J O H N ' S    J O U R N A L I S M L O V E    H U R T S or Ten Great Myths about Dating for the Lonely and Brokenhearted by John Connolly for the Irish Times, February 2001 1. There are plenty of fish in the sea This is almost true. There are plenty of fish in the sea. Unfortunately, by the time you pass 30 most of them have been thrown back by someone else. If they're not caviar, they're cat food. (Note: people in relationships use this adage to reassure those of us who are not. The only adequate response is to pray that their relationships break up calamitously. Ha! See how bloody reassuring they find it then.) 2. It is better to be single and lonely than to be attached and discontent It is better to be attached, discontent, and having sex regularly than to be single and having no sex at all. 3. Teenagers today have it easier than we did This one has an element of truth to it. To be honest, the blokes still look the same - pimply, slightly funny-smelling, and dressed like unemployed footballers - but the girls now dress like little supermodels. When I was a teenager, girls wore baggy sweaters and shapeless jeans. For the first 17 years of my life, I thought Irish girls didn't develop breasts until they were married. I assumed it was something in our water. Furthermore, they were the kind of girls who listened to gloom-laden anthems by The Cure and The Smiths. If you went to sleep beside a girl like that, there was a good chance that she might not even be alive when you woke up the next morning. (I knew one girl who had only one record in her collection, which was Hatful of Hollow by The Smiths, a fine album but one so unrelentingly miserable that turning it off is the audio equivalent of a mercy killing. Strangely, she didn't even own a record player, which says a lot about the kind of person we're dealing with here.) Actually, I wouldn't even have known what to say to a girl dressed the way teenage girls dress today. Mind you, I'm rapidly approaching the age when I know exactly what I'll say to her, and it will begin "No daughter of mine is going out dressed like a streetwalker. . ." 4. Men are afraid of commitment Men are afraid of everything. They are afraid of commitment, of rejection, of acceptance, of their girlfriends, of their girlfriends' parents, of their girlfriends' friends. In relationship terms, men exist in a state of barely-controlled terror. Anyway, men wouldn't be so afraid of commitment if women didn't keep bringing it up all the time. I mean, what's wrong with the way things are going now? We're happy aren't we? Oh, I see. My mistake. 5. Irish men are not romantic The average Irish guy's idea of romance on Valentine's Day is to buy dying flowers in a petrol station and to make sure that the chocolates aren't out of date (or, if they are, to ask the petrol station guy to remove the label.) Sadly, we live in a pub culture and pubs, due to their social nature, are not romantic places. The only people who truly begin lifelong love affairs in pubs are alcoholics. In addition, many men - and some women - still exist at the kebab-and-chips level of fine dining, so restaurants are not an option. In romantic eating terms, we still drag our knuckles on the ground and eat our meat raw. In New York, art galleries open late on certain evenings so single people can meet over fine art. In Ireland, galleries and museums are usually closed by the time most people finish work and, anyway, who in their right minds would go to an art gallery instead of a pub. I mean, be realistic. 6. There is someone for everyone This is true. When I was in school her name was Lisa, and the going rate was a Mars bar. 7. There is someone for everyone, part 2 Again, this is something attached people say to those who can't even get shopkeepers to look them straight in the eye. In fact, there are some pathetic individuals who are destined to die lonely, beating futilely at the darkness. This is because they are desperate, inadequate and sexually abnormal, with low self-esteem, a tendency to self-pity, and too many bad relationships behind them. Sadly, they don't hide it as well as the rest of us. 8. Men feel break-ups less intensely than women In general, men tend to talk less than women about their feelings of hurt and rejection, which is a good thing because it's weak and shameful and nobody likes a miseryguts. Some men try to deal with the end of relationships by getting back in the saddle and trying it with someone new. (Actually, this is often why their original relationships end in the first place. It's the same impulse that makes many men start one job in the house before finishing another, or constantly switch channels once they have a remote control in their hands. Funny, isn't it? Okay, possibly not.) Other men mope and try to brighten up their lonely existences by buying potted plants to brighten up their now empty lives. This is based on the mistaken belief that someone who killed a relationship stone dead by refusing to commit to dinner and a movie can somehow keep a complex biological organism alive. 9. Single people have more fun In reality, dating is hard, disappointing, and frequently frustrating. At best, it's a series of empty, meaningless sexual encounters - which is still pretty good, but won't make you happy in the long term. Honest. It is also said that married men live longer than their single counterparts and always have someone on hand to tell them how wonderful they are. Women, meanwhile, suffer from stress and depression, watch their husbands grow fat and contented in front of Saturday night football, then end up as widows. So a good deal all round then. 10. The whole dating scene just isn't worth it. There is no such thing as love. As Woody Allen once put it, the heart is a very, very resilient little muscle. It breaks, it heals, it breaks again, but disappointments in love rarely stop it dead. Only activities like eating chocolates and cream cakes will do that, although these are, admittedly, side-effects of disappointment in love. To quote Allen again, 70 per cent of success is showing up, and if all else fails you can always marry your stepdaughter. Love exists, but you have to be out there to find it. Hey, and when you do, keep it to yourself, okay? The rest of us have enough problems without adding your happiness to them. . .