Why is the man I fell for still looking online for love?
Solve your sex, love & life troubles
TV’s Steph and Dom Parker, 51 and 53, draw on their 20 years of marriage to solve your relationship problems...
QSIX months ago, I met a lovely man on a dating site for professionals and we’ve been together ever since. Rather wonderfully, I think I’ve fallen in love. We’re both a similar age — I’m 52; he’s 54 — and we share the same interests: music, food, city breaks. He’s charming and fun.
The only problem is he won’t take his dating profile down! I broached the subject early on, in a jokey sort of way, and he said, oh, yes, he’ll get round to it. He swore he wasn’t active on the site. But when I checked recently, it was still there.
So I gave him an ultimatum — if he hadn’t taken the profile down by the end of the month, I’d break things off. That deadline has been and gone and his profile is still up there.
Now I feel stupid because I don’t want to lose him, but I’ve backed myself into a corner. Why won’t he just delete the profile? And how do I deal with this without ending what we have? Help!
STEPH SAYS:
EASY! There’s only one thing to do — put your profile back up! If it’s good enough for him, then it’s certainly good enough for you. And if he doesn’t like it, there’s a very easy solution . . .
He’s being insufferably arrogant. His attitude is far too cavalier for my liking. You need to respond with the same attitude and see what happens.
I can sense you’re feeling a little vulnerable and might be tempted to just bring it up with him again in the future, in the hope of avoiding confrontation now. Don’t. Do. It. If you start banging on about the same thing, he’ll simply see you as a moaner.
You cannot give in to the temptation to start complaining now. You might come across as insecure — and that’s fatal. Modern dating is brutal. It is a tough old game out there and you can’t afford to show such weakness.
By issuing an ultimatum you’ve revealed your insecurity and handed him all the power. It’s time to take it back.
You’re worried he might be checking out the competition — he should be terrified that that’s what you’re doing! Reactivate your profile. It will send a strong statement.
Make it obvious — update it with a new photo, rewrite your blurb and make it very, very clear to him that this isn’t an accidental log-in.
It’s vital you don’t just sit back and hope he comes across it. After all, it’s entirely possible he was telling you the truth when he said he didn’t check his profile. You need to make sure he knows you’re getting back out there. Send him a message on the site saying, ‘Hi! I love your profile...Want to take me to dinner?’
This will achieve two things: not only will you be regaining control, but you’re also going to be giving yourself the confidence boost you need. This is about you, too.
At the moment, you’re being mousy. Don’t be. Don’t allow how he feels about you to dictate how you feel about you. Most of all, don’t wait for him. If he is keeping his options open to see if there’s someone better out there, then damn right you are, too!
I know that, sometimes, it doesn’t seem like it, but there really are other good men — put yourself out there again and they will respond. Get back online, get your mojo back — and either get him back. Or get over him. DOM SAYS: FIRST off, congratulations for having fallen in love. And at a perfectly comfortable age, too. Really, one might have hoped by this stage not to have made such a rookie mistake. Ultimatums are dangerous, silly things to issue. I feel you have no alternative but to live up to your threat — even if it means separation from this man. If you don’t, you will have exposed a fatal chink in your armour for future matters. Your credibility is at stake here. Regardless of how happy you might be together in the future, he’d always think, well, if she didn’t dump me then, she won’t dump me now. Fundamentally, this is a matter of trust. Deep down, you are worried he is looking for someone else and is going to leave you. Trust is hugely important in relationships. Now, if you aren’t true to your word, he won’t trust it in the future. So, in a way, you’re both as bad as each other. And you’re in a tricky spot. As to why he still had it up in the first place, well, I don’t know him, so I can’t be sure, but I’d say it’s 50/50 that he’s just a bit lazy as opposed to actively looking to woo other women. I think I signed up to professional networking site LinkedIn years ago and I wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to get back on — never mind get off it! So it’s perfectly plausible he just didn’t realise how important it was to you — and the only way you can show him is by making good your threat. The question is how you do it without losing him. He’s missed his deadline, so now, you have to tell him you simply won’t see him again until the profile is down. This is the ultimate test. Hold your nerve. If his profile doesn’t go, you leave — because he doesn’t care enough about what’s important to you.
O IF YOU have a question you’d like Steph and Dom to tackle, write to features@dailymail.ie