Tips for finding a date

The best way to find your perfect match is to meet love halfway." Anonymous

Whether for the first time or the twenty-first, you find yourself alone, footloose and fancy-free. You begin to feel a longing for a significant other, a friend and confidant, perhaps even a soul mate to share your life and love for the foreseeable future and perhaps beyond. Once a liaison starts, you can never tell how it will progress or where it will end.

You very much wish to have a date, but you're realistic enough to realize you won't find one by wishing. Here are some practical suggestions to help you achieve your goal.

* Spread the word. Tell family, friends and colleagues at work that you're ready to start dating. Ask them to keep an eye out for a suitable candidate. Give a general idea of the type of person you're looking for: age , interests, religion and any other qualifications you consider important.

* Check your personal hygiene and appearance. Get a haircut, shower frequently, dress neatly, use cologne sparingly so that you always smell good, but not overwhelmingly so.

* Listen to the news, read the papers, and watch the most popular TV shows and movies so you will have interesting conversational tidbits at hand for discussion.

* Go to places where the person you'd like to meet is likely to be: the library, sporting events, the theatre, or church services. An early-morning visit to the neighborhood coffee shop will often reveal many business people taking short caffeine breaks on their way to work.

* You might try an Internet dating site, but be very cautious. There is no guarantee that any person you contact is telling the truth, or even that they're the same sex or age that they're pretending to be.

* Find a single friend of the same sex and go places together: singles' dances, groups for single parents (if you have children), community events, anywhere where people gather to relax and have fun. Your one-and-only is out there somewhere, but you have to be visible and alert to make contact.

* Get a pet and take it for walks in your neighborhood and nearby parks. A cute puppy or kitten in a harness is a real magnet for animal lovers, if that's what you'd like.

* If you're a single parent, visiting favorite children's parks, MacDonald's, fireworks displays, parades and other places popular with the younger set, will result in meeting other single parents as the kids start to interact. Children have fewer inhibitions than their elders.

* When you spot someone who looks interesting, approach with a smile and an appropriate, non-threatening comment. It doesn't matter if you're male or female; this is the twenty-first century, and women's lib is the order of the day.

* Be confident, friendly, and comfortable in your skin. Don't rush into anything, converse for a while, using proper grammar, with no crudeness or swearing. If both of you seem to enjoy the interlude, ask if s/he would like to talk again, perhaps later this week or next, at the same place.

* At the next meeting, you might suggest going for coffee sometime to get to know each other better. If the idea is met with acceptance, suggest a specific time and place.

* After the coffee date, if all goes well, phone numbers may be exchanged and the relationship, if it is meant to be, will proceed from there.

It seldom happens that you find your one-and-only on the first try. However, with every experience you learn and grow. You find out more about yourself, specifically what qualities in another really appeal to you.

You learn how to relate to others in a dating situation, how and what to share and when, and what qualities and characteristics in another person you cannot tolerate. All this is is valuable information as you continue to seek for Miss or Mr. Right.

So get on with the quest and enjoy it. While dating is an important and a serious activity as you search for your lifetime partner, you'll probably discover that it can also be a heck of a lot fun!