‘where do you find a partner for a possible relationship?’  I used to ask this of myself & others & many of my friends & clients still ask me this continually?  Where is the Place to find someone?????  My daughter & I went to Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Festival in Ireland on the weekend.  You have to hand it to the Irish that they actually have a place (or should I say places, as there are other less well known matchmaking festivals around Ireland) where this modern day dilemma can be solved.  This festival/gathering has at its core the main goal which is to match couples.  Farmers from all over Ireland come down for the weekends & consult or don’t with the resident matchmaker, Willy Dunne.  If you are a woman & are not with a man at this festival, then you are fair game.  As my daughter said (we were two women by ourselves) it was ‘predatory’!  I didn’t feel comfortable at all being the prey either, so we didn’t stay long.  However everyone was having fun (the Irish word is craic) & dancing at all the hotels.  There was definitely a spirit of celebration in the air & the alcohol was flowing steadily everywhere & that was in the middle of the day.  I’m sure everything was even more lubricated by the time they had gotten into full swing in the evening…..

In today’s world the main areas where people meet or look for partners are online dating sites & social networks.  I am interested in how these sites are for supporting real relationships.  I discovered a poll on DatingSitesReview.com .  They ask: ‘Which dating site would you recommend for the 2007 Dating Sites Reviews Single’s Choice Award?’ & the results of their poll are as follows:

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security is usually an issue in any relationship, whether we base everything on that goal or whether we don’t care about it all.  It is difficult to match a couple with the same attitude towards security and this can prove to create difficulties down the line.

When I was young I read Alan Watt’s book ‘The Wisdom of Insecurity’ which was a brilliant read!  Alan wrote: ‘What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously.’  Maybe I should stop writing now, while I’m, ahead???

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how competitive are you in a partnership?  This is an important issue for matching couples because we all have individual requirements for outlet of the competitive urge in intimate relationships.  It’s OK to express unbridled competition in business and work relationships, although even there too much competition can destroy any trust or teamwork in a business or organization.  The Beijing Olympic Games made me think of about competitiveness where it serves the athletes and how it serves us or not in the sphere of relationships.

“Focus on competition has always been a formula for mediocrity.” Daniel Burrus

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Having another person involved in a relationship in any capacity immediately changes the dynamic between two people. This can be a positive experience or it can shatter a couple’s trust, depending upon the attitude of the individuals involved. Some of the possibilities are:

• When a relationship’s energy or good feelings are dumbed down by time & habit, one or both parties may venture outside the relationship & have an affair with another

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having never looked like Barbie, I always wondered what it would be like to be known as a ‘beauty’. It seems that most of the standards we have about beauty are hard calls for most of us, but we keep trying, no matter how sane we are???? What is that about??? When I was at high school, I was chosen to be best friends with the most popular & generally acclaimed ‘beautiful’ girl. She was renown at our school because she had even done a few ads for TV. And I figured that I must have been no competition for her, so pretty safe, cause I was what my mother termed an ‘ugly duckling’! I guess I listened to all her exploits cause I didn’t have any & I gained a side popularity with all the boys, cause they wanted to know stuff about her. We had a bit of a bust up before we finished high school because she got pregnant & had an abortion, all without telling me. She said later that I was too naive & couldn’t have taken it! Needless to say we never really patched the friendship up again, as I got to finally see how I looked through her eyes & that she had been having a friendship with me but watching what she told me – it doesn’t breed a lot of trust, at least from my side! I like the one liner below, it says a lot!

‘If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?’ Stephen Wright

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