The Singles Gym Blog

Valentine’s Day -- How Do You Survive It When You Are Single?

Are you single this Valentine’s Day?  Let’s face it, of all the holidays we have all year, the worst time to be single has got to be on Valentine’s Day!  The shops are full of Valentine’s cards oozing with romantic messages addressed to my darling husband’, ‘beautiful wife’ or ‘gorgeous girlfriend’.

Everywhere we look, we see beautifully decorated chocolate boxes and exotic red roses, special displays in the jewellers while restaurants everywhere advertise their romantic Valentine’s specials.

Through flowers, fragrance and jewelry, the media portray this day as the one day of the year set aside for love, romance and passion so not having a date on Valentine’s Day can evoke feelings of loneliness, self-doubt and lowered self-esteem.  The easiest thing would be to find he nearest stone and crawl under it!

Valentine’s Day is a glaring reminder that you are still single -- or worse, that you are single again.  It’s a reminder that you still haven’t found the person of your dreams and it may leave you wondering if you ever will.

So what are you supposed to do on Valentine’s Day when you are feeling the blues that you are single?  If you are feeling down as Valentine’s Day approaches take heart because there are plenty of ways to ensure you stay happy. 

So here are my top suggestions for you this February 14th.

Dating Lessons from the Golfing World

I pulled out my golf clubs the other day and dusted them off.  I haven't touched them since last summer.  I'm a fair-weather golfer and considering the number of 'fair weather' days we have in England you can guess how infrequently I play.  When people ask me what my handicap is, I assure them that golf is my handicap!

What amazes me is how well I play the first time I go to the golf course after such a long break and how much less well I play the more times I play.

What I've figured out is that it has to do with my expectations.  When I play for the first time, I'm thinking "I'll be pleased if I can just hit that damn little white ball!"  And I actually do pretty well and am feeling pretty pleased with myself.

The more times I play, however, the higher my expectations become.  The next time, I don't just want to hit the ball but I want to hit the ball straight down the fairway. Then the next time I want to hit it 200 yards and straight down the fairway.  And then the next time I want to consistently hit it 200 yards and straight down the fairway.

As my expectations about what I expect for myself change so does my inner talk and as my inner talk changes so my game changes.  My inner dialogue moves from, "what a gorgeous day, I'm just so pleased to be here and if I can hit the ball I'm happy" all the way to "I've got to hit this ball, and I've got to hit it 200 yards, down the fairway.  And finally it add, I need to be sure I don't hit it into that ****** bunker!"  Can you guess where it goes?!!

Alpha Female Relationships: Part Two - The Real Solution

In part one of Alpha Female Relationships, I wrote about the dilemma that wealthy, successful women seem to face when choosing a partner and finding happiness in a relationship.

Based on the stereotypes that the alpha male is threatened by the alpha female, and a relationship between the two would only lead to conflict, the solution on offer for the alpha female seemed to be to choose the beta male.

However taking a closer look revealed that the real issue often lies more in values and self esteem, than stereotypes.

So what's the real solution?

Alpha Female Relationships: Part One - Busting the Myths

I had the pleasure of being interviewed for a feature article in the June 2008 issue of Eve Magazine, where Catherine Gray, who was lovely during the interview, poses the question: "Are you with the wrong man?  Successful women are now turning their backs on driven, ambitious men and finding happiness with laid-back, domestic types."

According to Gray's research,

• The alpha female intimidates the traditional alpha male and her success is a passion killer for him
• A man's chances of marriage goes up with his IQ, but for each 16 point rise in a woman's IQ, her prospects of getting hitched decline by 40%.
• Women are only admitting to half their salaries and dumbing themselves down in a bid to attract men, which even I, in the article, confessed to having thought about doing! More on that later...

The bottom line according to Gray is that "alpha/alpha relationships often lead to conflict and not blissful harmony." 

The obvious answer seems to be to partner up with a Beta Male - someone who is confident and unthreatened by his alpha woman, happy to let her be the centre and puts family and friends before his own career. Examples shown in the article include Madonna and Guy Ritchie, and Courtenay Cox with David Arquette. 

While this solution obviously works for some women, the danger as I see it is that we end up creating yet more myths and stereotypes.
 

Derren Brown's Trick or Treat: The Negative Trap and Relationships

Derren Brown demonstrates the power of negative suggestion by taking 19-year-old Lauren on an emotional rollercoaster."

I was completely mesmerised as I watched this episode! In this programme Darren Brown shows in just 23 minutes, in a most visible and extraordinary way, the power of negative suggestion.

A student, Lauren, was recruited by Derren Brown - in his own unique way of course – to take part in a very simple task.

Derren had put a very small and adorable kitten (even non cat lovers would agree) in a glass container. Derren introduced Lauren to the kitten and then showed her how the glass container was wired up to a box with a large red button on it which he had placed on a nearby table.  If the red button was pushed a bolt of electricity would be transmitted to the glass container and the kitten would die.

Lauren’s task couldn’t have been easier and the reward for getting the task right was pretty compelling too.  Derren explained that the task for Lauren was simply not to kill the cat.  The reward she would get for not killing the cat was £500.00.  Now really, that could not have been a more simple task could it?

The Pseudo-Intimacy Game - Sex Sells But Can't Buy You Real Intimacy

I normally don’t watch a lot of television.  I have so many exciting things going on in my life that watching television for hours on end just seems like such a waste of time to me.   I do, however, like to have some background noise on when I ‘m working on my laptop.  So there I was at 11:00pm,  sitting on my sofa last Thursday (24th April) evening with my laptop (I know, get a life!), tweaking some bits on my new website when the television caught my ear – Channel Five was about to broadcast A Girls Guide to 21st Century Sex. 

                       Have you heard of ‘mummifying’ or the ‘X’ position?

Well, what can I say – I was compelled to watch this.  So I quickly shut off my laptop, put it away and I spent the next 45 minutes learning about group sex, sex toys, the ‘X’ position, mummifying and some awful skin disorder that affects the genital area – I can’t even remember what it was called – not nice!

Being Single - Advantage or Health Risk

Is Being Single a Health Risk?

“A happy marriage lowers blood pressure.”   I read this headline as I sat in a warm sunny corner of the spa where I was staying at for a weekend to escape the windy, cold and snowy weather that had descended for the Easter weekend.

The study, being reported by David Gardner in the Daily Mail (28 March 2008), shared the results of a study that compared the blood pressure of 204 married and 99 single adults at random intervals throughout the day and night.  The conclusion of the study, as reported by Gardner, suggested that happily-married couples are more likely to live longer and be healthier and fitter than those who are single. 

It doesn’t take rocket science to figure out what the solution being offered might be if you want to be healthy, fit and live longer – get married! 

Something, however, didn’t seem quite right to me as I re-read the headline. "Happily married have lower blood pressure than singles."

Commitment Phobia - A Modern Malady

As a psychologist, I get referrals to help people with all kinds of phobias.  I have, however, never, in all my years of practice, ever received a referral for anyone suffering a ‘commitment phobia’ yet this problem seems to have reached epidemic proportions and is causing untold heartache for so many people.

Sharon and John have been together for six years.  Sharon wants to get married, John doesn’t.  Every time Sharon brings up the issue John accuses Sharon of nagging.  He refuses to talk about the issue, except to rationalize his stance and to tell Sharon that she is being too ‘needy’ and demanding.

Sharon feels confused and frustrated by the mixed messages she gets from John.  On the one hand, John is always telling Sharon how much he loves her. He assures her that they will always be together and he tells her how utterly devastated he would be if they ever split up. On the other hand, John refuses to take their relationship one step further.  Likewise, John seems to prioritise his time at work and his time at social activities over his time with Sharon.  She seems to constantly come in at third on John’s priorities and if she didn’t arrange her timetable to fit in with John’s timetable, they probably wouldn’t spend much time together at all.

Single - Advantages to Travelling Solo

Have you ever wanted to book a holiday, gone online, only to find that most holidays cater for families with children or lovey-dovey couples?  You don't want the noise and activities that hotels and travel companies offer families and you also don't want to be the only single standing out like a sore thumb in a resort full of newly married, newly engaged or newly come together couples!

Well, things, thank goodness are changing.  More companies are catering for single travellers and without all the stigma that used to surround single people doing things on their own!

Jayne Clark, writing for USA TODAY notes that mainstream travel tour operators are increasingly, targeting singles-only itineraries.  The move, she writes, is designed to tap into a growing lucrative market – the baby boomers who are entering their retirement years.

According to Clark, a survey of 30,000 revealed that 25 million singles age 42 and older will spend $28 billion on travel this year. “This group,” she writes,  “is more likely to take weekend trips and spend proportionately more per person than other travelers.”

How (Not) To Find Love

Everyone spends a huge amount of their lives, tantalized by love, either by looking for it, trying to keep it, or trying to get over it. We have more opportunities to meet people, we have more disposable income, more leisure time than any generation before yet finding love seems so elusive to so many.

Martha Beck writing for Oprah.com (Living, November 2007) notes that today’s dating game is based on the concepts of scheming, flattering, and playing hard to get. These behaviours are all based on a model of love-seeking where the idea of romantic pursuit is a type of predation, a hunting experience – the goal of which is to capture. The predatory model of dating has even infiltrated the words we use. The kind of question you will most likely be met with when you next meet up with your friends is “Did you pull last night?” You might have also heard people talking about ‘dressing to kill.’