Home Page
Club List

National News
Links/information
Library
Country Singles 
(our northern states paper)

Singles Scene News
PO Box 10159
Scottsdale AZ 85271
USA

Voice and Fax 480-945-6746

How it works

For years I wore my hair long because I had the idea that most men like long hair on women. Then one day -- maybe I had just accumulated enough experience on the subject -- I realized that I had never been really crazy about any of the men who originally liked me because I had long hair.

So I cut my hair short -- so short that lots of old friends didn't recognize me. And not long after that, I met a really super guy who I liked and liked me. Would he have liked me with long hair? Maybe. But he doesn't seem to have had very many long-haired women in his past.

I've known women who took up golf because they thought it was a good way to meet men. They didn't really like golf. I suspected that as soon as they thought they'd connected with an "interesting" man, they'd give up the sport.

And there's the problem. Because if the guy found her attractive in part because he thought she liked golf, he was going to be pretty disappointed when the truth came out. Even if he could overlook the non-golfer part, the deception itself is often a relationship killer.

So you have to consider both aspects: If this is an environment in which there are people you find attractive, are they also likely to be attracted to you?

Find your passion

When you've got both, you've got a winner. That's why we so often advise that you figure out what you really like to do, things you really enjoy and where you like the other people who do the same thing, and that's where you should start on meeting new people.

Maybe it's possible to like an activity and not like the other people involved. Can you really like to play chess but not like most other people who play chess?

I'm not sure. Let's say it's possible. Then that means you'll have to move to the various edges of your interest and see how that affects who you meet.

For instance, you love to read and you join a library book discussion group. But it's not really your crowd.

You've still got lots of options.

Switch book groups. Switch libraries. Attend author lectures at book stores. Attend literary discussion programs at museums or universities. Take a writing class.

By thinking of where other people who like what you like are likely to be, you expand your options for meeting people who will interest you, and who may find you equally interesting.

Try something new!

What got me started on all this originally was going along with a friend who had entered a table tennis (aka ping pong) tournament. As I recall there were twelve tables with pretty much non-stop pinging and ponging at each one and I was practically the only woman in sight! Only one woman was competing, and there were only a few in the audience.

I went up to one of the players between his sets and asked him about the table tennis club that was hosting the event. There were more women in the club, he said, but he acknowledged that for some reason it really mostly attracted men.

The great thing about this group was that they formed leagues where every team had an A, B, C, and D level player. So you could get started meeting people of all levels of ability just by joining the league. Cool.

But then I realized that even though table tennis is fairly easy to learn and doesn't require you to be a super-fit athlete, it wasn't necessarily going to be every woman's idea of a good time.

I guess the same thing applies to dancing. Lots of women love to dance; dances, dance classes, anything to do with dancing generally attracts a lot of women, and it baffles me why men -- who are always asking me how they can meet women -- don't get into dancing.

But hey, if they really don't like dancing, don't want to learn dancing, don't even want to be seen dancing -- they shouldn't go just to meet women.

But folks, if you think you MIGHT like it (dancing, ping pong, whatever), if you think it could maybe be fun, if you think you could learn to enjoy it, give it a try!

Sorting out the singles

Of course, when it's not specifically a singles event, some of the people you meet may not be single. You can figure these things out by being observant. You can work it into the conversation about what you've been doing -- singles groups and events you've attended. That way they know you're single, at least. Or, as you get to know people in the group, you can ask, "Do you know if Pat is single?"

Even better, you can do things to create a singles group within the group. Host a potluck for all the single members. Make an announcement to invite people to a singles event that's coming up in some other organization.

Create activities especially for the single members. I know of a Sierra Club chapter that had singles hikes which were so successful that eventually some of the married members started complaining that the "best" hikes were limited to just the singles!

Give it some thought

It's fairly typical that when a single person decides it's time to rev up their social life, the first thing they think of is hanging out in bars. If that's what you do anyway for fun, then might work.

But if you're only there to meet someone so that you never have to go there again, you can improve your odds -- and your fun -- by giving some thought to where the kinds of people who interest you are likely to be.

And, in your experience, what are the sorts of places that people who have found you attractive are likely to be?

The intersection of those two lists is a good place to devote your meeting-people time.

Top of Page  ||  Home

• Best of our other sites to try, click here