‘I am getting desperate and that might come across when I chat people up’

PROBLEM: I am a man in my early-forties, my hair has receded and the bit I have left has gone grey. I have been travelling with work for the past 20 years. Two years ago, I changed career, moved back to a rural part of Ireland and bought a beautiful home. I was a bit wild when I was younger, drank quite a bit and had lots of girlfriends, and a few long-term relationship that were never going to last because I was always on the move.

But in the past five years, following bereavement, I have re-evaluated my life and now I would like to meet someone, and maybe have a family. I thought it wouldn’t be too hard, go on a few nights out, chat up someone attractive and eventually start a relationship.

Two years later and very little has happened. I still have my charm, but maybe not the looks I once had. My friends, all who are married, tell me to go online, but I don’t think that is for me. I don’t understand how you can create a natural spark or get a sense about someone by flicking through pictures online. I think I am getting a bit desperate and I think that might come across when I chat people up.

ADVICE: It seems that for most of your life you felt attractive and not needy in any way and nothing led you to expect some frailty or insecurity at this stage in your early forties. Everyone experiences vulnerability in their lives, even if they must wait for retirement or loss for this to happen, and it is a very useful skill to know how to handle this. You say that you have had bereavement recently and this led to a re-evaluation and the life structure that had long led to confidence has been dismantled.

This leaves you outside your comfort zone, but it is only here that anything new and challenging can happen. It is hard for you to settle in one place, to consider having a family and it is hard to change the habits of a lifetime. You need to reconsider what is attraction and how to engage in the world of dating at mid-life. It will demand that you stretch how you think; it will require that you take more risks in your personal life and your attitude to the online world will have to change.

Not being sought after has put a dent in your confidence and perhaps now is a time to investigate how to be more attractive to possible partners. In a physical sense, we are very attracted to health and vitality and this comes from a very primitive need to ensure that our DNA survives by mating with someone who has strong and healthy genes.

This attraction tends to be linked to weight these days, but it is much more about getting a sense of wellbeing and energy from the potential partner. Be active and engaged; join clubs and participate in your local community. If possible, join clubs where you might meet interesting women, such as running clubs or perhaps hiking or yoga.

Mentally, we are attracted to people who are not caught up in focusing on themselves, that is, people whose interest is turned outward towards others.  The friends we choose to spend time with are those who are interested in us, who are light-hearted and fun, as well as capable of serious conversations. This means that we need to be aware of our self-commentary, which tends to be negative and learn how to focus our attention outwards. Negative self-talk leads to self-absorption and our capacity for being witty and charming diminish as a result.

Finally, to be attractive emotionally we need to be stable and at the same time can take a risk and to have the ability to handle rejection and continue nonetheless. Now is the time to put this skill into action and the first challenge is to go online dating.

Signing up for a dating agency shows that you are both interested in, and in the market for a meaningful relationship. This is true and it deserves your whole attention at this time. A book called Meeting Your Match, by Daisy Buchanan will take you through the process from how to write a profile to what picture to post; plus, it is funny and enlightening about the possible minefield of online dating.

The research suggests that success at online dating depends on limiting the number of profiles you look at (20 seems the outer reach) and on organising to meet within a short time of initial contact (a week, or 10 days at the most). With practice, you become better at deciphering which person you might like from their profile and subsequent messaging, and in a month from now, you could find that you have had a number of dates with interested and attractive women.

Trish Murphy is a psychotherapist. Email tellmeaboutit@irishtimes.com for advice. We regret that personal correspondence cannot be entered into