It just seems that way because so many young people today don’t know the basics of etiquette and manners, it is not taught anywhere so unless someone you know teaches you then sadly this is fading out.

That is no reason for you to allow the good old days to fade.

The thing is that women are a lot more conscious of manners and courtesy. We have different upbringings and although we may not use typical manners when with our male friends,  it is not acceptable to use the same kind of manners when in the company of a lady.

This puts you in a great position because as women reluctantly accept the fact that most men’s manners are going out the window. They are genuinely shocked and impressed by a man that can show proper etiquette!

1. Standing Up

This may seem a little stuffy for some, but it is traditional etiquette that you stand whenever a lady enters or departs from a room (it is also etiquette to do it when an elder or someone very important enters or departs the room).

So don’t sit there on the sofa while she leaves, get up, at least say goodbye to her face to face, and don’t let her make her own way out. Walk her to the door and see her off properly!

All of this shows you care about her and you are paying attention to her, grunting goodbye at her from the sofa while you are still watching TV does not show respect or attention!

2. Door Etiquette

Everybody knows the rule of holding a door for a lady. Rut to do it right you need to hold it open for them and step out of the way so that they can pass. Nod and say, ‘after you’ if she hesitates. A smile always helps as well as she may be a bit stunned!

How about revolving doors then? Well these are a bit trickier. The guy goes in first (try an, “allow me” before you do so she doesn’t think you are just pushing in front) to push the door round for the lady who follows in behind you. And no spinning it round fast and having it smack into the back of them like you do with your friends!

These two are sure to get you a smile from a discerning lady.

3. Etiquette for Walking Into a Room

This one should be easy if you think about it…

… she walks in first because you are holding the door for her!

The same goes for concerts, movies, etc,  hold the door so she can enter and then the lady goes first into the row of seats.

On exit from the row,  you will be leading, so stand at the end to stop anyone from cutting off your partner as they exit the rows in front, and allow her to exit in front of you then walk beside her.

4. Table Manners

This is a sorely neglected area of people’s manners, but here a few tips to have you polished in no time!

• Always serve everything for the lady you came with, but never for a lady who came with another man (do it if they are by themselves though).
• Never talk with your mouthful or make noise as you eat.
• Never leave the table before the family or guests without asking to be excused by the host or hostess
• Always drink your soup from using the side of the spoon without any noise!
• Do not talk loud or boisterously
• When serving them never overload their plate or force them to have something which they have already declined once

5. Be Punctual

Always always always be on time for a date!

It shows respect, good planning and personal timekeeping and reliability.

Make sure you leave in plenty of time, and if necessary,  get there early and wait for a while, much better than run the risk of being late.

If you are running late, then telephone the lady. If she doesn’t answer her phone, call the restaurant to make sure she is aware of what is going on and not left to become unnecessarily anxious.

If you are having to rush to meet her  after you have phoned,  make sure you take a minute or two to ‘catch your breath’, compose yourself and straighten yourself out before you go the final stretch and meet her.

6. Conversation

Remember that a conversation is two sided. This means if you catch yourself talking for too long then apologise and turn the conversation to them.

For most people,  a great topic is themselves. They know a lot about that subject so they feel comfortable talking about it! Women love it when you show an interest in them and their lives, so try to get her to talk about herself more and she will really feel a connection with you.

Be enthusiastic and positive, no matter what they are saying, even if it is boring or not! This will put them at ease and more relaxed so a conversation will start to flow.

Try to avoid topics that evoke emotion like religion, politics and money. These may get you caught up in debate that is more suited to the comfort of your own home rather than on your date.

Laugh at funny jokes, but a smile will suffice for unfunny ones; you don’t have to laugh at everything or she will think you are trying too hard and being insincere!

7. Getting Comfortable

It is your place, as the man, to make sure that your date is comfortable at all times. Do not  keep asking her if she is comfortable, but to notice if she is looking cold or shifting in an uncomfortable seat and take appropriate action to remedy the situation.

If you are walking along and you see a puddle then you may be comfortable going through it but don’t drag her through it. You don’t have to throw your coat over it like in old times, but just make sure you both avoid it somehow.

Offer your coat if she is cold when you are out and about. Women tend to dress lightly since they hate to have too much stuff to carry around, so you should be prepared to sacrifice your coat or jacket to keep them warm (or getting them out of the cold is another solution!)

8. Eye Contact

Most people make eye contact when they are listening, but not when they are talking. Try to make as much eye contact as possible to let them know they have your undivided attention.

Make sure that you genuinely are paying attention to them so that they feel they are the only person in the whole place. If you look around the room or look at other people then the person talking will assume that you are bored and looking to get away.

A good rule with eye contact is to look at the spot just in-between people’s eyes. Don’t stare for extended periods of time, take a quick break by briefly looking at something else and then come back, otherwise the talker could become uncomfortable.

9. Be Yourself

People can usually tell when you are exaggerating, if not immediately. It will show through later and bite you in the butt.

It has also been said that women are 10x more sensitive to body language than men, so if you are lying or exaggerating, there is a good chance they will know it!

If you try and be someone  you are not, you’ll only trap yourself into lying in the future to keep up the pretence, or  having to be called out which will make you look worse than if you just tried to be yourself.

People can tell when you are trying too hard and that is not a good trait as it shows you are not comfortable with the real you.

10. Extra Tips

Lastly, some other things you need to remember for your date:

• ALWAYS make sure she gets home ok. If you can, escort her home, then go home. Cabs are not always as safe as they seem
• Never try and have sex on a first date. Men try it routinely, but if a woman responds then one of you is bound to cheat later on in the relationship with that attitude to sex!
• Never swear or use uncouth language in front of a lady. Yes they already know the words, but that does not make it acceptable to use them
• Always make an effort to be dressed smartly, be fresh and smell good
• Never argue or be rude to others on a date, just let things slide or you will look like a jerk
• Compliment your date, but only if you mean it!
• On the first date always pick up the tab, on later dates always do it unless she offers first
• Never date unless you are genuinely, genuinely single! None of this, ‘Well I am kind of seeing someone’. That is not acceptable behaviour.

It’s hard to believe that an online dating site like eHarmony can be so closed minded about allowing gays and lesbians to use their services. What were they thinking? Anyway, I think they’re moving in the right direction, however, why do they need to create a separate site?

You can read the article here.

eHarmony loses lawsuit, must now provide gay and lesbian matchmaking services

Embroiled in litigation for over two years, the online dating behemoth eHarmony has now agreed to pay two million dollars to settle a class action sex discrimination lawsuit. Read the rest here.

Many people refer to dating as a game. It’s understandable. I mean, you go out and try to figure out in a few hours whether or not the man or woman sitting across the table from you is worth going out with again. People in the dating game make up elaborate plans in order to boost their success rate, while trying to figure out the right place to find a suitable mate. No wonder people call it the dating game!

Yet there is a relatively new piece in the dating game, and that piece is the Internet. Now, more than ever, people can sit in the comfort of their own home, browse profiles, chat online and get an idea of what the other person is like, just by asking a few questions.

The Internet is fast becoming the best place to find suitable single people. Millions of singles are hooking up and building successful relationships over the Internet. However, if you’re looking to find a suitable single guy or gal over the Internet, there are a few things you should keep in mind.

Profile

Sure a profile is great, and most people assume they’re accurate, but this isn’t always the case. People can lie better over the net, than they could in person. It’s important that you keep your profile up to date, and keep in mind that the one you’re viewing on your glowing computer screen might not be as honest as you think.

Region

There are successful long distance relationships, but they are more likely to fail. The stresses of driving back and forth, plus the added strain of not being able to see each other very often, take their toll. In most cases, it’s far better to find someone online who is close to you.

Interests

The guy or gal, who you’re talking to, may be a veritable beauty queen or George Clooney look-a-like, but do they share any of your interests? If you’d like to win the jackpot in the dating game, you may want to make sure they share at least a few interests that you do.  Chat with them, find out what they like to do in their spare time, and you’ll get a better idea of what kind of person they are, and whether or not you’re compatible as a couple.

If you use good judgment, ask questions and be discerning when it comes to online personalities, you can win the dating game and find suitable single people every time.

Online dating related article

• ARA: We’re dating, but his online profiles are still active (timesunion.com)

However, some people are better at hiding their true selves than others. Sometimes you can be in a committed relationship before you learn that your partner has some unsavory attributes that he or she had successfully kept hidden until now. While leaving the toilet seat up might be mildly annoying, the fact that your new live-in partner likes to punch holes in walls or fling ashtrays at your head when angry, isn’t something that can be passed off as annoying.

There are a few ways that you can test their personality before you commit. For instance, watch how they react when under stress. Most people can keep their true selves under wraps when everything is right in the world, but can’t maintain the mirage when under strain. Watch carefully how they react when angry, sad, annoyed or upset. In most cases, this is when their true colors will come shining through.

You can also watch how they treat the people around them. Does your new boyfriend treat his mom like a queen? Does your new girlfriend maliciously gossip about everyone when hanging out with her friends? If so, you can bet your bottom dollar that this is an indication of what they are like when not trying to impress someone.

You can also watch how they interact with strangers. Suppose you go out to a restaurant for a bite to eat, and the waiter brings them an order of shrimp, instead of the clams they originally ordered. Do they react angrily? Or do they just shrug it off, make a joke, and wait calmly for the waiter to fix their order? If they are a jerk over something so easily corrected, how are they going to be with you, if you screw something up? Everyone makes mistakes, but ideally you want a partner that’s going to be understanding, and not over-react.

The bottom line is, that people have a hard time pretending to be something they’re not, when the going gets rough. Every relationship has its ups and downs, and you want to make sure that when the going gets rough…your partner isn’t a jerk. By watching their actions and reactions before hand, you can spy out potential relationship ending problems that will crop up in the future.

Keep Dating

Many couples forget what attracted them to their mates in the first place. Sometimes work or kids leave them with little time to grow as a couple and they move away from dating.

This can pose a serious problem for couples. I know a couple that’s fallen into this situation. After the birth of their first daughter, the wife was so tired all the time with taking care of the infant that she no longer had any interest in her husband. It’s important to keep that spark alive by continuing to date. Whether it is once a week or once a month, it’s important to get some alone time with each other. This might mean getting a babysitter for an evening or putting overtime at work on hold. If your partner is worth it, don’t let the relationship grow stagnant and die. I know this sounds easier said than done, but keeping that spark takes a lot of time and energy, especially when a newborn.

Make Love In Weird Places

One great way to inject more passion into your relationship is to take your love making outside the bedroom. Make love in different rooms, in public places or places that you’d never normally think of as a hot-spot. Many couples fall into routine lovemaking….boring, right? While there’s nothing wrong with routine, it’s always a good thing to add some spontaneity to the relationship.

Remember when you first met, and couldn’t keep your hands off of each other? That’s the kind of passion you want to recapture. Your partner wants to know that they’re still attractive, desirable and you can’t get enough of them. They want to feel like they still have it in them to drive you crazy with lust, with a glance or a touch. Flirt with each other and build the anticipation. My sister and her husband have been married for 10+ years, and they claim they’re still on their honeymoon.

For most couples, it’s easy to fall into a rut. Taking each other for granted and doing the same thing over and over again, will lead most couples down the boredom highway. Every once in a while (as much as possible!) you need to hit the gas and swerve off that highway if you want your relationship to last. It’s not terribly difficult to inject more passion into your relationship and it can be a lot of fun.

Try it out….who knows? You may discover another part of your spouse you never knew existed.

When Tiger Woods’ many indiscretions were discovered, his wife allegedly turned his golf clubs against him, bought a Swedish mansion in her own name—and, perhaps most tellingly, threw out his phone.

As other woman after other woman comes forward, spilling the gory details of her time with Tiger, it seems more and more likely that a telltale text message may be what, in the end, did the big cad in.

Unfortunately, if that’s the case, Elin Nordegren won’t be the first—or the last—spouse to discover her significant other’s dalliances the new-fangled way.

“An intercepted text is the 2010 version of lipstick on the collar,” says Jonathan Alpert, a New York City psychologist, who’s recently seen a spike in clients wrestling with the aftermath of technologically fueled affairs. And the behavior is rampant on both coasts: “More frequently than ever, this is the way people are finding out that their partners are cheating—whether it’s cheating with sex involved or an emotional affair,” says Yvonne Thomas, PhD, an L.A. psychologist.

In fact, e-mail and texting—and now “sexting”—have leveled the playing field, making straying easier in the first place, whether you’re a professional athlete or the average American.

There are even websites, like ashleymadison.com, designed to make a “more efficient” way for married couples to stray, says founder Noel Biderman, who built the site in 2001 after reading a statistic indicating that 35 percent of users on dating websites were actually married and looking.

In fact, most of today’s indiscretions start virtually—a volley of desire lobbed back and forth at the speed of light, gaining intensity as it goes.
Yesteryear’s trysts—bosses and secretaries, long nights at the office—now seem almost quaint, more like a Mad Men plotline.

Perhaps the only thing that hasn’t changed is that when an unsuspecting partner clicks to find an e-mail that rocks her or him to the core, the pain isn’t mitigated by the digital age.

“It felt like an out-of-body experience,” says Wendy Silver*, 33, who discovered a slew of graphic text messages between her live-in boyfriend of three years and several different women an hour before her younger sister’s engagement party.

She wasn’t even snooping. He was out golfing for the day, and when she called, his jean pocket rang—he’d left the phone behind. Because he was hosting the after-party, she wanted to be sure he hadn’t missed any messages.

“I’d never checked his phone before in my life,” she says. “I just trusted him.” After all, they’d grown up together. She’d known him since she was 14. At the time, they had been talking engagement.

Silver didn’t waste any time. When he got back home, she confronted him and told him to leave the party. He burst into tears and apologized.

“I didn’t think you would ever find out,” he said.

“A part of me wishes I hadn’t,” she admits.

Dee Sanderson, 34, author of How to Marry a Loser Without Even Trying, was a little more tech-savvy: A computer programmer by trade, she decided to bug her husband’s computer based on a bad feeling she had.

“It was a period in my marriage where it felt like something was wrong. We weren’t connecting,” she says. “I couldn’t seem to get him interested in doing anything together.”

She felt stupid installing the trace. “It will probably be nothing, and then I’ll feel bad about not trusting him,” she said. Instead she was shocked by her virtual haul.

“Lo and behold, he had three or four different e-mail accounts he’d opened, and he was trying to solicit women,” she says. “One asked him outright, ‘Are you in a relationship?’ And he said, ‘Oh, it’s nothing serious.’ That was what hurt the worst. He basically said that our marriage didn’t mean anything.”

She kicked him out—then relented, for a time.

Go here to read the rest of this article.