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Came across a wonderful dating tips article on MSN today. With Father’s Day just around the corner they featured a short article with some dating advice given to young men and women over the years by their fathers.
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Equal pay for equal work is a great idea in the workplace. Do you also believe in equal pay for equal good times on the dating scene? It’s a question that bothers many women. Do you offer to pay for your own dinner or movie ticket?

If you do pay, is it really a “date” in the traditional sense - or just hanging out like you do with friends? When a man invites a woman for a date, he usually plans to pay the check. If he isn’t going to pay, then he needs to make that known up front.
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You look out the window as his sleek, luxury car pulls into your driveway. During that casual encounter at a mutual friend’s party, you didn’t really memorize every detail about him.

As you watch him walk up the path to your door, you notice that he is tall, well dressed and looks promising. In fact, he looks so good that you ditch the old dress and pull out something a bit more chic.
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It happens. Relationships are fragile things that break for many different reasons. The main thing for you to remember is that if this one didn’t work out, it was for a reason – and that reason is probably that you were not meant to be together. It’s far better that you find that out now rather than somewhere down the road.

Whether it’s only been a short-term relationship, or one that’s lasted more years than you want to count right now, it’s still better that a relationship that’s no longer going anywhere ends and allows you to find someone else who will appreciate you more than your ex has.

Don’t look to place blame. Accept that the relationship has ended because it wasn’t going to work. It may hurt because you’re ex partner found someone else, or that they just don’t see any future with you, but the more time you invest in a relationship that’s not going anywhere, the more time you waste. Even if your ex partner has treated you badly, they’ve done you a favor because now you are free to find someone with whom you can have a future.

Objectively consider the reasons why the relationship didn’t work. If you think that you should have done things differently resolve to change this when you start a relationship with a new partner. Don’t make the same mistakes – even if your only mistake was to be too trusting!

Pamper yourself! Your heart and ego have been bruised in this relationship fall and so you need to administer some tender loving care on them. What raises your spirits? How about some beauty treatments or a makeover? Spend a weekend pursuing an extreme sport you’ve longed to try but didn’t have the opportunity because your ex partner wasn’t interested. Buy yourself something to cheer yourself up. Spend time doing things that you enjoy, especially any that you didn’t do while you were in the relationship with your now ex.

Don’t allow being dumped be an excuse to turn into a recluse. This ex partner didn’t want you. That means he wasn’t worthy of you. You did nothing that necessitates you hiding yourself away! Get out and socialize. Call up friends that you’ve lost contact with, go out and celebrate your new life as a single person! Being single isn’t a crime, it can even help you re-center your life and rediscover things about yourself that you’d forgotten whilst you were busy being half of a couple!

Take time before getting into another relationship. Even if you accept and let go all of the emotion tied up with the broken relationship, you still need to wait a little before getting into a new one. Don’t hook up with the first person who catches your eye. Rebound relationships can work but are usually destined for failure. Set yourself up for relationship success by giving yourself some breathing space as a single person again before putting yourself back into the dating arena.

Being dumped is a bad experience, and often you don’t have any influence over the situation, but what you can influence is your reaction to it. Your ex walked away from your life, don’t let him take that life with him – live it to the full yourself!

It seems a natural for love to bloom at the office, and as much as we always hear that dating someone at work is forbidden, and discouraged and just not a good decision, people still do so – in droves. It’s fairly easy to see why.

You spend at least 40, and often 60 or more hours there together. Especially if you’re in a position of responsibility and you excel at your job, as do they, you both see each other in a very positive light. You have similar interests, mutually admire each other, and work closely on projects that culminate in satisfying, profitable conclusions. Or, at least that’s the ideal.

Still, most human resource professionals will tell you to avoid love at the office. Most will tell you dating someone at work is more risk than all but the most positive long term results would warrant.

Dating someone at the office can begin with love, but end with animosity towards each other, from co-workers or subordinates, jealousy from your mate or others who are attracted to your mate or see you succeed and wonder if you’ve earned it. Some liken the office to a family, and describe the animosity generated by the rumors that fly of favoritism due to love and romantic relationships to sibling rivalry.

Of course love at the office can have expansive legal repercussions. What began as a consensual relationship between supervisor and subordinate might not be presented by the jilted subordinate later down the road. Charges of harassment, blackmail, or even rape could result - and have. Repercussions can and do get felt throughout the office as the productivity turns from office tasks to spreading the gossip.

In a 2002 workplace study conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) 25 percent of U.S. firms expressly forbid dating someone at work, although 81 percent of the managers surveyed said that they frowned on love at the office. These 81 percent said that these romances usually lead to workplace conflict and were often downright dangerous. What’s really contradictory, however, is that this same study found that two thirds of those who found love at the office ended up marrying their new found love.

The message to take away from this is that while you may find that dating someone at work brings you a happy long term relationship you should keep your distance at work, and be as discreet as possible. If the relationship matters that much to you, it may be very sound advice for the one whose job is the least advanced, and who is best capable and willing, to find a new job once the romance starts to sizzle. Of course, the issue then becomes whether you really wanted to do that or if you’re later going to resent giving up your career for someone who wouldn’t give up theirs.

The other disadvantage of love at the office is that it can be just too much togetherness. Coming home to each other may be a whole lot more affectionate, exciting and fulfilling when you haven’t been toiling side by side all day.

Going on a blind date? Here are a few tips for making the most of your blind dating experience:

• The best time for a blind date is lunch, or if it must be in the evening meet for drinks or coffee rather than dinner. If the meeting is scheduled to be short and casual, you’ll find far less pressure put on your blind date. You also won’t have to be concerned about the propriety of who is to pay for the dinner.
• Choose someplace quiet and someplace where you won’t run into several friends who stop and say hello. This is the time to pay attention to your date, not everyone else.
• Etiquette is an important part of your best blind date and an important tip. Avoid sarcasm, talking badly about other people, telling rude or crude jokes, using racial or ethnic slurs, and making suggestive comments. Especially if you are the male, the latter will make a very nervous blind date – and one probably not destined to see you again.
• Avoid controversial topics. A blind date isn’t the place to discuss how much you hate organized religion or how liberal your politics are. The exception is if this blind date is made after you are brought together online or otherwise and have determined that you have these attitudes in common.
• Courtesy, above all, is the rule for a blind date, no matter how disappointed you might be at the person sitting across the table from you.
• Ignore your cell phone calls. Better yet, you should turn your cell phone off, unless you are prohibited. The latter might be a physician on call, a police officer and so forth. If that is the case, the first thing you’ll want to do is explain that you might have to respond to some emergency call, but you’ll ignore all others.
• Your blind date shouldn’t be the one night search for your true love. Talk about pressure! Our tip is to avoid that kind of stress by telling yourself that this meeting is the chance to go out and have a good time and maybe meet somebody nice. Perhaps you won’t find your perfect mate, but you just might meet a new friend.
• Listen to your blind date – that’s an important tip. Listening at the first meeting is much more important than talking. Don’t avoid disclosing enough about yourself to seem open and honest, but don’t monopolize the conversation.
• Come armed with questions to keep the conversation flowing. These questions should be open-ended, to get your blind date talking. Asking, “What brought you to Boston?” could elicit a lot more conversation than, “How many years have you been in Boston?”
• While you might be dating someone that your friends know, don’t ask too many questions before you actually meet. Make your own decisions, rather than letting someone else’ biases negatively coloring your opinion before the blind date even happens.