Eight More Things I Have Learnt Will Help You Find Love

Following on from my previous post about 6 things I have learnt about love from my year at working at RSVP dating agency head office, here are a further 8 things I have learnt that will improve your chances of meeting the right person.

1) Don’t put too much importance on one date with someone; think of it as just a date or a meeting. Over-thinking things or letting your imagination run away with you is never going to be helpful. If the date doesn’t go well, don’t stop and replay it in your head; move on to the next one.

2) Do dress up and make an effort on dates. When our Dating Consultants meet prospective RSVP members, we hear them say that they are fed up of the other party not putting the effort in any more. I am not saying you need to dress up to the nines, but it is common sense to look clean and presentable on dates. Leave football shirts, trainers, scruffy jeans and dirty clothes in the wardrobe, along with that cliche 'they'll have to love me for what I am'.

3) Relax. Nerves are normal, particularly on your first date or first singles event. Just remember, RSVP is a traditional matchmaking agency; this is not online dating! All of our members have been met by our Dating Consultants and everyone is who we say they are, without exception. At RSVP, we suggest considering different activities for a date, not just the typical drinks at the pub. Our RSVP single events are a less nerve-wracking way of new meeting people, eg. guided tours, walks, dinners, adrenalin activities.
 
4) If in doubt after a first date, go on a second date. A first date may feel tough and nerves can get in the way. At a second date, you can relax and get to know each other better and this may help you decide whether to take it further. Two RSVP members who have recently got together are very grateful that we encouraged them to have a second date, despite having reservations after the first. 

5) At RSVP, we write bespoke profiles for all of our Gold and Platinum members. These are based what our experienced dating consultant learned about you at your meeting before joining. Trust us on this. We really are the experts on knowing exactly what to say in order to optimise your chances of generating lots of matches. We'll encourage you to resist putting in obscure details and references or strong opinions that others might not understand; it's so easy unknowingly to put off potential matches. Unfortunately we have seen this happen on a couple of occasions, when otherwise it could have been a perfect match.

6) You don't have to have identical hobbies and interests to be a great match. Of course, it is good to have common ground, but you don't have to both like skiing or musicals for it to be a good introduction. To me, and I am sure to many others, what is more important is if the same things make you laugh, if you have the same family values or that you are on the same page emotionally.

7) Make friends at RSVP. I have seen so many friendships formed with different RSVP members at RSVP singles events, which is great. Occasionally we hear things along the lines of ‘I already have friends, so I don’t want to go to events if there isn’t someone for me’. I disagree with this:

• Firstly, you might find someone at RSVP singles events who you are attracted to unexpectedly.
• Secondly, you could make friends with other members at events; you can never have too many friends! Within new friendship circles, you can get introduced to a wider audience. 
• Thirdly, some food for thought: a lady joined us who made a female friend at an RSVP singles dinner. She was invited to her birthday BBQ. There she was introduced to Birthday Girl’s brother. They are now married! 

8) Be open to trying new things and different places. Whilst it may be daunting at first, if you are single and looking for a partner, now is the time to break out of a rut and try something new. Opening doors to new experiences, hobbies or opinions outside your bubble will, without doubt, increase your chances of meeting someone new.

Six Things that I Have Learnt About Love After a Year Working at RSVP

I am celebrating one year as part of the Head office team at RSVP Dating Agency and Singles Club and I have seen countless happy-ever-after stories. When I tell people what I do, they are fascinated and ask lots of questions. Here are six things that I have learned about love in the last year.

1) Members who join us with an open mind and a positive attitude are the ones who typically meet someone faster - and get more out of their introductions and our singles events. If you are unhappy and resentful because you are not in a relationship, this attitude won’t encourage people to want to be in a relationship with you.

2) People don’t always know what they want until they find it. On occasions, we come across members who have a shopping list of what they think they want. If on paper their matches don’t tick every box, they don’t seem so interested. I will always suggest that you meet as many people as you can and you will be surprised that what you thought you wanted originally might change. At RSVP we write your profile for you; we have been doing this for 25 years and we know exactly what kind of profiles work well.

3)  ‘I am a young  58’. Believe me when I say we hear this multiple times every day. What does that even mean? In theory, we live in a far more ageless society than ever before. However, the whole age issue has stopped countless romances that could have been wonderful. Members who won’t date anyone older than them are undoubtedly shooting themselves in the foot. If you met someone in a pub, you wouldn’t know their age. Yes, we will tell your introductions your real age and you will know their real age. Would you prefer to be matched with someone who is fit and active who happens to be 3 years older than you with a young and modern attitude? Or would you rather see someone who is 8 years younger than you who isn’t active and behaves older?

4) Dating is a numbers game. The more people you meet, the more likely you are to find 'the one'. We want to help you find the right partner as quickly as possible, so don’t put all of your eggs in one basket; it is quite normal to be talking to different people and arranging a couple of different dates until you both choose to become exclusive or you become intimate. Mixing introductions with our singles events will increase your chances of meeting a partner.

5) Have realistic expectations about a potential partner. Did you know the average dress size for ladies in the UK is size 16 and the average height for men is 5ft 9in? So if you are a gentleman wanting a lady no bigger than a size 10, you'll inadventently exclude more than half of potential matches. Likewise if you are a lady looking for a man over 6 foot tall with a full head of hair. Dating agencies are often the haunt of second timers; and if it is a long time since you were previously single, you'll need to adjust your expectations from what you expected previously when you were 25.

6) It only takes one right person to make all of those bad dates seem like a lifetime ago. We have had members go from ‘I am giving up and I’m not going to date for a while’ to ‘this is the one and thank you’ within a week. If your current dating method is not working for you,  get in touch and arrange an appointment with one of our expert dating consultants.

More Online Dating Fraud

We have all heard the scare stories in the media of the perils of meeting people on line. With, seemingly every month, another new app or dating website popping up, there really is a lot of choice out there. But is one better than the other and do they all come with the same warnings? Here at RSVP Dating Agency and Singles Club we meet real people, in real time. We interview everyone and they often tell us of their online dating horror stories.

One lady we interviewed had met a guy on a popular, free website and spent months – yes, months – corresponding with him via email. We’ll call him Bernard. As the messages flew back and forth the emotional connection (and the time invested) grew. After Bernard sent some images of himself, a well-meaning friend of our prospective client used Google’s Reverse Image Search to discover that Bernard was, in real life, a dancer in New York and actually not residing locally as she first thought. When she asked him why, Bernard closed his email account and she never heard from him again. She was lucky. She only wasted months of her time.

Another gentleman we interviewed met a girl on line and spoke to her on the telephone. After no response to his texts for a couple of days, she eventually made contact asking for £2,000, stating that she was stranded abroad after having her bag supposedly stolen. Thankfully, he declined her kind offer .... but will the next chap she approaches be so savvy?

As an industry leader in dating for over 25 years, RSVP Dating Agency and Singles Club is often asked to comment about national news stories. Michelle recently offered BBC Radio Leicester listeners advice on online dating fraud.

If you value your confidentiality, your time, your wealth and, ultimately, your safety, contact RSVP to arrange an interview with one of our dedicated Dating Consultants and let the professionals find you love.

Love will never go out of style - only the way we find it will change

If there is one thing we can guarantee at RSVP Dating Agency and Singles Club, it is that love will never go out of style. The desire to couple-up is still at the forefront of people’s minds and will continue to magnify, bringing more relationship-orientated people to the dating pool.

Whether you love them or hate them, in recent years we have seen a surge in the number of online dating apps and while online dating will continue to make it easy for people to meet others, it seems that people we see every day are missing the authenticity of real-life encounters.

As the technology on our smartphones continues to develop, so will online dating apps. There are already apps on the market that have a video chat option and dating experts believe that this will only continue to expand throughout the market in 2018.

It's been said that online dating can be a full-time job, so, as people grow more and more fatigued by online encounters, the idea of face-to-face dating will expand past our smartphones and matchmaking will get trendy again, along with the idea of shared experiences for singles - events, tours, walks, dinners - all things that we specialise in at RSVP.

Being a traditional dating agency, we constantly hear from our members about how fed up they are with online dating and how impersonal and disconnected it feels. At RSVP, our experienced Dating Consultants take into account the things that are most important to you and open your eyes to the possibilities and potential matches that could be available to you. They are there to advise and support you every step of your dating journey and put the personal touch back into dating.

For those looking to meet someone in a more natural environment, our hosted singles events allow people to meet in a group setting, giving a more relaxed approach to dating. With activities, dinners, suppers, tours and our infamous singles balls, we consider a variety of different tastes, budgets, lifestyles and locations when creating our quarterly events calendar and host many superb events every week!

Over our 25 years of being established, RSVP’s expert matchmaking and events teams have worked with a huge variety of people and, whether they are male or female, young or old, they all have one thing in common: they are all actively looking to find someone to share their life with away from the games that blight modern dating.

If you want to find out more about our services and the memberships on offer, please contact RSVP here.

Don't make the first date an interview.

I’ve been getting a lot of feedback from RSVP dating members lately, who decide not to go on a second date because they feel they are being interviewed when they first meet someone. I am sure that no-one sets out to interrogate their match on a first meeting and there can be many reasons why this happens. Often members want to appear confident and in control of the situation, which leads them to ask lots of questions. Another reason can be that you have spent a lot of time building up the person in your mind and you are genuinely interested in finding out more in the excitement of a first meeting.  Whatever the reason, if you are aware that this can be off-putting, you can take steps to avoid this. Here are few tips.

1. Be realistic about how much information you can expect to find out about your date on a first meeting.  Don’t try and work out if this is “the one”.  You just need to know, 'would I enjoy meeting this person again?'. Take things one step at a time.
2. It’s important to appear interested in your date, so you do want to ask some questions. Just make sure they are fairly light-hearted. Avoid questions that are too deep or personal; neither of you should be talking about ex-partners on a first meeting. Or whether you want children. Or whether you want to get married (again). Have a look at this article to give you some ideas. www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-practice/201305/21-first-date-questions.
3. Once you have asked your questions, listen to what they are saying! There’s nothing worse than being asked to talk about yourself and then not listened to once you start answering the question.
4. Try and be open-minded about what you are hearing. It’s very rare for any two partners to agree on everything or have identical hobbies and interests, plus sometimes opposites attract, so give the person a fair chance.
5. Whilst you do want to hear about the other person, be prepared to talk a little about yourself. I often hear people say that you have two ears and one mouth, so you should think about a ratio of about 2:1 listening: talking.

Obama Talks about The Value of Meeting Face to Face

At RSVP Head Office, we have had a lot of discussion about Prince Harry's recent interview with President Obama for Radio 4’s Today program. It turns out we are not the only ones, this has become one of the most talked about interviews for months. Throughout the interview they talked about a variety of different current topics that resonate well with dating and our members at RSVP.

Image of Prince Harry by Suzanne Plunkett, CC BY 2.0

The first thing that struck a chord with us was when Obama discussed the positives and negatives of the internet and social media, he stated "One of the dangers of the internet is that people can have entirely different realities. They can be cocooned in information that reinforces their current biases”.

This is one of the reasons why RSVP Dating Agency and Singles club don't operate online like other agencies and dating websites; everything is done in house with a team of specifically trained people who learn and have a more sensitive understanding of our members than that of a computer operated database which churns out basic results.

Furthermore Obama elaborated "...it’s important for them to get offline, meet in a pub, meet in a place of worship, meet in a neighbourhood and get to know each other, because the truth is that on the internet everything is simplified". At RSVP we are huge believers in getting out there and taking chances with people; this could be a simple coffee with an introduction or attending one of our fabulous singles events. We often have members say things like 'I wish I joined years ago, I am so much happier now I am getting out and meeting new people’.

Returning back to the interview, another thing that is worth noting is when Obama said;  “When you meet people face-to-face, it turns out they’re complicated. There may be somebody who you think is diametrically opposed to you when it comes to their political views, but you root for the same sports team. Or you notice that they’re really good parents. You find areas of common ground because you see that things aren’t as simple as had been portrayed in whatever chatroom you’d been in".

There have been plenty of similar instances at RSVP when we send out a profile of one member to another. They are a good match, but then the member may phone up us up because they see something on the profile that they don’t like, fixating on one small point that they disagree with or don’t see a commonality. We always say that a profile is a tiny slice of the overall picture of who someone is. Having different hobbies to yourself or different religion or ethnicity doesn’t matter at all when you actually meet them face to face.

To open up new doors and to kick start your 2018 into a more socially-filled 'getting out there' year, get in touch with our team at RSVP and we'll organise a meeting with one of our friendly Dating Consultants.

A Modern Royal Love Story & Keeping an Open Mind whilst Dating

At RSVP Dating Agency and Singles Club, naturally we always like to hear a good love

story... And the recent Royal engagement with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle was no different. You may be wondering why we are choosing to comment on this, since that it has already been well covered in the news and media since the announcement. And what this Royal engagement has to do with RSVP? Funnily enough, from this we can draw many parallels to a number of RSVP success stories.

An engagement ring © Cytherium 

CC BY-SA 3.0

At RSVP, we interview every prospective member before joining, asking a range of different questions to get to know all about them and their expectations from a potential partner. Very often we hear similar comments; for example a gentlemen might say ‘I don’t want to date anyone older than me’. Another comment that we sometimes get from ladies might be ‘I don’t see the point in meeting someone who lives more than 50 miles away from me’. If both Harry and Meghan had this approach, they would never have started dating. Meghan is 3 years older than Harry and they previously lived across the Atlantic from each other.

Interestingly, Meghan is of mixed heritage; on occasions people say to us that they only want to date within their own religion and ethnicity, then they meet actually someone who has a different background to them and soon see that it really isn’t the obstacle they think it is. RSVP's team of expert matchmakers occasionally will encourage a member to take an introduction from someone who is a little outside their criteria. They are often pleasantly surprised that it has worked out well and are pleased that they kept an open mind. 

We also strongly recommend members go to our RSVP singles events, open to all members regardless of membership level, age or location. At an RSVP singles event, you will be meeting a larger section of members and, unsurprisingly, our singles events have a brought many couples together too, as you'll see from our success stories.

So, our recommendations from Harry and Meghan's success? Be open-minded to potential partners and don't put barriers up based on past experiences or old-fashioned notions that you may be unnecessarily holding on to. To start your own love story, book an appointment with one of our dating consultants.