Mature Dating - Perfect Your Online Dating Profile

LOVE BEGINS AT 40

Online Dating can be a very rewarding experience, but also at times an extremely daunting one. No matter how confident or professionally successfully you are, signing up to a dating site is a scary prospect. Perhaps one of the biggest worries is how to portray yourself effectively in so few lines?

Your online dating profile can be as important as a photo in attracting perspective dates, but how do you sum yourself up accurately and impressively in so few words? Luckily following these few simple tips can make this process a lot easier for you and make your dating experience a whole lot more successful.

1. Be Positive! It is essential to be positive in your approach to online dating and in how you represent yourself. Negativity is a turn off, so in your profile talk about things you love not hate, and how excited you are to be joining a online dating  service, not how nervous or apprehensive you maybe.
2. Be Unique! There will be thousands of profiles out there; many will be very similar and typical. Make yours stand out from the crowd, don't worry about putting the odd person off, you'll attract much more interest through your individuality and uniqueness.
3. Use Examples – When describing yourself, don't just say that you like films, say what films you like. If you like reading, what books do you like? If you describe yourself as funny, be funny in your online dating profile, don't just claim it.
4. Honesty – There may be a big temptation to embroider the truth or even just make things up. You don't need to, you are interesting and exiting enough as you are. Plus if a relationship does happen then these lies may be hard to cover up and come back to bite you.
5. Photo – Photos are integral to dating websites, despite other temptations you should pick a good, but honest and fairly recent photo of yourself, doing otherwise will just cause complications later. Let the photo show the kind of person you are, if your sporty why not use a picture of you playing a sport?
6. Relax – One of the biggest advantages of online dating sites is that there is little pressure. Unlike meeting face to face you don't need to be quick witted or confident to impress. You can take your time in producing an impressive profile that says everything you want about yourself, you can make your perfect first impression.

LOVE BEGINS AT 40
 
The online dating world is an exciting one, with a lot of opportunities and if you  follow these tips you should be well on the way to many successful dates.

What Deep Rooted Fears Are Keeping You Single?

LOVE BEGINS AT 40

It is very difficult to sit with a group of your friends and hear their stories and experiences that are taking place in their relationships - especially if you’re on your own. It will make you look at your life and wonder just how it is that you’re still single while all of your friends your age are married or at least in serious relationships. You start to feel down, depressed, frustrated and wonder if you’ll ever have what they do.

Have you ever thought that this could be something that you’ve brought on yourself? There are actually fears that can keep you single and you may not even know that you have them. 

LOVE BEGINS AT 40

You may be afraid that you will be single forever. This is something that many single people fear whether they admit it or not. It usually happens when you’ve had a few, or more than a few, unpleasant or seriously awful relationships, especially in a row. Somewhere in the back of your mind you’re thinking that you may NEVER have that just right relationship. This can really worry you if it’s later in your life than you thought you’d be single. Men can tell when a woman is desperate and scared to be on her own. Sensing this can change the way a man feels toward you. So, you see, holding onto this fear that you’ll never meet the Mr. Right may very well push him away when he DOES show up.

Another fear that can keep you single is the fear of losing your man. Most people are on their best behavior when they first meet. However, there are some guys that act creepy right out of the gate by assuming too much about where your relationship is going. They may even start getting possessive and/or controlling. Women that exhibit this same type of behavior with men after only a few dates will scare those men away. So when you start worrying about losing the guy before you ever really connect with him, it can make you act in ways that, while totally uncharacteristic of you, can cause the end of this relationship before it even starts. 

LOVE BEGINS AT 40

One of the top fears that might keep you single forever is that he will turn out to be just like your ex. This is pretty easy to understand. If your last relationship ended badly, you need to take enough time to get emotionally under control again. When you give it enough time, then your next man will get a fair chance without you comparing him to your ex. Breaking the emotional ties to your past, and the fear associated with it, helps you move away from the past without taking any old problems or patterns into the new relationship you’re trying to get off the ground.

Be very honest about whether or not you have these fears. Only by admitting to them can you start getting rid of them.

Ready For the Sexual Side of A New Relationship?

  

LOVE BEGINS AT 40
               
Men and women have to redefine themselves after a relationship ends, and reinvent their lives. If they do it well, it can lead to the most satisfying and successful years they've had. Dating successfully after divorce or a breakup require several steps to recover from the breakup.
Understanding what went wrong in the last relationship, so you don't repeat the pattern.
Identifying the kind of partner you're looking for and developing social networks involving these kinds of people.
Some people never date again or don't do so for a long time. People who wait a long time, or never date are trying to avoid repeating old mistakes and having hurt feelings, loss, disappointment and grief. This is akin to not changing anything in your departed partner's closet, because you don't want to face the pain. A better way to do it is to work through the pain, and learn from it as you go. You can figure out what went wrong, what your mistakes were, and how to correct all that and re-think your idea of relationships. This may require the help of a therapist.

Once you've taken the steps needed to recover from a breakup , finding a new love is simple, because you've changed the odds to be in your favor. But there are a few tips to help you as you start dating again.       LOVE BEGINS AT 40
 
1. Don't have sex right away with your new partner.
Keep in mind that, if you have sex right away, it usually brands the relationship as sex -only and you don't get taken seriously. So, if you want to see if you can manage it, pick someone you're attracted to, but realize there's no relationship there. Also, if you are the type who bonds upon having sex, keep that in mind -- your partner may not be, so make sure there's some bonding there before you try it.

2. Take precautions when you do have sex.
Safer sex, of course. If you're female, don't just worry about pregnancy -- make sure you're informed about disease, as well. Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) can be deadly and devastating, so always provide a condom and insist on using it unless you're both tested and in a committed relationship (with someone you can trust).

3. Deal with the awkwardness of sex with a new partner.
I recommend the zen idea of a beginner's mind: Accept that everything you’re doing now is new to you, and open yourself to learning about it. Wide-eyed wonder at whatever happens is very attractive. I’m not talking about being brainless or thoughtless. On the contrary. A beginner’s mind is alert, observing, and open to new ideas. Your objective is to learn — about what people are doing, who they are, what the possibilities are and how it all fits in to your goals.
Everything you’ve learned about relationships and dating in your past is certainly useful, and you’ll draw on it as we go along, but your general approach to this process is as a beginner -- 'I’m new at this, I want to learn.' Because you are a beginner, you can open lots of conversations by simply asking questions about what’s going on.

Keep a Healthy Balance - Do Not Give Away Your Power

LOVE BEGINS AT 40

 One reason your relationships tend to fail is that you start out well enough, but then slowly, without realizing it, you start to give away your power. This process is insidious and before you know it, instead of having a healthy give and take, the relationship has lost its balance. When you give your power away it erodes your self-esteem and you start to feel a sense of unease and resentment. This affects how you show up as half of a couple and can’t help but create tension and dissatisfaction.

Giving up your power never feels good, though it may feel comfortable. It’s a habit you may be repeating without your awareness.
How you’re giving your power away in relationships:

1. You avoid conflict: No one enjoys conflict in a relationship, but all too often a woman will ask me, “How do I confront him with this?” I then ask her why she’s using the word “confront?” Why not consider how you may have an adult discussion about a problem. If you frame it in your mind as a confrontation, of course you’ll want to avoid that. If you think you’re someone who avoids conflicts, you might want to learn some new skills on how to appropriately present your needs.

2. You’re afraid of what others will think: If you find yourself not quite being honest to your friends and family about the state of your relationship, you’re doing yourself a great disservice. You’re at risk of starting to believe your “lies” and not facing the truth about what is hurting you. You may be embarrassed or you may be afraid they’ll be mad at you — so you fake what you’re feeling to avoid their judgment. When you conduct your life worried about what others think, you will never be true to yourself and always feel unfulfilled in love.

3. You compare yourself to others: Comparing yourself to others will only cause you misery and pain. Anytime you look outside yourself for validation you will be disappointed. If you see a loving couple out in public, you might compare by asking yourself, “Maybe he doesn’t love me enough, why doesn’t do that with me?” A better response is to let them inspire you to be more like that yourself. One response adds more love to your life while the other replaces it with a complaints.

 LOVE BEGINS AT 40

4. You diminish yourself to please someone else: As women we are more powerful than we know. Women who feel their power will sometimes be attracted to “weaker” men. At first the imbalance of power feels good but it soon becomes frustrating. But to show your displeasure will make the man feel bad just for being who he is. So you resign yourself and put a barrel over your “light” so you don’t show him up. This happens in many subtle ways, by acquiescing to his needs and feelings and discounting your own.

Giving your power away hurts YOU the most.
Take a good look at how you’re showing up in your relationships. If any of these examples feel like you, do the work you need to stop giving your power away in love and then hopefully find a healthy balance that works for you in your relationships.

Mending a Love Affair

It is always very hard to break up. A break up is one devastating moment that one can ever experience.  The unbearable pain and the harsh emotions that come along with it quantify many times over especially you are still actually very much in love.

All is not lost, indeed, as you can certainly repair your relationship provided that you are aware that all relationships are built on love and faith and honor for each other. These are the things you have to work into your relationship as well.

Here are some of the things that you must and should do in your quest to mend your love affair….

Be honest – with yourself and your partner. Understand why you two broke off the relationships in the first place and be honest about it, especially you were the one who messed things up. Own up to your mistakes and resolve that it will never happen again.

LOVE BEGINS AT 40

Accept differences, accept responsibilities - Realize that both of you aren’t perfect people— and both have various faults as well. That’s why both parties should accept each other as they are, with their faults and limitations. Remember, it is probably these differences that made the two of you drifted apart. 

Be practical – Do not expect miracles to happen. You both need to work on the relationships to make it happen. And realise each other’s shortcomings and work from there to strengthen the relationships. Do expect perfection... you’ll never get it.  Think of the things that kicked off your relationship. Be truthful about them. Work at being more loving, faithful, compassionate and caring. Learn to forget and forgive. Mistakes will be done by both of you; you have to realize that.

Communicate – Most couples break up due to lack of communications. Therefore, its pertinent to keep the conversation lines open at all times. You have to be frank with each other when you talk. If there is something haunting you, do make sure to share it with each other. Don’t push anything back—bring it to the fore and discuss it. Any skeletons that you sweep under the already dusty carpet are sure to spring up and haunt you later. It is always better to bring them out when there is still time and talk about it.

However, if talking is simply compounding matters, then it might be a good idea to shut up for a while. Stay away from each other when things get too heated and think about things. When you do that, you aren’t retreating; you are actually behaving like a sensible and respectable person. It also helps because you can clear your mind for a while and get the larger picture in your mind.

Show your feelings - Be grateful for your partner, for what they mean to you, for what they do to you. It is best to live with each other amicably and make the most of the time you have with each other. Support them in everything, and they will reciprocate with their support as well. Share in their joys and sorrows. Praise them on their achievements, whether big or small.

Do things that you like to do together - This is a notable method to save a relationship. A lot of people who have been together for sometime often could not recall why they got together in the first place. Think about the time when you were attracted to your partner the first time. Try to rediscover that attraction.

Some of these methods may seems very petty in order to save your relationship, but they are quite practical and something you could use without worrying about any harm being done.
Get inspired from these simple strategies and you will find how they work for you. With great effort, you will be able to rescue your relationship. When that happens, make sure nothing happens to make it again.

LOVE BEGINS AT 40

How To Use Mature Dating Sites Effectively

LOVE BEGINS AT 40

We all grow with our age; with nearly all of us turn serious and reserved when they reach at the age of forties, fifties and sixties. However, you would find people whose heart remains young and energetic, these just tend to live with their grown up styles. They are also seen expanding their social networks to an intense degree. And the nearly all appropriate place for such people could be the senior dating sites. But when it comes to using these sites, you should know the ways of using them. The below is the list of key instructions to use these websites. 

People coming to these sites just search for people as travel companions, senior activities, activity partner etc. So, before you head to such websites, ensure you simply limit yourself to any competent site, which allows you to use it for free for limited time duration. In this way, it will help you a lot understanding the trustworthiness of these sites with the help of the free services. Once you do so, you could think of upgrading your membership to the premium ones. Once you upgrade yourself at such places, you are additional likely to meet senior friends online.
While using these senior dating sites, make sure you remain polite and guarded while someone contacts you. You should first communicate with this person via the emails simply for a while, and when you do so you know about this person and its nature and after that you can share the contact amount. This exercise is nothing but checking the patience of the person, anyone who seems to be impatient would like to meet the person immediately without actually talking and discussing around him should be avoided for all the known reasons. 

LOVE BEGINS AT 40

Protect your identity: While checking the site senior improved make sure you do not just display your address, contact numbers or any other kind of personal information approximately you until and unless you are ready to meet that person. Once you meet genuine people you can go ahead and carry out the dates with each other via online activities including playing games or sharing over a forum or some private chat rooms. Always bear in mind that these senior sites or communities are very much vulnerable to scammers; so superior make sure you remain very cautious to a wide range of profiles which appear fishy. Go for the people who happen to have their pictures over their profile of their current age. It is always suggested to meet over a coffee which doesn't last more than twenty minutes rather than meeting for an hour on a dinner with an enormous charge and thus find a wrong person.

Rebuilding Your Self Esteem After Divorce

When the divorce process begins to move along, you may find that your self-esteem is completely gone. You need to learn how to rebuild your self-esteem so that you can move on successfully after the divorce. Moving on successfully means that you are okay not being married anymore. 

LOVE BEGINS AT 40

It may take months or even years to get there, and it is a lot of work for some. Some people will take it really hard and the shock of the divorce can be devastating. You need to learn how to focus on the positive things and learn how to appreciate what you have. You will feel a lot better about your life when you learn how to think positively. 

You should never beat yourself down. You will want to replace any thoughts where you doubt yourself by stating something that you like about yourself and keep telling yourself that you’re okay and everything will be okay. You should learn to use positive words to describe yourself like smart, beautiful, ambitious, and so on. Your image of yourself will affect your life a lot.
To think positively you need to think things to encourage yourself. You should use self-esteem building activities like talking to yourself in a mirror. Tell your reflection how you feel about yourself in a positive way. You should make encouraging statements and you will actually begin to feel better by doing such things. The first step to rebuilding your esteem after divorce is to let go. You need to place the past in the past and begin to think about ways that you can improve the way you feel about yourself.

LOVE BEGINS AT 40

One way to let go of the past is to get dressed up and go to your favorite restaurant and eat alone. If you can go there by yourself and have dinner, then you know that you will be okay. You know that you can be okay with being alone. However, if you feel extremely uncomfortable, ask yourself why and then tell yourself some encouraging statements so that you can feel better about the situation and accept being single. No one will stare at you, no one will notice you and at the end of the meal you will be much stronger.

You should also let go of any goal of being perfect. This will allow you to adjust and you will lighten up about the entire situation. This is when you should tell yourself that you’re perfectly fine being who you are. If you decide you need to make changes you need to be able to stand on your own. You should decide what you need to do to find yourself again and then reach out. Your level of success and confidence will rise.

How to Move Conversations Beyond the Superficial Level

LOVE BEGINS AT 40

Tired of making small talk and want to bring up more personal topics and build more meaningful relationships? Taking conversations beyond the surface level isn’t always easy. It’s comfortable at the surface and often moving deeper entails a bit of risk. But the most rewarding relationships and conversations tend to happen when you move beyond the surface.
How do you take your conversations deeper?

Emotionally Lead First
Any time you want to take a conversation deeper, you’ll usually have to lead first, emotionally.
Let’s say you want to establish more trust with someone. You want them to feel comfortable confiding in you and sharing their secrets with you.
Naturally, you can’t ask them to share their secrets with you if that trust isn’t there yet. So how do you actually get someone to open up?
You do it by opening up first. Take the first step in moving the relationship to the next level by sharing your secrets and granting your trust, first.
When the other person really feels like you trust them and have opened up to them with a deeper part of yourself, they’ll feel comfortable doing the same.
This principle applies to just about any aspect of taking conversations deeper. It applies to trust, vulnerability, realness, respect and so on. Give first, before asking the other person to do the same.

Deliberately Choose Deeper Topics
When you initially start dating, most people have about 10 questions or topics they tend to gravitate back to. Questions like “how is your day?” “how are the kids?”and “what’s new at work?” aren’t bad questions, but they won’t help you move conversations beyond the surface.
Once you start seeing the person on a more regular bases, experiment with trying to move topics to a deeper level by asking more important questions and sharing more impacting stories and facts about yourself.
Ask others about their passions. Share yours. Ask them about their life philosophy, or their 10 year goals. What makes them feel most alive? What are the three most important things they want to do before they die?
Naturally, don’t pile these questions one on top of another. Ask them when it feels natural and when it feels like you already have rapport with one another.
Start conversations at the surface level and naturally work your way to deeper and more meaningful conversations. Start with the “autopilot” questions, then ask slightly more meaningful yet unobtrusive questions. Then when those conversations start to flow naturally, ask even more intimate questions.
Remember also that these kinds of conversations are a two way street. For someone to feel comfortable answering a question like these, you also need to be sharing similarly intimate details about yourself.
There are few things more rewarding than a great conversation and a great friendship. By leading first emotionally and deliberately choosing deeper and more intimate topics, you’ll pave the road to having relationships that are truly fulfilling.

 LOVE BEGINS AT 40