Matt Dunn
Man may traditionally be the hunter-gatherer, but when it comes to finding a mate, forget it - especially since our ‘let-you-know-we-fancy-you’ strategy seems to consist mainly of us trying to conceal any evidence that we do.
Back when we were twelve, it was easy for you to tell when we’d crossed the line from finding girls repulsive - mainly because our reaction to the strange stirrings we were feeling down below was to tease you and pull your hair. And while you may still make us go stiff at the most inconvenient of times, more likely nowadays it’s with fright.
But fortunately for you women, it’s a lot easier to read our body language than it is for you to read maps. There are always tell-tale signs. And if you suspect that we may be interested in you, don’t always leave the first move to us boys. If you do, you might be waiting a long, long time…
The guy in the bar
Let’s face it, when we’re out on the town, we eye up any girl who walks past, so how do you tell if that sexy faraway look in our eyes is because we’re lusting after you, or just due to the fact that we’ve put away one pint too many and can’t focus on anything? Well, once you’ve ascertained that we’re looking, which will be easy because we’ll be making such a bad job of not looking, the trick here is to watch where we’re looking. Whenever we think we can get away with it, our eyes will be roaming all over the various (obvious) parts of your anatomy, but if we’re really interested in you, the area of flesh that we really want to see bare is the ring finger on your left hand. Then, if you do manage to engage us in conversation, we’ll ask you questions about yourself, and actually listen to the answers. If we offer to buy you a drink, chances are we’re being more than just polite. If we let you buy us one back, even more so. And when we need to go to the loo, if we apologise for it, then nip back with such indecent haste you’re nervous about touching our hands, you might want to think about booking the church.
At the gym
Ever wondered why us guys always work out in front of the mirrors? Well, it’s not so we can keep an eye on our form. A classic hunting ground for the male of the species, the gym is a tricky one to read, as more so than in the bar, given your lack of clothing we absolutely don’t want you to catch us staring and think we’re a perv. Instead, demonstrating twisted bloke logic, we’ll position ourselves so we can keep tabs on your reflection, thinking this doesn’t therefore count as gawping. And it’s likely that we’ll try and mirror your behaviour, too - watch to see if we cut short our session on the treadmill just as you finish your run, then hang around to see where you go next. We might take the machine next to you, even when there are plenty of others free, or if there’s a bank of three stretch mats/bikes/steppers, we’ll get there first, occupying the middle one just to ensure you have to take the one next to us. And the proof of the pudding? If, despite our workout programme finishing, we don’t until yours does. It took my mate Mike hours of Stairmaster stalking before he finally managed to ask gym-babe Julia out. But not only did he gain a girlfriend - he lost half a stone in the process.
Your neighbor
The days of us hoping you’ll pop round to borrow a cup of sugar are over, particularly because by the looks of you you’re a sweetener-only girl. So how do you tell when - to paraphrase a certain Aussie soap - good neighbours might become more than good friends? This can be a hard one to work out, as everyone’s generally neighbourly, and helping you to take out your bins doesn’t necessarily mean we want to take you out too. But if you see our curtains twitching every time you pass, don’t be fooled into thinking that we’re just doing our Neighbourhood Watch duty - there’s only one thing in the neighbourhood we want to keep our eye on, and that’s you. Here, the Rule of Coincidence applies - if you notice that we always seem to be leaving for work at the same time as you, or when you’re sunbathing in your back garden, we’re ‘coincidentally’ mowing the lawn. Similarly, when you’re outside washing your car, we pick that moment to wash ours, even though you’re sure you saw us do it yesterday. Remember - once is luck, but more than once is lust.
Your brother’s friend
Back when you were growing up, you were our mate’s little sister, so of course we didn’t fancy you. Instead we’d look after you, buying you drinks, and frightening off any spotty oik who’d dared to glance over in your general direction - behaviour that nowadays would have you convinced we were crazy about you. Now you’re older, we’re still not technically allowed to fancy you out of loyalty to your brother, so how do we show that we, in fact, do? Well, by ignoring you, of course. But although we might not even acknowledge you when you walk into the bar, we’ll surely be watching you out of the corner of our eye. The giveaway is when we do eventually deign to talk to you, we’ll know much more about you than we should, especially considering that we ‘ignore’ you most of the time. And when you crack a joke, we’ll be laughing the hardest, because it’s ’safe’ to laugh at something funny, and we’re desperate to make some sort of contact with you despite ourselves.
Your housemate
Housemates tend to see the worst of each other, particularly first thing in the morning; hungover, hair dishevelled, unshaven - and us guys don’t always look that great either. So watch for when we start taking an excessive interest in our personal hygiene - which for most blokes means having a regular nightly bath rather than a regular bath night. And if you get home and we’ve done the Hoovering, the washing up, or you find us doing the cleaning, chances are it’s because we want to do the dirty with you - my friend Nick swears that it was the sight of him in his Marigolds that finally convinced his flatmate Emma that he was interested in sharing more than the household chores. Of course, she may just have had a rubber fetish, but other tactics include ensuring the two of you are the last ones to go to bed then offering to make you a coffee, or suggesting that you give your night out with the girls a miss to watch some slushy DVD that we’ve rented ‘by mistake’. Subtle, we’re not.
Your mate’s ex
You’ve possibly always suspected we’ve fancied you, maybe from those odd glances held a little too long, or the good-natured insults. But we know there’s around a three-month cooling off-period (although if blokes made the rules up, it’d be about five minutes) during which we won’t dare make the move - perhaps out of loyalty to your mate, but more probably because we’re worried that she’s told you about the strange face we make during sex. So when we feel it’s safe, we might test the water by swapping insults for backhanded compliments - ‘You’re a lot more sensible than Jen ever was’, or ‘I wish she’d had your sense of humour’ etc. The clincher is when we try to demonstrate how caring and sensitive we are by calling you up to ask you how your mate’s doing since the split up - what we really mean is ‘do you think she’d mind if I asked you out?’.
Your friend
Sadly, the days of letting a girl know we liked them by chasing her around the playground are over - for most normal people, anyway. Instead, our mature, sophisticated approach will probably be to insult you, or even to try and chat up your friends, when really it’s you we want to ask out. You’ll notice a subtle change in the way we look at you - or rather, don’t look at you. And when you’re alone with us, if we constantly question you about your boyfriend, tell you what a jerk he is, and how you need to go out with someone who treats you like you deserve, you don’t have to guess who we’re referring to. But be careful - you’ve got to get this one right, as the last thing you want to do is ruin a beautiful friendship.
Your work colleague
A lot of people meet their new partner at work - it’s just a shame that many of them are still going out with their ‘old’ partner at the same time - and there’s nothing more embarrassing for a guy than becoming the subject of office gossip by asking out someone at work who’s already loved-up. We need to find out precisely what your current romantic status is before we do anything else, and the only ’safe’ way to do this is by (gulp) talking to you. So how do we engineer this? Well, by ‘accidentally’ bumping into you several times a day at the water cooler, or just happening to be walking past when you’re struggling with the jammed photocopier. Us blokes will plan our whole afternoon workload just so we can drop everything and pack up in five seconds flat when we see you making for the lift at the end of the day. And if we do get you chatting as we, ahem, go down together, watch to see if we’ve managed to ‘casually’ enquire about your evening/weekend plans (i.e. love life) before the lift doors have even shut.
It’s a brand new year and you can start over! If 2008 wasn’t your best dating and flirting year, you change it! Decide right this minute that 2009 will surely bring someone new and exciting into your life! Let that fun, fearless and flirty person that’s been hiding inside you to shine!
As we move into 2009, if you’re feeling unlucky in the dating department, don’t despair! You have 12 brand new months to change things around. Remember that you can never change other people, so if you aren’t getting the attention you want.. you have to change yourself. You have to believe in yourself and what you can do. By channeling a bit of positive thinking, it will reflect in your outlook and this will be noticed by others. So look in the mirror every day and see someone that everyone wants to get to know. You’ll get fireworks on more than New Year’s Eve!
1. If you eat a Christmas cookie fresh out of the oven, it has no calories because everyone knows that the first cookie is the test and thus calorie free.
When we were kids, we were read stories of princes who rode away to lands far, far away to look for their princesses. They battled dragons and monsters. They fought ogres and witches. They did all this and more in their quest for their one true love. Despite the sufferings and hardships they encountered along the way, they were able to save their damsels in distress and find their heart’s one true desire. Sadly, these things only happen in fairytales but do we let real life and cynicism get in the way of our quest for our heart’s missing piece.
A long, long time ago, way before any of us were born, the postal service was one of the busiest industries around. Imagine millions of letters passing through the post offices. Many were written by lovers-both young and old! And long before everybody had a phone, people sent letters to people they loved and missed! Now the Internet has changed all that. Not only has the Internet changed the way people communicate with each other but it has also revolutionized the way dating works. Back in the dark ages in 1994 when I met my husband through a news group feed on a local bulletin board system, my friends and family were convinced I was a nutter.
I’m constantly amazed by how the Internet has changed people’s lives. I remember driving into the Atlanta airport one day and seeing the airport’s web address on a billboard. It was the biggest “aha” moment for us because we knew if something as big as the Atlanta airport - the largest airport in the world - was embracing this thing called the Internet, it was going to take off like nothing we’d ever encountered. So we’ve gone from me being the nutter in Georgia going to meet this geek she met through a local bulletin board system to nearly every person in the world connected. I just visited Atlanta last week. I saw people connecting to the net in airports everywhere. Laptops, Blackberries, iPhones - whatever - they were connected. 
