Want to find love? Do the maths!

There are 144 eligible, mature single women for every 100 men. But here’s how to beat the odds and find Mr Right

When you find yourself facing yet another snub in the midlife dating game, it’s all too easy to fret that perhaps you’re not slim, witty or blonde enough, or that you’ve just become too cynical and set in your ways.

But there’s every chance your lack of success could be much less to do with the possibility that ‘he’s just not that into you’ (or you into him), but much more to do with the simple fact that there aren’t enough of him.

According to the latest statistics, women in the UK outnumber men by almost a million and the perfect male suitor is more rare if your minimum intellectual requirement is a mate with a university degree.

It’s a simple question of mathematics: a dating market that sees eligible men in low supply means a woman looking for love in midlife has the numerical odds stacked against her.

It’s like musical chairs: you might barely notice the one chair missing in the first round in your 20s, but by the end of the game, your chances of not getting a chair will have risen dramatically.

each time an eligible man gets married, a chair is removed and the chances of losing the game increase.

I’m afraid it is a mathematical certainty your marriage prospects worsen the longer you stay in the dating game. A 50-something female graduate is stuck in a dating pool with 144 women for every 100 men.

Today, there are 33 per cent more women than men graduating from university, but for 50-somethings, the graduation gender ratio was more balanced — more like 50:50 when they got their degrees.

So on paper, your dating options should be better than younger women starting out on their quest.

But the statistics are complicated by the fact men seem to be able to dip down (in terms of age) and pluck a younger partner out of the segment of the dating pool where there is an over-supply of women.

Your potential target market of 50-something men is also under attack from nevermarried 30-somethings who might find the older man more relationship-minded than playboy bachelors their own age who are perfectly happy to live the single high life.

You see this playing out in the divorce/re-marriage statistics, which show 1.07 million divorcedbut-not-remarried women in their 50s potentially looking for love, compared to a paltry 0.68 million divorced but- notremarried men the same age.

That means there are 57 per cent more women than men in the market.

not only does a statistical shortage of men make it harder for women to find a match at this age, but, according to psychologists and sociologists who have studied the effects of these lopsided gender ratios, an over-supply of women gives men an incentive to misbehave and play the field.

When men outnumber women, romance and courtship are the order of the day as men fight for the wife of their choice and are willing to make and to keep a commitment to stay together.

But when the tables are turned and women outnumber men, it can be incredibly hard to pin down those men.

however, despite the shortage of clever, eligible men in the midlife dating pool, you can beat the tricky odds . . .

WHERE THERE’S MUCK THERE’S MEN

If YoU’re serious about finding a mate, consider expanding your search, switching your heels for hiking boots, and relocating to the country.

The statistics are clear: a higher proportion of single women live in urban areas, but there is a surplus of single men in the countryside.

You might find 99 single women for every 100 men in an inner- city area, but your options increase to 103 single men for every 100 women in some of the more remote leafy rural idylls.

Though there are inner- city exceptions ( in the City of London, you’ll find 155 men for every 100 women, and the London borough of newham has a macho gender ratio with 126 men per 100 women), cupid’s arrow is much more likely to find its target in more isolated reaches.

Try the Isles of Scilly (119 men per 100 women), forest heath in Suffolk (117 per 100), and Copeland in Cumbria (115 per 100).

Type your postcode into an interactive map at www.visual.

ons.gov.uk and you’ll be able to see at a glance how your area matches up to the more remote hot beds of masculinity.

There are big pockets of match-making opportunity in mid Wales, the Lake District and east Anglia and your odds look pretty favourable in reading, Berkshire, but if you do nothing else, book a weekend break to Scotton near harrogate, where 85 per cent of singletons are male.

If a house move is out of the question, you can still notch up your chances of finding love if you switch your search from the city to the suburbs.

Gender ratios appear to be less imbalanced in commuter belt areas (39 per cent of male workers commute 30 minutes or more compared to 33 per cent of female workers), possibly reflecting men’s greater willingness to travel to work.

LEARN TO LOVE YOUR LOCAL PUB

YoU might be able to increase your odds of success significantly in the midlife dating game if you are willing to drop your minimum requirement below the ‘ he must have a university degree’ threshold.

There are more men without degrees than with them, and their dating behaviour is less likely to have been distorted by an oversupply of women.

Wherever you live, you’ll have more success visiting your local pub during a football match than you will sipping prosecco in an upmarket wine bar.

DON’T BE SHY: MAKE THE FIRST MOVE

When it comes to midlife dating, the long-held stereotype that men enjoy the chase may well be a myth.

I am convinced that men want to be wanted and in a lopsided dating market, women who actively pursue their man are more likely to succeed than those who sit back and wait for Mr right to woo them. This

helps explain why there is a disproportionate number of fabulous — and highly marriageable — women still single in their 30s and even 40s.

They are lamenting their poor pickings among the remaining single men, many of whom seem to be unattractive, socially awkward, emotionally damaged or unemployed.

The problem is that most of the good men were snapped up years ago by women whose most salient characteristic was not their beauty or passion or intellect, but their decisiveness.

It’s like any heady emotional auction bidding process: a strong bidder (the woman who is fit, attractive, funny, popular, healthy and solvent) will all too often be her worst enemy if she holds out for the ‘ideal’ mate.

Wait too long and you may miss out — the best men end up with the women who pursue them most aggressively.

THE TIME TO GIVE HIM AN ULTIMATUM

DATING advisers might warn against giving a man a ‘put a ring on it or I walk’ ultimatum, but this assumes that the decisionmaking process for romance has little in common with the process by which human beings make every other type of important decision in life.

Why make a lifetime commitment to one woman when you can keep her as an option while continuing to survey the market — a market that, for a man, has an ever-increasing number of attractive options?

If your chap won’t commit, you might just have to put your foot down and essentially demand a ring in order to get one.

ultimatums work because they create artificial scarcity in an otherwise abundant marketplace, strengthening his desire if he fears that he is in real danger of losing you.

This may sound high-risk (not to mention manipulative) when applied to marriage. But there is strong evidence that women who are prepared to break things off are, in fact, more likely to get what they want.

Be brave! The key — as in any tough negotiation — is you have to be willing to walk away.

COSY UP TO A WORK COLLEAGUE

YOUR workplace is an important part of your dating opportunities, so it’s wise to choose your career judiciously ( ie, not a predominantly female profession) and, if necessary, be prepared to change it in later life.

According to the statistics, one in five people marry a co-worker. So work is a potentially fertile hunting ground if there are enough men around you to chose from.

I’d be the last person to advise a female teacher who is happy in her job but unlucky at love to retrain to be an aircraft mechanic (98 per cent of aircraft mechanics are men, compared to the 80 per cent of teachers who are women) or to think about a career in law enforcement when 78 per cent of the police force is male.

But it is worth knowing that your career choice could be dimming your dating prospects.

If you are prepared to get your hands dirty in the name of love, you should know that other overwhelmingly male professions include IT (83 per cent) and financial adviser (74 per cent).

If you need a bigger incentive to make the career leap than just the increased opportunity for romance, it’s worth considering you might also end up with a higher salary because maledominated industries tend to be more highly paid than femaledominated ones, such as teaching and nursing.

GET ON YOUR BIKE AND CHASE MAMILS

IF YOUR favourite pastimes are Zumba, baking and quilt-making, you’re not making the most of your spare time.

you can dramatically increase your exposure to men if you get into cycling.

Thanks to the GB cycling success, cycling is the top male pastime — last year, men cycled nearly three times more than women. Think of all the dating potential in that MAMIL (middleaged men in Lycra) tribe!

Even better, get running. Triathlon participation in Britain has grown by 300 per cent in the past five years — it’s the new golf for thousands of formerly sedentary semi-retirees.

yes, it requires effort, and yes it might hurt, but it’s fundamentally healthy, and it’s got to be better than Googling Star Trek conventions (fans are predominantly male) or stalking the village hall gatherings of model train enthusiasts.

DON’T DISMISS ONLINE DATING

ONE in five relationships start online and dating sites are no longer the sole preserve of the young and over-sexed.

If you are keen to find a partner, it’s a resource you shouldn’t dismiss because academics believe your chance of finding love through a dating site is 10 to 15 per cent higher than through traditional means.

IF ALL ELSE FAILS, CATCH A PLANE

COULD it be worth packing your bags and expanding your search to countries where university educated men do outnumber the women? Try:

India (22 per cent more male graduates than female) Turkey (16 per cent more men) Indonesia (15 per cent more men) Japan (10 per cent more men) Pakistan (8 per cent more men) Mexico (4 per cent more men) Switzerland (1 per cent more men)

ADDITIONAL reporting by louise Atkinson. Adapted from date-onomics: How dating Became A lopsided numbers Game by Jon Birger (Workman, £11.99). © 2015. to order a copy for £9.59 (20 per cent discount), visit mailbookshop.co.uk or call 0844 571 0640. P&P is free on orders over £15. offer valid until november 7, 2016.