A date for my daughter!

Nearly everyone seems to do online dating these days, there is no reason to feel uncomfortable with it, is it better to meet someone in a bar?I think for somebody of her age it would be far better to find someone by online sites, as long as you meet in a public place. You have to meet a few frogs before the prince turns up.

I have a very hard working successful 38 yr.old son I wish was married! He had a long term relationship with his high school luv but it didn't work out.If only he didn't live in Calif.

Does she meet the wrong guys or is she attracted to the wrong guys? Perhaps she needs first to think about what was wrong with the previous men she had relationships with and why she was attracted to them and then adjust her mind set so that she is not attracted to the same type again.

Perhaps, also, if she was less worried about being single and just made a life for herself where finding a partner wasn't central to her life, a partner would be more likely to appear, there is nothing more offputting to a potential partner than someone desperate for a relationship.

My DD was 40 in 2013. She decided some years ago that life for her as a single woman was actually more attractive than finding a partner. She owns her own home, has a job she enjoys, as many friends as she wants and a host of hobbies and interests. Her niece and nephew adore her and ignore parents and grandparents if she is present. My sister was similar - then married at 47. Whether DD marries or not she has made her choices and must live with them

Anyway, any perusal of Gransnet threads shows that marriage is no guarantee of happiness for Gransnetters or their sons and daughters. Perhaps you should stop worrying about your daughters single status and encourage her to enjoy the life she has, instead wishing it away for something that may never happen.

My DD's best friend is the same age and had the same problem. Career girl living in London she was getting used to the idea of single hood. Always fancying the wrong bloke. Married, or self centred good looking types just wanting to play the field. However - I hear she's just met a farmer and dot, dot, dot!

Aren't there special dating sites for meeting farmers.... but you would have to want the farm as well wouldn't you.
I've got a lovely son in NZ who is not shy of women. However he lives in NZ and there is a shortage of unattached women (emigration is a problem) and he also has very high standards of looks - all the girlfriends so far have looked like models.
His shy friend (who worked in a hospital but was too shy to get a date) did meet his wife through internet dating. I witnessed the process. Evening after evening trawling through to find someone he fancied. The second one he dated was an immediate success.
The other side of the internet dating coin is having to "sell yourself" - you have to put a particular version of yourself out there to be judged. Perhaps in her shoes I would find that the difficult bit.
My niece is an attractive and lively woman in her mid 30s who cannot find someone she wants a long term relationship with. I suggested that she needs to change her job to one where she meets more men. Some offices, and some industries, these days are overwhelmingly female. I believe 50% of people meet their spouse at work. I met my DH in work, in a water company, which employed a lot of men and I worked in a role in which I met hundreds of them. Spotted DH and asked him out...

sparkledeb a few years ago I was beginning to fantasise about arranged marriages (in the nicest possible sense) for both my children who are in their mid and later thirties.

Handsome (so I'm regularly told) son commenced online dating and brought a few really scary girls to "meet the parents" (scary in the sense that we could see that not at all a good match) and then boom boom bang he met someone who is lovely and set her sights on him straight away (I could tell) and he didn't have a hope in Hades anyway, but thankfully they fell in love and got married last summer. Their first date was in a Costa coffee shop, that was her playing it safe (a good sign).

Daughter who is lovely had been in a relationship which ended and literally broke her heart and then after a while took up with someone from her "gang" who was under her nose all the time. When I asked her "Why now?!" she just said "We were never both available at the same time". They are engaged and getting married this summer .

I agree with Jess re meeting people at work. I had the best years of my dating life when I worked in an office equipment repair company's technical department, where my job was to "control" the 30 male technicians!

Why do we consider not having a partner a problem?

One of my mother's sayings was; 'better happily single than unhappily married'

flickety in my case I wished that for my children because both of them expressed the wish to have partners for various reasons - companionship, being lonely, wanting to start a family, etc.

But of course lots of people are happy without being in a relationship.

It used to be that you were unusual if you were single and in your 30s , never mind your 40s. I too have a 40+ plus daughter who had a bad relationship in her 20s and has been single ever since. The problem really is that society is still geared towards couples and if you live in London most singletons cannot afford to buy a flat or even rent a decent one. My daughter is a great auntie and would love to be a mum but cannot afford to go it alone and time is running out for her. Meeting someone at work doesn't seem to have happened either and she's just been made redundant . One child seems to have an 'easy' time and the other seems to find life very difficult indeed.

My daughter met her husband on the Internet and we had reservations from the start but kept quiet. She went off to live in the US with him and at first all was ok. However, our DD suffers with borderline personality disorder and has mood swings. Her husband was initially supportive but then became quite unkind and would wind her up and then say, sneeringly, 'did you forget to take your medication?' when he had reduced her to tears. To cut a long story short, they were married for five years and he then left her for someone he met at work. Our DD was in a new city with no support network at all so she turned to the Internet again and met another seemingly nice man, but this has also turned sour as he was using her to pay for everything whilst setting up his own business and then dumped her with a pile of debts.
I am so proud of the way she is pulling herself up but I have begged her to please stay away from the Internet!

I think you are absolutely right, Flickety and I said as much to DD about better to be on your own than with the wrong man, but I do understand that my DD at 32 wants a family like her younger sister. You can't rush these things but she feels her biological clock is ticking. I wouldn't dream of match-making for her, though!

humbert you hit the nail on the head with economics, I forgot about that one, and it nearly caused my daughter's relationship to flounder in the early stages because (in her opinion and I agree) they moved in together too soon. (They were in a house share together which was ending and both needed to find somewhere else and it made economic sense to go for it as a couple). The other thing that impacts in London is that older young adults get sick and tired of house shares and they understandably want their own space.

I wish my daughter wouldn't date men! For the time being anyway! I wish she'd concentrate on herself and two boys. Give herself and them time to heal. She has had two major and I mean major disasters that have damaged her and the boys terribly. It's not that I don't want her to be happy. I just don't want her to be so very very unhappy. I'd sooner that she was single. Watching this vibrant young women turning into a whimpering 5+ stone wreck is heartbreaking. It's a pity we can't have what we wish for our children. I'd give up some of my own happiness to her if I could.

kiora how hard for you to stand by and watch that.

DS1 met his lovely [or so we thought!!] wife on the internet. I've posted before about how she brought him home to us after he had a major stroke and then scarpered to her home on the other side of the world.

He is now 42 and will probably spend the rest of his life alone rather than with a wife and family, as they had planned until disaster struck.

It's not the internet that's the problem though is it - it's the presence or absence of a bastard detector. Some young people have it at an early age, some of us acquire one by bitter experience and some never seem to learn. I think another of the difficulties is that post-pill so many people fall into bed very early in a relationship, rather than "dating" for a while and getting to know them. Which means there is pressure to sleep with someone you have been out with only once or twice.

One of my old friends met her OH through a dating agency and they have been together about 30 years.

Biological clock ticking can be a problem for women. I feel happy that my DDs have all met someone and married and had families as it would have been sad if they had missed out on this.

JessM interestingly enough, I think the pressure to sleep with someone goes both ways nowadays, my young (in his 20s) nephew who is dating but not settled, was telling me the other day how determined some of the women are to get him into bed without delay, and that he finds it quite intimidating.

I bet - it must feel like some kind of test I would have thought. Can you perform to my standards young man?

This sounds like a mirror image to my daughter! thanks for the message x

Thank you for all of your comments, I guess some people meet the right person and some just have to keep on looking, most of the time she seems fine and has a good job, her own flat and a good social life but its going home to an empty house that gets to her I think, we all know what it is like after a hard day to go home and release all to a partner, when the rant is over, we feel so much better, I think its companionship that is important.
Hopefully I can keep you posted throughout the year - fingers crossed )

Oh yes please do. Sorry I can't fix her up with my DS as he is too far away