No matter how busy, stressed, or tired you may be, there is always room for a spot of the love stuff. But when you’re holding down three jobs and find that the only spare time you have is spent running errands, shaving your legs, or arguing with your landlord, you’re left with minimal opportunities to meet ‘the one’.

What working person has time for networking events, speed dating (just not speedy enough), and hanging out in bars waiting for your future spouse to walk out of the rain, and into your raincoat-ready arms?


In the age of McDonald’s deliveries and door-to-door massage, there must be a smarter, more effective way of finding the man or woman of your dreams. Well my little love-o-philes, where there is a will, there is always a way. So go and slip into your ‘onesie’ and put the kettle on, because I’m going to tell you several ways in which you can discover the perfect one for you without the need to leave the comfort of your Ikea armchair. One sugar for me, please.

Internet Dating
The best thing about internet dating is that you can meet the man or woman of your dreams whilst wearing an intensive moisturizing hair mask, a pink fluffy dressing gown, and plucking your eyebrows. And girls can use it too!

The cloak and dagger shame that once shrouded the Internet dating scene has dispersed, my friend – and I’m not just saying that because I’ve dabbled in it myself. Who can resist the efficiency of being able to filter out all the youngies, oldies, and nobodies with the mere click of a mouse? Narrow down your search for love to exactly what your throbbing heart desires – a non-smoker? You got it. An arty-farty thespian sort? Thy will be done. Fun and frolics? One word: Craigslist.

Unfortunately for shallow ol’ me, there are certain criterion you cannot specify your preference. There are no tick boxes for height, hair situation, and shoe size (oo-er), therefore you are not safeguarded from falling for the charms of those posing under the guise of someone rather great. The risk we run by getting to ‘know’ somebody online is that we swiftly create a mental image of what the person is like in real life. And those mental images tend to be a mish-mash of perfection personified.

In the words of my internet-dating pro mate (‘pro’ stands for ‘professional’ fyi!), “don’t spend ages getting to know somebody online. Meet them ASAP.” The statement I had once mentally grimaced at, and thought “eff, I’m not that desperate” now rings true. It’s these wise words that have played on my mind since realizing how I’d wasted hours and hours chatting to a guy who turned out to have a severe perspiration problem. I triple-checked, and nowhere on his profile did it mention his soggy affliction.

But hey, what are damp armpits and a dripping forehead to a single woman in her late 30’s? As with most things in life, the less picky / more desperate you are, the closer you are to finding yourself someone nice. Or nice enough, anyway.

Law of Attraction

You mean to say that we can attract the perfect relationship with the power of positive thought? Well stick a fork in me, because I’m done. If this is the deal to finding my darling future hubs, then sign me up! Right, so all we have to do is think positively 24 hours of every day for the rest of our lives, and then we can have everything we want.

Ok…Question - How do I control my frenzied thoughts and borderline-psychotic emotions? Curse you, brain, for sabotaging my chances of happiness!

The law of attraction says that you can manifest whatever you want by following one excruciatingly simple formula: Ask - Believe - Receive.
However there are a few catches. Believers suggest that the formula may not work if you are not giving yourself enough self-love. (Tee-hee). To ‘prepare yourself for love’, it’s suggested that you jot down all the things that you love about yourself. And I have to say that after I’d completed my stamp-sized list, I felt raring to go.

The next step is to have a mental image of the kind of person you want to meet. Hmm, so I’m envisioning someone tall, who doesn’t hold my bad sense of humour against me, and who owns his own island – you know, just the basic requirements really, nothing too fancy.

Next, I should behave as though this person is already part of my life. Ah. Now I’m a fairly imaginative person, but when it comes to sending myself a postcard from a tropical island signed “with snogs” from my imaginary boyfriend, I have to draw a line.
Does the law of attraction work? Well, if the potential outcome is that you manifest James Franco with an engagement ring clenched between his…ahem…teeth, then it’s definitely well worth a try.

Feng Shui

Is your furniture the key creating a red hot love life? In the art of Feng Shui, clutter is generally conceived as the devil. Now, cleaning has never been my forte, but after I’ve cleared out my three-year catalogue of City Weekend magazines and fapiao, I do feel a fleeting sense of Zen. Now all I need to do is condense my 5 wardrobes worth of clothes into a neat little stack of drawers, and then I might be able to swing a cat in my apartment. Or a tiny kitten perhaps. But then that might result in more than a flow of qi.

NB. No cats were harmed in the writing of this paragraph.

So apart from clearing space to make it feasible for an extra person to actually enter my room, what else can I do that will draw my future hunk of a husband into my midst? Through extensive research, I discovered these three simple tips;

Tip one: Rid your apartment of anything that reminds you of your past relationship.
This seems a tad extreme if your ex bought you something nice. Or, in my case, most of the things in the darn apartment - I’ll be damned if I’m parting with my kettle because he bought it! The removal of photos of your ex kind of go without saying, but it’s also a good idea to banish any cuddly toys or little things that remind you of him or her to the back of the wardrobe. Be gone o’ fluffy one!

Tip two: Apparently, pink is the colour of lurve. Who’d have known!?
By adding splashes of reds and pinks to your bedroom, you can unleash passion into your surroundings. A few strategically placed red cushions and throws in the bedroom, and you could be on to a winner…Among other things.

Tip three: Always arrange things in pairs.
Well, my shoes are neatly paired up. My socks, the raunchy little devils, enjoy multicultural relationships – whites with blacks, stripes with spots, woolies with sports. There’s certainly no prejudice in my household.

Re-examine the Subs Bench
You may be searching high and low for someone with the qualities of a person that you already know. You met them, got on well with them, but for some reason decided not to take it any further. Try to remember which boxes they didn’t tick for you. Over time people change, and so can their characters and needs. Could it be the right time to take things to the next level with that ‘friend’?

Take a little tour through your weibo / facebook friend list to refresh your memory of your subs. You may discover the ‘one that got away’ now happens to be single too. The trick is not to fall into the trap of going back to exes. Re-enacting history is just a pointless waste of the present.

It’s very likely that your bezzie mate may have been keeping a hottie co-worker under their hat all this time. How devilishly selfish of them?! Your friends’ friends are your greatest untapped resource, and online networking is a convenient way of breaking the ice and monitoring their profile for signs of insanity, extra limbs, and devil-worshipping ahead of that initial meeting.

Remove the Biases

All I’m asking for is a guy over 6ft tall that doesn’t confuse “your” with “you’re”, is that too much to ask for? Well, according to psychologist Dr Jeremy Nicholson (aka the man that tore my dreams apart), yes, it most probably is.

Nicholson believes that we all have certain biases when it comes to dating, and it’s these mental barriers that block the way to us finding love. In his article, he firstly describes how people “self-handicap” in their pursuit of a relationship. This entails pre-judging people before we get to know them on factors such as age, looks, and social status. He says that we mustn’t “limit (our) options with shallow and trivial must-haves”, and that by eliminating these biases, we create more opportunities for love. Well, duh…

But wait - maybe he does have a point. Have you ever tried something new that you were certain you would hate only to find that you absolutely loved it..? Like stinky tofu, bungee jumping or dogging..? Say no more. So, perhaps seeing someone who wouldn’t usually fall into the category labeled “your type” could be a refreshing new approach to dating!

If you’ve met a person whose intentions are pure, dotes on your every word and wants nothing more than to make you happy, why on earth would you want to stand in their way? So they may wear pork pie shoes and have grammar issues, but nobody’s perfect. I mean, look at you!