Blog Posts by Dan Juan

A mate of mine, 31 years old and recently chucked by his girlfriend, told me this week that he doesn’t know a single other person that’s not in a relationship. I laughed, but then we listed all our mutual friends plus his numerous other friends, and it was true. None of them were single.

Some are happily married or as good as, but just as many are in what I’d call fakelationships. They’re not necessarily bad relationships; they fancy each other and they have fun together. But they know deep down (or often, just one of them knows) that it won’t last. Or at least, it will last until they can find someone better.

This is all well and good in your early twenties, but when you’re hitting 30 and beyond it’s possibly prudent to start thinking about a relationship’s long-term prospects. So why do men stay in these relationships? Often, I simply put it down to fear of singledom. Here are four of the big reasons why many guys are scared to be unattached…

Can’t turn down sex
If this makes men

Last week we pondered why men are reluctant to extricate themselves from relationships that don’t fulfil them – aka fakelationships. This week, here are seven signs that you might actually be in one of those fakelationships yourself...

You haven’t met his parents
It’s scary when you’re introduced to the potential in-laws, but perhaps you should be more worried if they’ve never heard of you. This either means he doesn’t see any future with you, or he's just embarrassed because he's the lovechild of John Major and Edwina Currie. Either way, it doesn’t bode well.

He doesn’t want to move in with you
Some fakelationships last for several blissful, if ultimately pointless, years but their make-or-break moment often arrives when someone suggests sharing a place. Many men are happy to stay in a fakelationship for ages providing they have a quick and easy get-out clause – but there’s nothing quick or easy about lugging a box of ‘Sopranos’ DVDs and an acoustic guitar down some stairs and into a

A mate of mine got a shock from his new girlfriend recently when they started playing the numbers game - and her number was higher than his. His number is 15. Hers is 20. He felt emasculated and somehow threatened. They're still together, but he still can't get those other 19 willies out of his head.

Even in this sexually enlightened age of Carrie Bradshaw and Rampant Rabbits and Edwina Currie, many men still use a woman's promiscuity as a whip to beat her with.

Personally, this is a conversation I rarely instigate with a girl. I put it in the "Will Only End In Tears" category, along with Exes' Knob Sizes and The Politics of Chairman Mao Tse-Tung.

The numbers game only generally crops up in long-term relationships, and that's just because you've run out of other stuff to talk about.

But coupled with this is a nagging curiosity. We might not want to tell - but we really, really want to know.

After witnessing my mate's torment, I decided to do a quick survey. I asked about 20 male

I went on a date a couple of weeks ago with a Finnish girl called Jenni. She was 27 years old, doing quite well for herself in marketing and fairly hot (about a seven). We met outside the pub, I bought us some drinks, we grabbed a seat and had a nice chat. She told me about her job, about Finland; I told her about the time I went travelling and the boxing gym I go to. Soon our pint glasses were almost empty.

At the end of the first drink on a first date, there’s always a slightly uncertain moment: who gets the next one? Obviously I got the first one because I’m a geezer. Do I also get the second one because I’m a geezer?

In my experience, about 80% of the time, the girl will offer to buy the second drink. And I will almost always insist on getting it myself. She will quickly agree to this idea, leaving the impression it was a token offer, but that's fine. With Jenni, I waited for this moment briefly, but when she didn’t offer I asked if she wanted another drink. In about 80% of cases,

I don't normally open my heart in this column but this week, I can’t help it. The thing is, I met someone. Someone special – and she gave me something I've been searching for my whole life. But now it's all ruined.

I'm talking about my hairdresser.                                      

I've had more than my fair share of hairdressers down the years. A lot of them were one-time things that just ended up damaging my self-esteem. Other relationships went on longer but they always fizzled out in the end. Sometimes I even tried men. But no one felt quite right, until I found Kerry. Kerry has only ever given me good haircuts. But now I can never see her again. It's over, and I'll tell you why.

Kerry has cut my hair about five times in a row and unprecedentedly, I was consistently satisfied with the results. My hair has been a constant disappointment to me since I was about seven years old. It's unruly. But Kerry tamed it - she was the only girl who could. As a result I'd never felt better

So I suppose you want to know about this online date then…

This was the girl I'd been chatting with online who seemed nice. We arranged to meet in a busy east London thoroughfare, in case one of us turned out to be a psychopath.

I prepared myself for the fact she wouldn't look like her photo — it was to be expected. But that couldn't prevent the feeling of deflation when I saw her face. It wasn't quite like David Brent's blind date in 'The Office' but it took me a good couple of minutes to recover from the disappointment. I'm sure this was evident to my date, Jess*, as I distractedly walked her to the pub. When she went off to find a seat while I ordered drinks, there was a split second where I seriously contemplated spinning around and running off down the street. It was just a split second, though. 

The problem was, in her pic she looked at least an 8/10. Yet when I saw her I thought instantly - 6/10. Before I go any further, I'm just going to give you a rundown of the scale

Call me fickle, but after my tirade last week against the concept of online dating, I signed up this week to a well-known singles' site. Just to see what it was like.

At least, that's what I was doing at first. I signed up 'for free', uploaded a photo and started browsing through women, 'for free'. Within about 10 minutes, one of these free women sent me an email. But I couldn't read it... unless I paid. As an innately curious man, I had no choice but to reluctantly reach for my credit card.

I know lots of people do online dating - a quick look at the site I'm on tells me there are 58,623 of them 'Online Now' - so what follows is probably old news to you. But for me, this opened up a whole new world...

Pages upon pages of women's heads. Of all descriptions. Haircuts and smiles, beckoning me to click and find out more. It was overwhelming. So I customised my search.

The process reminded me of a football manager simulation computer game I used to play. In the game, you'd pick the

An acquaintance got engaged last week to a girl he met on an online dating site. She's nice too. And she's famous! Not very famous, but she's an actress who had a small role in a well-known TV show. And she's hot. In summary, she contradicts everything I assume about girls that use online dating sites - namely that they're either desperate Pat Butcher lookalikes or attractive girls with psychological defects. Hence I have never used such sites.

I realise there are lots of things wrong with this view. Firstly, it's snobbish and offensive. Secondly, I write a dating blog yet I'm overlooking one of the most popular methods of dating. And thirdly, I'm single. So I can't be doing well enough in the real dating world to justify dismissing the virtual one.

Yet I continue to resist cyber romance. Let me try to explain why...
 
Time
I'm a busy man. Alright, I'm not busy doing anything important. OK I admit it, I'm not that busy. But even if I was, I wouldn't want to waste my free time with