’s vision of Paris as the world’s most romantic city. Try Flagstaff, I guess.
Love,
Breakup Girl
I had been going out with a recently divorced lady with three kids under the age of 12. Long story short, kids love me, she said she did, but never really gave me the attention, and recently told me adios. I am broken totally. I had hoped for the future. I’m 43, work 2 AM – 9:30 AM Monday-Friday. My prospects are nil. I feel totally lost. I just don’t know how to get going again. I am not a bar guy, and am not real aggressive in “hitting on” women. I like myself, think I’m a great catch. I like having a partner; ’tis what helps make life more fun. Give me a road map, if you can. Just some advice that I can really use.
— Peter
Dear Peter,
Okay, here’s some. Start a social group in your community called “People with Weird Schedules and The People Who Love Them.” Breakup Girl is quite serious. There have to be people out there in the same predicament who are dying to attend an event like an “‘E.R.’ Pancake Breakfast.” Advertise in the paper, at the grocery store, on the Web. And keep at it: I just read something about a social group for tall people in NYC whose first meeting had about six people — now they have to rent convention halls. Good luck!
Filed under: News — posted by Breakup Girl @ 5:49 am
According to a new poll, 77 percent of people avoid discussing politics. Which is funny, ’cause around me these days, at least 77 percent of people can’t stop. But anyway: this survey, conducted by VitalSmarts and the authors of Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High, suggests that they dodge the topic not because they don’t care, but because conversations about politics with friends and family can be nasty, brutish, and not short enough. Nearly half of respondents, according to a press release, “have had bad experiences in the past when sharing their political views — and rather than risk a verbal battle, they hunker down and shut up.” And: “As soon as the discussion escalates or becomes the least bit controversial, only 28 percent feel they can control their own temper and only 23 percent believe they can handle if it the other person gets upset.”
Yeah, I know. This is not good for the political conversation, small or large. “This is a tragedy for democracy,†said Joseph Grenny, co-author of Crucial Conversations. “Our founding fathers believed spirited public discourse was the crucible of democratic decision-making. And here we have evidence that dialogue has all but ceased. The result is a public whose opinions are rarely tested and challenged.†(His latter point is taken, especially since we so often hang out with our own choirs, but “dialogue” has hardly “ceased.” Um: political blogs?)
But stay with me; I’m getting to my — apolitical — question. “People no longer feel safe discussing politics,†says Grenny. “These discussions quickly turn from casual conversation into personal attacks on people’s values and interests.†Especially now, apparently, with 66 percent of people, according to this study, “believing the current political race is more controversial than in past elections.” [Supercomputer? Are we sure that’s not 166 percent? — BG]
Okay. So never mind friends and family — what about more-than friends? Promising dates? On the one hand, it does always seem advisable to avoid potentially controversial topics (politics, man skirts) during early courtship. On the other, especially these days, it really does seem unavoidable, especially if your first date is at MooseBurger King. I mean hey, it comes up.
So BG wants to know: How are you handling that little conversational dance these days? Especially that — perhaps now more than ever? — your date’s red or blue status may be a deal-breaker for you? (Of course, depending on how or where you met, like at the Ron Paul dance marathon, you’ll already know.) How do you balance the demands of getting-to-know-you with your own personal need-to-know (if any)? (And of course, even planning to vote the same way doesn’t mean you feel the same way about what’s going on.) In other words, no matter what, plenty of room for other sparks to fly. So what, in terms of political conversation, is your dating campaign strategy these days?
Listen up, single New Yorkers. Think it’s impossible to find a good worm in the biggest of apples? Meet Sandra Schwartz-Pingrey, Founder and President of Cause & Affection Dating (formerly Cause and Effect), a matchmaking service that — like others before, but with a more individualized touch — brings together this perfect couple: dating and volunteering.
As Time Out New York reports, “a 2007 study conducted by the Corporation for National & Community Service revealed that New York’s volunteering rates ranked in the bottom three of 50 U.S. cities.” Oof! Cause & Affection is doing its part to help improve this ranking by offering clients (screened via face-to-face interviews! no online profiles!) a date structured around a charitable cause, such as taking shelter pooches out — together — for those proverbial “long walks.”
Soup kitchens can’t guarantee soul mates, of course, but hey: as Cause & Affection says, “Even if it goes bad…you did good.”
Filed under: Advice — posted by Breakup Girl @ 10:14 am
Young singles searching for love in Boston, say, have it hard enough. Now — societal age preferences and demographic clusters being what they are — try being a 50-year-old single mom in a Granite State “bedroom community,” where much of the nightlife likely consists of driving two hours from Boston and going to … bed. With that, we bring you this week’s installment — now on Mondays!* — of Ask Lynn, the advice column penned by BG’s alter ego at MSN.com (powered by Match.com). This week we meet “Searching in New Hampshire,” who, well, there you go.
She’s got two grown kids plus a 9-year-old — and room in her heart for a fella. Her hope both wanes — “I’m starting to feel that I need to move…as everyone around here is either married or in a relationship with women my age who don’t have younger kids” — and waxes: “I still feel that there must be men out there who like kids or have never had children and would like to experience them without the baby/toddler phase or miss having children around the house now.”
Yes, there must. And they are not made of wood. Or granite.
What suggestions — and reassurance — does Lynn have for Searching? Read the whole exchange, and then come back here to add your own!
* Our latest season of all-new adventures wrapped up a few Mondays ago >sniff< ! Stay tuned for more!
Last week we told you that the top five cities for meeting men over 35 were spread throughout the country (#1: San Jose, #2: Salt Lake City, #3: Raleigh). Now the New York Daily News suggests that landing a man on the Eastern seaboard isn’t as tough as all that. In fact, New York has been ranked the #2 state to land a single guy, edged out only by Washington, DC. (Hey wait! That’s not technically a STATE! No fair!) According to the News, “there are currently 3.9 million men in New York City, and 35% of them are single.†Too bad there’s also 4.3 million women also living in the city, with nearly 70% of them being unmarried. (So, um, why isn’t the article — or, like, any article ever — about the best region for meeting single WOMEN, hrmm?). Apparently, though, a little move upstate will do some additional good to your odds: in Albany, 75% of men — and 75% of women — are single. (Now does someone want to do a study on why political cities are such singlesfests?)
Meanwhile, over at CNNMoney.com: Hoboken, NJ shows the most single people with 57.7%, followed by Cambridge, MA; Somerville, MA; Berkeley, CA; and Boston, MA (hello, college town). Albany appears at #15; New York City doesn’t show up at all.
Man. If only there were some sort of map. Oh, wait.
P.S. While we’re on the website, props to Oprah for addressing abuse in relationships. Say what you want about her weepy (or jumpy) couch confessions, or Dr. Phil, you can’t deny that when she talks, people — including people with something they need to hear — listen.
Filed under: Advice — posted by Breakup Girl @ 6:00 am
Here, your weekly installment of Ask Lynn, BG’s alter ego’s column at MSN.com (powered by Match.com). This week, we meet “Hope It Works,” who has a serious disability that keeps him from doing certain things … though not from meeting people online. Now, he’s met someone pretty special, but he doesn’t know when or how to give her his full story. On the one hand, he says, it’s a lot to lay on someone you barely know; on the other, of course, he knows it’s something she has to know. What to say without scaring her away? See what Lynn thinks — and then come back here to share your own thoughts!
P.S. A couple more tidbits that touch on love and disability: a letter to BG from Turf Warrior, plus a nice shoutout from JulieFoolie (third item on page).
It’s the clothes that make the man…brave enough to talk to a woman! Spotted on the blog at Wired.com: the CyranoSuit, which, as Wired describes it, “uses a series of sensors embedded in the arms and chest to detect physical interaction with a woman and then a hacked receipt printer delivers romantic lines [such as “I love your hair”] straight to the breast pocket of the shy would-be Lothario.”
Man, you know, if a nervous nerd made this much effort just to talk to me, I’d totally give him a shot. Sure, cutie, let’s hit Staples for another roll of paper, ’cause I could read you talking about me allllll night!
I for one, believe that the human need for love and romance is indomitable, and two recent articles — one focusing on young women’s point of view, the other on that of young men — in the New York Times’s Generation Faithful series totally back me up.
In Saudi Arabia, as the articles describe, the opposite sexes live nearly entirely separate lives — the harsh and hardly women-friendly restrictions are a topic for another post — in a culture that values carefully arranged marriages in support of large familial groups. The details herein are fascinating, particularly for revealing the ways that young Saudis do yearn for romance, love, and intimacy even as they embrace traditional and religious restrictions against co-ed interaction before marriage. They also show the extent to which technology is aiding and abetting forbidden exchanges between young men and women with the same — or perhaps even more intense — excitement, hope, and fears shared by people everywhere. I mean: they’re prohibited from flirting, but their ring tones all play love songs.
One question I was left with: what happens to the romance of the anticipated and the forbidden once these young folks do get married? Conventional wisdom holds that arranged marriages often do form the basis for solid, lasting bonds. If so, can they offer some pointers? Or should we at least be more open-minded when our moms want to fix us up?
e-mail to a friend in need
All the good ones are taken, from January 19, 1998…
, suggests that they dodge the topic not because they don’t care, but because conversations about politics with friends and family can be nasty, brutish, and not short enough. Nearly half of respondents, according to a press release, “have had bad experiences in the past when sharing their political views — and rather than risk a verbal battle, they hunker down and shut up.” And: “As soon as the discussion escalates or becomes the least bit controversial, only 28 percent feel they can control their own temper and only 23 percent believe they can handle if it the other person gets upset.”
Young 
