You are a guy who is always in a serious relationship. You are a guy who hasn’t dated in years. Or maybe you’re a guy who has never been successful with women. Whatever your situation, there are some common dating rules to follow when venturing into the dating jungle. These conventions even the playing field, preparing you for success while protected your emotions. Women are trained from day one in the art of dating warfare. They have a physical and emotional arsenal that you may never hope to match. But you won’t be outgunned if you properly prepare for the battle.

1. Look your best. Get some decent clothes and shoes. Women always look at your shoes, even if you last checked your Nikes in 1996. Get clothes that fit you, suit you and are contemporary. Don’t just buy one outfit, sort out your entire wardrobe. Buy a nice tailored suit, there is no excuse not to. If you can’t take care of yourself, how are you going to take care of her?

2. Sort out your hygiene and styling. Go down to the barbers and clean up your hair, getting it styled if possible. If you don’t have much hair, still get down to the salon, maybe get your head shaved. Or just get a regular shave, a professional shave will leave your face looking and feeling great. Then it is off to the shops with you for good quality cologne and a grooming kit. Men are so often criticized for smelling bad. Get into a regular showering routine so you will always smell fresh and clean. Women appreciate it.

3. Sort out your job if you have one. Women want a man who has some ambition in life. Coasting along as a skateboard instructor is generally not going to win you a real catch (though I’d give it a go, I love skateboarding). Any job is better than none, but knuckle down and sort out some direction in your life. If possible try and look like you have something of a career. If you have a manual job, at least have some plans to work for yourself, and if you already do, then you are on the right track. But know what you are about work wise and have some idea of your future plans because women will ask questions about your prospects. Even if they pretend it isn’t important, it is.

4. Do not extol the virtues of drinking in the bar 5 nights a week. This will never win any fair princess’s heart. If you spend all your time boozing with the boys, it’s time to take a step back and pick up some more productive habits. Taking your lady for a drink is fine, especially if you take her to get cocktails at a nice lounge, but give them the impression that you live there will get you absolutely nowhere fast.

5. Be in the know. Make sure you are up to date with current affairs, watch the news and read quality papers. Women do not appreciate stupidity, and laziness is no excuse for sounding dumb. Current affairs are important in showing you know all about the world we live in. If you travel a lot then this will help tremendously. If you don’t, make plans to travel and tell her about it. Proving you are willing and able to plan vacations is essential in the grand scheme of things.

6. Keep your super fan status in check. If you love your sports and enjoying watch the game with your buddies, fine. If sport is a religion and you have your favorite player’s number tattooed on your back, you may have a problem. If you are serious about dating, rattling off baseball stats, ranting about unfair umpires and constantly check the score will put them off in record time. To the uninitiated, sports are completely boring, and many women interpret the obsession as a total lack of thought, creativity or inspiration. Millions of girls love sports too, and rooting for the same team is great, but don’t make your passion into a one-sided one.

9. Never expect sex on a first date. If all you are after is sex, you have come to the wrong place for reading material. If you are looking for the girl of your dreams, there is nothing sexier than a patient man. You are easily capable of waiting for the right woman.

10. Start listening and stop talking. Keep your date interested but don’t turn into a one-man circus. She will bore of you quickly because she wants to talk about herself too. Listen to things she tells you about her and remember them. Women love to chat so you need to learn to listen to her. Remembering things she told you will impress her even more.

11. Read up on manners, courtesy and chivalry. A woman likes being treated with respect. Lose the coarse language, the swear words, the rudeness and the laziness. Know how to eat in a top restaurant. Know about fashion, jewelry and flowers. Know how to hold a door open for a woman, let her go first and help her with her seat. Listen to what she says but have opinions of your own too. Show her respect and manners at every step and you’ll be on the right path.

12. Learn to dance even if you have two left feet. Women love to dance and it puts you two in close contact. It is also romantic and sexy. You can be the world’s worst dancer, I don’t care. But if you stay seated when she is on that dance floor you may as well not exist. Try joining salsa and ballroom classes. You don’t need to be Travolta but you should have an idea of the basics of rhythm. Get started today.

13. Give up smoking. Now.

OKCupid, an online dating site, analyzed 500,00 online dating first emails by looking at keywords and phrases. They came up with a set of rules for what you should and should not say when sending your sending your first contact email.

Netspeak, bad grammar, and bad spelling are huge turn-offs. Our negative correlation list is a fool’s lexicon: ur, u, wat, wont, and so on. These all make a terrible first impression. In fact, if you count hit (and we do!) the worst 6 words you can use in a first message are all stupid slang.

Language like this is such a strong deal-breaker that correctly written but otherwise workaday words like don’t and won’t have nicely above average response rates (36%and 37%, respectively).

Interesting exceptions to the “no netspeak” rule are expressions of amusement.haha (45% reply rate) and lol (41%) both turned out to be quite good for the sender. This makes a certain sense: people like a sense of humor, and you need to be casual to convey genuine laughter. hehe was also a successful word, but much less so (33%). Scientifically, this is because it’s a little evil sounding.

So, in short, it’s okay to laugh, but keep the rest of your message grammatical and punctuated.

Although the data shows this advice holds true for both sexes, it’s mostly directed at guys, because they are way more likely to talk about looks. You might think that words like gorgeous, beautiful, and sexy are nice things to say to someone, but no one wants to hear them. As we all know, people normally like compliments, but when they’re used as pick-up lines, before you’ve even met in person, they inevitably feel…ew. Besides, when you tell a woman she’s beautiful, chances are you’re not.

On the other hand, more general compliments seem to work well:

The word pretty is a perfect case study for our point. As an adjective, it’s a physical compliment, but as an adverb (as in, “I’m pretty good at sports.”) it’s is just another word.

When used as an adverb it actually does very well (a phenomenon we’ll examine in detail below), but as pretty‘s uses become more clearly about looks, reply rates decline sharply. You’re pretty and your pretty are phrases that could go either way (physical or non-). But very pretty is almost always used to describe the way something or someone looks, and you can see how that works out.

We took a close look at salutations. After all, the way you choose to start your initial message to someone is the “first impression of your first impression.” The results surprised us:

The top three most popular ways to say “hello” were all actually bad beginnings. Even the slangy holla and yo perform better, bucking the general “be literate” rule. In fact, it’s smarter to use no traditional salutation at all (which earns you the reply rate of 27%) and just dive into whatever you have to say than to start with hi. I’m not sure why this is: maybe the ubiquity of the most popular openings means people are more likely to just stop reading when they see them.

The more informal standard greetings: how’s it going, what’s up, and howdy all did very well. Maybe they set a more casual tone that people prefer, though I have to say, You had me at ‘what’s up’ doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

There are many words on the effective end of our list like zombie, band, tattoo,literature, studying, vegetarian (yes!), and metal (double yes!) that are all clearly referencing something important to the sender, the recipient, or, ideally, both. Talking about specific things that interest you or that you might have in common with someone is a time-honored way to make a connection, and we have proof here that it works. We’re presenting just a smattering: in fact every “niche” word that we have significant data on has a positive effect on messaging.

Even more effective are phrases that engage the reader’s own interests, or show you’ve read their profile:

Awkward, sorry, apologize, kinda, and probably all made male messages more successful, yet none of them except sorry affects female messages. As we mentioned before, pretty, no doubt because of its adverbial meaning of “to a fair degree; moderately” also helps male messages. A lot of real-world dating advice tells men to be more confident, but apparently hemming and hawing a little works well online.

It could be that appearing unsure makes the writer seem more vulnerable and less threatening. It could be that women like guys who write mumbly. But either way: men should be careful not to let the appearance of vulnerability become the appearance of sweaty desperation: please is on the negative list (22% reply rate), and in fact it is the only word that is actually worse for you than its netspeak equivalent (pls, 23%)!

Mentioning your religion helps you, but, paradoxically, it helps you most if you have no religion. We know that’s going to piss a lot of people off, and we’re more or less tongue-in-cheek with this advice, but it’s what the numbers say.

These are the religious terms that appeared a statistically significant number of times. Atheist actually showed up surprisingly often (342 times per 10,000 messages, second only to 552 mentions of christian and ahead of 278 for jewishand 142 for muslim).

Though very few people actually do it, invoking the sky-breaking thunderbolts of zeus does help a person get noticed (reply rate 56%), but maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise on a site that is itself named for a member of the Classical pantheon. So if you can’t bring yourself to deny the deity, consider opening yourself up to a whole wacky bunch of them. But ideally you should just disbelieve the whole thing. It can help your love life, and, besides, if there really was a god, wouldn’t first messages always get a reply?

There you have it, scientifically the best first email you can send!

Top 4 things online daters lie about:

1. Height

People are two inches shorter in real life. Height is one of the top three things American men lie about on online dating sites, while women are more likely to lie about their weight and build.

2. Income

People are 20% poorer than they say they are. Income is one of the things American men lie about most when looking for love on the web.

3. Pictures

The more attractive the picture, the more likely it is to be out-of-date.” On the whole, the dating site found that “over a third of the hottest photos on the site are a year old or more. And more than twice as many hot photos are over three years old (12%) as average-looking ones (5%).”

4. Sexuality

80% of self-identified bisexuals are only interested in one gender.

Online dating used to be for the awkward, socially inept personality type.

Now-a-days though there has been an explosion of dating sites. They are as common as Starbucks and about as popular too. No doubt, online dating has become the modern day match maker (online dating results in about 33% of all US marriages!). Instead of having your aunt preach the virtues of this girl she meet (or this guy), online dating sites now make for a “do it yourself” solution…which is all the more reason you need online dating advice and online dating tips to help guide you.

The biggest question most ask…
is how and where do you meet people that are date worthy? Once you’re done with school and you’re working full time it gets more challenging. Are you really going to meet the love of your life at a bar? At a friends party? Maybe haphazardly when you’re strolling through the mall? Sure, why not. Crazier things have happened…but why put it to chance alone? This is why online dating has such a level of popularity. It gives you direct power over your dating life.

It can be difficult to meet quality people if you’re single and on your own.
Learning how to date online is useful because if you choose to ignore it, you’re missing out on a wonderful way to meet a variety of people you may never would otherwise. Stop looking at dating sites with skepticism and prejudice and learn how to leverage online dating sites and have fun with it.

Online dating is your personal catalog of willing and available persons.
The awesome thing about online dating is it acts as a catalog of men and women in every shape size and color. You can literally browse other human beings by category: White, Black, Asian, mix, other. Set predefined height limits, set up filters on who can talk to you and who can not. You can also check out the new arrivals or view the clearance section. Categories also allow you to browse by whatever is your “type” is. Personality? Character? Ambition? Who cares! I only date black guys or white guys or blond women or Asian chicks!

Internet dating exposes you to more variety. It allows you to meet girls and guys you otherwise would not.
Plain and simple this is the strongest reason to use a dating site (and is specifically why I use online dating in conjunction with going out). You meet girls/guys all the time, but when you do the same thing week after week, the same 3 bars, the same 4 clubs, in the same 3 towns over and over. The variety starts to dwindle, you find yourself meeting the same type of person over and over again. Online dating can help break this cycle up. Maybe you’ll meet the busy entrepreneur who works all the time and never gets out, maybe you’ll meet that beautiful family/career oriented girl who doesn’t like bars, or maybe you’ll meet the 35 yr old who live at home with mom and dad and doesn’t go out because he has no friends. There is risk in online dating, but if you arm yourself with the right online dating tips and online dating advice you increase the potential that you might me someone great.

The first and most important thing to do before you start dating again is to learn to love yourself. If you are not happy with yourself you cannot expect someone else to be able to make you happy. Happiness comes from within. If you do not love yourself, ask yourself why and make some changes in your life.

If you have low self-esteem try writing a list of all the things that you know you are good at, list everything (good friend, good parent, good cook, good timekeeper, good organiser, good communicator). Don’t leave anything out. When you have done this ask at least two of your friends to add to the list. You will be surprised at the qualities that other people see in you that you don’t see in yourself. Most important of all – believe it when other people tell you good things about yourself.

Make sure that you spend time identifying what went wrong in your previous relationship. It doesn’t matter who made the decision to leave – both parties need to identify what caused the relationship to fail. Do you have annoying habits? Did you change during the relationship? What qualities will you look for in a new partner? Will they be different? Make sure that you really examine what went wrong in your previous relationship and what you want from a new relationship. It is very easy to repeat the pattern in your next relationship if you have not consciously identified what it was and made an effort to prevent it happening again. Before you embark on a romantic relationship with anyone make sure that you like the person and can be friends with them. If you don’t really like someone it is unlikely that you will stay together.

Think about your values in life and don’t be prepared to compromise them. Have you built up a life where you are happy and have lots of interests? It is important to have done this before you start dating. I firmly believe that both partners in a relationship should have their own interests as well as sharing interests.

There is no doubt that as you become older it is more difficult to meet new people. This is partly because we don’t tend to go out in big groups as we get older. Internet dating is becoming more popular all the time and I know of several people who have formed successful relationships in this manner. The best thing about internet dating is that you can build up a friendship online before you meet in person. However, it is important to remain cautious when meeting in person for the first time. Ensure that you arrange to meet in a public place, that someone knows where you have gone and who you are meeting and that you arrange to call someone when you get home safely.

Another way of meeting people is to join clubs such as dining clubs, reading groups or activity clubs. Alternatively why not take up a new interest? Dancing classes are becoming more popular and are not only a good way of meeting people but also good exercise. A quick internet search for clubs and societies or evening classes in your area will throw up endless opportunities, such as bridge clubs, camera clubs, chess clubs, salsa clubs, history clubs, reading clubs, scrabble clubs, amateur dramatics groups or join in with exercise classes at your local gym. Even if you don’t meet someone you want to be romantically involved with you may well make new friends.

You often meet people when you least expect it. I know of people who have met at bus stops, on trains, at exhibitions and, of course, at work. The good news is that according to recent figures there are 11 million single people out there – you are not alone!

Do you need an answer to the question “how do I convince my girlfriend to gain weight?” If you do, here is some common sense advice to help you.

1. Let her know you love and care for her. If your girlfriend knows how much you care about her, she is more apt to pay attention to what you say about gaining weight.
2. Tell her that being too skinny isn’t healthy. Explain that there are risk factors that come along with being too skinny, and let her know it is healthy to gain the proper amount of weight.
3. Remind her you love to eat with her. Talk about how much fun it is to go on dates and actually watch her enjoying the food she eats as you do. Talk about some past dates you had where food was involved.
4. Tell her you do not like thin women. Explain to her that super thin women are not sexy to you. Tell her that when you see a super thin woman all you see is bones and think how much they need to gain weight.
5. Tell her it is more enjoyable to have sex with a full figured women. Tell her that you enjoy women with breasts, hips, thighs, etc. If she is too skinny she will lose these aspects of her body and you will not have anything to hold on to or caress as you are making love to her.
6. Ask to get on the scales and actually look at them. Then suggest she ask her doctor if the number is a healthy one. This should indicate whether she needs to gain weight.
7. Tell her women in magazines do not do it for you. Also remind her that many of those pictures are airbrushed.
8. Tell her underweight women age faster.When you are out in public, discreetly point out thin older women to her and point out the wrinkles on their faces.
9. Begin buying more of the foods she loves. Sometimes you just need to tempt a person to eat.