Blog Posts by Dan Juan

The Welsh city of Newport is only really famous for its proximity to a big bridge and this song but now it's reportedly set to make dating history.

According to the South Wales Argus, which I don't normally read, a pub in the town is going to host the UK's first eye gazing night.

Eye gazing is like speed dating but instead of speaking to someone for two minutes, you just silently look into their eyes and work out if you've got a connection. Apparently it's the big thing in dating in America. Well I'd never heard of it. Just because it comes for America, are we supposed to think it's good? I fell for that once with Kellogg's Pop Tarts, these days I'm warier.

For starters, I've been to Newport, and I imagine that if you stared at someone in one of its pubs for two seconds they'd try to hit you, let alone two minutes. The only people in Newport who stare at things for that long have done a lot of drugs, or are sheep.

Read More »from Gazed and confused

My return to dating websites this week has been like getting reacquainted with a crack habit. That familiar warm, fuzzy feeling came flooding back as I perused the legions of smiling thumbnails, luring me back into their lonely world with hot promises of everlasting love.

After a recent period of cold turkey from online dating, I was apparently rehabilitated. I had no cravings, no regrets. But now that I'm back online, chatting to a brunette from Dulwich calling herself "Sandy80", that's all gone out of the window and I'm wondering why I ever left. I've got the buzz again. And it has brought with it waves of clarity. I've suddenly worked out why online dating is so addictive

One of my long-standing issues with these sites is the amount of ugly people on them. I'd estimate the proportion of monsters at roughly 85 per cent. Very often a message will pop into your inbox, prompting a jolt of excitement, and then you'll see the sender's face and be disappointed. It stands to reason that

Read More »from Why online dating is so addictive

One of my issues with dating is how samey it all is. I invariably go on dates to the same pubs in the same areas and chat about the same things to girls who all look and behave similarly. When you're a regular dater, this gets a bit tedious.

So I was intrigued by a new dating website called Doing Something, which works on the philosophy that dating is better when you combine it with an activity. Members are asked to come up with a faintly zany date suggestion to attract their fellow singletons.

I was willing to try it, although some suggestions were more appealing than others. Here's a selection of date ideas proposed by girls...

Teaching me to play ukulele in a park somewhere in London
This sounds like quite a nice thing to do but the girl is limiting her options. There can't be many Londoners who can play the ukulele, and I have a suspicion that a large proportion of the ones that do are really annoying.
Verdict: Swathes of nice men will feel excluded by this idea.

[Related feature:

Read More »from Is dating better when you’re doing something?

I have a problem: I'm a dating blogger who is bored of dating.

I'm like a Mozart who can't be bothered to play piano, or a Ron Jeremy who just fancies a snuggle, or Jeremy Clarkson on a tram. I am toothless, inert, not fit to do the one thing I've put been on the virtual earth for.

But I can't help it… I've just been on so many dates. Actually it probably isn't that many. I reckon I've been on about 30 dates in the past two years. Is that a lot? I don't know. It's certainly sufficient to induce the occasional Groundhog Day sensation, as happened on my most recent date.

She was a girl from the internet. Nice photos, good banter — Jane. I met her in a pub in central London, it seemed convenient. I'd made some effort to look nice, smell nice, to send her some amusing texts in advance.

Then I arrived. I instantly recognised her. She was fine. Just fine. But I didn't find her attractive, I knew that within a millisecond. So there was no point. Of course you always run this risk on an online

Read More »from Losing the will to date

Telling someone you no longer want to have sex with them is one of the most excruciating first world problems we may encounter. And the worst bit of any dumping is when the spurned lover asks for a reason why.

So how very unhelpful that there is new website designed for that very purpose. WotWentWrong.com enables jilted exes to contact the person who chucked them and ask, literally, What Went Wrong? Or more specifically, "What is wrong with me that prompted you to chuck me?"

You may be familiar with another revolutionary online tool that provides a similar function - it's known as email. But WotWentWrong is better, apparently, because it purports to help users "develop fresh insights and behaviours to ensure your future relationship goals."

[Related feature: 10 excuses for dumping someone]

[Related feature: The truth about 'it's not you, it's me']

Here's how it works: you choose a 'template' that best fits your emotional position on the break-up, such as 'cool, 'confused' or

Read More »from You’re dumped, does it matter why?

It's supposedly only women who get jealous and competitive about each other's sexiness. Like when a very attractive girl starts a new job and all the other women in the office hold a conference declaring her a devil, hell bent on hooking up with all the men they've been flirting with, who must be stopped.

But guys do this too, just in a more subtle way. And I fear I may have become embroiled in such a rivalry with a guy in my office called Chris Stapleton.

Either Chris Stapleton doesn't like me, or I am imagining he doesn't like me because I don't like him - I'm not sure.

On paper, Chris and I should be mates. Apparently, we both feature regularly in the office "Top 5" chosen by girls. The Top 5, as anyone working in an office will know, is a ranking of colleagues in order of attractiveness/eligibility.

I'm afraid my appearance on this list isn't as impressive as it sounds because the majority of men in my office are either too old, too married or too gay to be seriously considered

Read More »from Why men are as jealous and competitive as women

There are bags of crisps spread out on the table and we're sipping our first pints of the evening, engaging in standard manly pleasantries. Arsenal "should not have lost", the price of beer in this place "is obscene", my hairstyle is "trendy within the gay community".

We check on each other's general welfare: James has a cough, Kuldip has a new scarf, Craig hates work. And then it comes to me, and my mates huddle in intently, expectantly…

"So which poor young woman is it this week, Dan?"

Wherever I go, whoever I'm with, this is what happens. The stock question I'm asked, when we're all settled down for some proper chat, is how many women I'm boning. Increasingly, I play down this element of my lifestyle. Only to face howls of derision and disbelief.

"Don't lie Dan, just spit it out: who have you had sex with today?"

Once I may have thought it was cool to be deemed a "ladies' man" but now I'm pretty bored with the persona. And like all urban myths, the truth is never as salacious as

Read More »from Why everyone needs a ladies’ man

If you ever look at the comments people add to my articles, two things will stand out. 1.) I am about as popular as Nick Clegg and 2.) A lot of the people commenting seem mentally unhinged.

That's fully expected in the comments sections of websites, although I've always wondered what these keyboard warriors are really like. And recently, I had the pleasure of finding out, with quite astonishing results.

On one of my recent articles, a friend of mine noted that an attractive girl called "Ellen" had written an unusually sweet comment. We looked at her profile and I sent her a virtual thumbs-up, then forgot about it.

A few weeks later, I received an email saying that Ellen and I were now "connected" (i.e. we had each other's email address).

So I wrote, saying hello and explaining who I was. She replied, saying who she was — namely, a Berlin-born marketing masters student based in Surrey. She seemed nice. We had a bit of polite banter for the next few days. Then Ellen went off-topic. She

Read More »from A friendly comment