General News

Single Man, Married Man – a new book written by a group of men specifically for single women – proclaims to offer brutally honest advice for women who are looking to get hitched.

The book has outraged many feminists, and for good reason. Some of the advice offered in the book includes this as fact: “all men” want to get married – if they tell you otherwise, they are “lying.” Another piece of advice from one of the book’s single authors: “No matter where a woman is in life, she should always be able to cater to her man’s needs.” A divorced co-author advises that when a man gets his ego stroked, he will be more inclined to love you.

The book also offers reasons why a man you are dating isn’t taking the relationship to the next level – namely, that it’s your fault. One author writes: “It takes a lot to hold their attention, and men tend to lose interest in romantic partners when they stop being, well... interesting.”

In other words, women need to start giving more massages, complaining less, and stroking their guys’ egos a lot more often. Then they will more likely convince their men to put a ring on it. (Speaking of Beyonce, one of the writers even suggests keeping Destiny’s Child’s “Cater 2 U” on repeat on your playlist).

The book is certainly gaining a lot of attention in the press because of its apparent sexism, and its authors maintain that it is “brutally honest” because they want to help women. Two of the main authors spent three years interviewing more than 300 men online and in person to arrive at their conclusions, so they stand by them.

So what does this mean? Should women take a step back and consider catering more to the men in their lives? Or should the guys who authored this book admit that creating a controversial book would help them sell more copies?

The truth is, no matter how many people you interview, or how much research you do, or how many coaching sessions you conduct, dating is still mysterious and fickle for everyone. Some tactics work with some people, others don’t. Some people have chemistry together, others don’t. You can’t force a relationship to move forward if that’s not what it is meant to do. There are no tricks. Dating is much more nuanced and individual. Blanket advice of how each gender should behave doesn’t really move the conversation – or the dating scene itself - forward.

So as much as we take dating advice from many sources, we should also be discerning. If something doesn’t feel right to you, pay attention. If you’re working too hard to try and “make things work” with your current love, maybe it is time to let go. To find out more about the book "Single Man, Married Man" you can check out the authors website.

If you are among the 150,000 Tinder users in Ireland, your chances of finding a match are only one in a hundred - or about 1% - according to a new study.

Researchers for Ipsos MRBI, who surveyed people living in Ireland who say they use Tinder, discovered that dating app users’ chances for finding someone they click with are not that much greater than randomly meeting people at bars and pubs. In fact, the odds may be less favorable with apps, likely because there is the perception of browsing through a seemingly infinite number of eligible singles each time you log on to the app, making commitment seem unappealing. The more choices you have, the less willing you become to settle for just one person.

There is an addictive quality to apps like Tinder, according to its own figures. The average Tinder user spends between an hour and 90 minutes using the app every day, logging in 11 times. There are also an estimated 50 million active users of Tinder, compared to 864 million active Facebook users and 300 million active Twitter users – proving that the dating app has as much power to hold users’ attention as the major social media platforms.

Part of the reason for its low percentage of matches might be Tinder’s demographic, at least in Ireland - preferred mainly among fickle twenty-somethings who log on to the app several times a day. Only 12% of Irish Tinder users are between ages 35 and 44, and for those between 45 and 54, the number goes down to 3%.

Men are also less picky than women when it comes to saying yes to a dating app match. According to the study, they are three times more likely (46%) to swipe “like” on a woman’s profile whereas only 14% of women say yes to a man’s profile. The study also shows however that women invest a little more thought and time - women spend 8.5 minutes reading profiles on Tinder each time they log in, compared to a man’s 7.2 minutes (which are spent swiping).

So what does this mean for daters? The U.K. might not be much different from Tinder users all over the world. There is an accessibility and ease to the app, which has made it extremely popular and given its users a lot of options when it comes to meeting new people. But just like flipping through magazine pictures, sometimes it’s easier to just look at more photos than to reach out and contact someone, even if you find them intriguing. The real test is – can Tinder translate to real-world relationships?

Maybe your chances are about the same on Tinder as they are at your local bar. But until you reach out to try and meet in real life, you won’t know.

Bye Felipe has become an Instagram sensation, with female daters posting their awkward, annoying, uncomfortable and sometimes even harassing message trail with other online daters, mainly men. It seems that in the wake of Tinder’s popularity, there have been a few casualties and women are looking for a more genuine tool to meet guys, sans the weird pick-up lines.

While there isn’t a dating app that can screen or prevent all creeps from making their way into your matching possibilities, at least some apps give women the power to decide what we will and will not tolerate.

Following are a few to watch for in 2015:

Bumble. While I’m not a fan of how this app came about – it’s the brainchild of Whitney Wolfe, one of the former Tinder executives who also filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against co-founder Justin Mateen. And since she walked away with a bit of money from a settlement, she has decided to launch her own dating app, where women decide who they want to meet (and have 24 hours to make that decision before the option disappears). According to its marketing, the app “promotes a safe and respectful community…Bumble suggests matches based on more relevant signals than other, more shallow apps.”

LuLu. This has been around for a couple of years, allowing women to rate their dates and share information about men with other female app users. While LuLu sounds like it has the potential to be a giant slam book, many women also use it to promote their guy friends who are looking for love – kind of an online voucher for a guy’s character. The Grade is another new app that has a similar kind of review system through – you guessed it – grading them. If you get an “F” guys? You’re off the site.

Siren. True to its name, Siren allows women to put a question out to men they choose on the site (or to all men in their area) to schedule a last-minute date. For instance, a woman could ask: “want to meet up for a jog?” - and then see who responds. She can also browse profiles in private without revealing herself.

JessMeetKen. This online dating site works through Facebook connections, and allows women to post a profile of their male friends who are looking for love, recommending them to other women. (Think of that guy you really like but just aren’t attracted to.) The guys all come recommended by a woman, so it’s less likely the men you’ll be meeting will be creepers, which makes it worth it even if you aren’t a match.

Happy dating!

The new year is upon us, and here in the United States and Canada eHarmony is celebrating by having a Free Communication Weekend that is 5 days long. It starts Friday January 2nd and runs to the end of day on Wednesday January 7th.

The month of January is the busiest month for dating sites and eHarmony is starting off with a bang by allowing new and existing members to communicate for free on their service. No credit card is required and all you need is a free eHarmony membership and your profile filled out. This promotion is available on their website as well as their dating apps. eHarmony is famous for their matching algorithm and the research they put into it. When filling out your profile it is important that you answer all questions the best you can. This way you will get the most accurate matches. There is almost 150 questions which will take you about 45 minutes to complete. If you don’t have time the first go around, no problem, as you can save your partial profile and continue on at a later time. The only thing free communication on eHarmony does not include is profile photos, the phone service called secure call, and skipping the guided communication process straight to email.

With most people still on holidays it is an ideal time to try out eHarmony as it will be extra busy with free communication going on. To find out more about how this dating site works and how to best use the service you should read our eHarmony review.

Get out of the pajamas. Put down the Seamless delivery containers. Log out of Netflix. It's time to make a change around here.

If you've been avoiding online dating like the plague, no one would blame you. Sometimes it feels like online dating is a plague, except instead of the usual symptoms this plague comes with shirtless mirror selfies, terrible pickup lines, and unwanted dick pics.

Luckily, there's a new crop of dating apps designed to prevent exactly that. These apps hope to decrease the creep factor that's keeping many women away from mobile dating, by offering women more control over the process. Try out these five female-friendly dating apps in 2015:

Do singles prefer taking selfies or traveling? What city has the highest number of active daters, or at least those who message the most? What height do most women prefer when they filter their matches?

If you like knowing the answers to these kinds of questions – in other words, identifying peoples’ preferences and what are they actually doing when they’re online dating - Match has just presented a wrap-up list of dating stats for 2014, culled from its extensive database. 

Tinder might be taking the dating world by storm, but so far the traditional dating websites like OkCupid and Match have been studying their users and providing us with valuable data about how people actually date, instead of just making assumptions. As it turns out, not everyone is into hooking up or taking selfies despite popular opinion and Tinder. But singles do tend to be visually stimulated. It’s all about the photos.

According to Match.com, 4.8 million photos were added to its site in 2014, and 280 million total were “liked.” It seems the ladies know that men are looking at their photos more than anything else, because straight women topped the list of most photos posted, with an average of 3.6 photos uploaded per woman (compared to Lesbian women and Gay men with 2.3 photos on average, and straight men with 2.8 photos on average).

And what cities are the best in terms of active online daters? Interestingly, Miami subscribers sent the most messages (over both New York and Los Angeles); users in Albany, New York logged in the most; and not surprisingly, those from Anchorage, Alaska searched most frequently outside their city looking for potential dates. Salt Lake City was the runner up, with the second highest number of users looking outside the city limits for love.

As for keywords people include in their profiles, “travel” came in first with over 1,000,000 people using the term to describe their interests. “Down to earth” is another popular phrase used in online dating profiles, with over 232,000 including it in theirs. The word “selfie” appeared in profiles far less often – just north of 5,600 times. Match.com even discovered who included the most hashtags in a profile – (44 hashtags to be exact).

Among the most common words used in profiles: Electrician, Welcoming, Warmhearted, Quickest, and Ladies. Other interesting choices that were among the most popular include crochet, sewing and Cosmetology. (I’m kind of surprised things like “jogging” or “watching football” didn’t make the top of the list, but maybe people are starting to branch out?)

And apologies guys – the height that most of your female Match.com counterparts were looking for was 6 feet. Being tall is definitely an advantage for men.

What’s in store for 2015? I guess we’ll have to wait and see. For more information on this dating service please check out our Match.com review.