Tips For Single Ladies

Use the New Year as an excuse to revamp your dating life

Dear Monica, With the New Year coming, can you give us single women suggestions on how to break out of the same old rut? — B.B. Center City

Dear 2010, it’s been fun, but we’re moving onward and upward and welcoming the New Year with a fresh start. So long to the string of bad dates and bad boys of 2010. Hello to only dating good guys this year. While your standard New Year’s resolution may be long forgotten come February, here are a few worth keeping. This year we will learn from our mistakes.

TOP THINGS SINGLE GIRLS SHOULD VOW NOT TO DO IN 2011

  • Over-analyze every situation to death. If it doesn’t feel right, move on!
  • Sit at home — cell phone in hand — waiting for him to call, text or email. (Reach up and smack yourself if you are guilty of this.)
  • Lie about your age, interests, education or political views to impress a guy. This is so pathetic and will get you nowhere.
  • Check his sent text messages while he’s in the shower to see if he’s texting other girls. Or worse: Scroll through his call logs. If you feel that insecure with him, he’s so not for you.
  • Get upset when he won’t spend every single evening with you. Personal space is a good thing.
  • Hold relationship issues inside until they all burst out after a few cocktails.
  • Tell him about the romantic gesture your best friend’s boyfriend did last week and ask why he can’t be more like that. No guy wants to be held to somebody else’s standards.
  • Stay in a relationship that has clearly fizzled out because you are afraid to be alone and think anything beats being single. Does a bad relationship beat being single? I don’t think so.
  • Feel you are undesirable when all your best friends are in relationships and you aren’t. Like yourself enough to be alone instead of with a loser.
  • Commit because it fits the marriage timeline you made at age eight.
  • Feel like you can’t go out as much with your girlfriends because you want to spend all your time with him. (Miss him a little. It’s good for the relationship.)
  • Add photos to your Facebook page to make your ex jealous.
  • Monitor his Facebook page, refreshing it every half hour to see the last time he’s logged on, any new friends he’s added, or comments left from mysterious girls.

The more you focus on being single, the more missteps you will make. Enjoy your friends, family, career and life. When you least expect it, is when good things happen. Thinking about singledom 24-7 can become your biggest burden. Embrace the New Year with a positive attitude and focus on what you do have, and not on what you don’t.

Monica Mandell, Ph.D. is the Director of the Philadelphia office of Selective Search, the premiere (off-line) upscale matchmaking firm for the most eligible singles.
Please send your questions to: monica@selectivesearch-inc.com