Q. I deeply fancy someone in my office who sits near me. Our exchanges have always been businesslike and I doubt she has noticed my interest. The other women I work with appear to find me congenial and we socialise outside the office although none seems to perceive me as a ‘sex object’. Having said that, former partners have never complained. I don’t want to risk ongoing embarrassment by making a move and being rejected, so how can I find out first if I have any chance?
Name and address withheld
A. Choose one of your female colleague friends to act as unwitting emissary. Confide that your concentration is being affected by vivid nightly dreams involving romantic congress with this woman which disconcert you during the day when you sit in such close proximity. Act daft and say you cannot imagine why you are having the dreams since neither of you has ever shown the slightest interest in each other. (This will cover you if it later transpires that she does not return your feelings.) Your colleague will be unable to keep such a titillating nugget of gossip to herself. The woman you fancy will soon get to hear about your dreams. She will find them stimulating — particularly in the light of your continuing to maintain your reserve. You will shortly witness a thawing in her attitude towards you signalling that an overture would not be repulsed. If you do not, no harm will be done because you have already pre-empted any humiliation.
Q. I am a single woman, although I do not wish to be. I am told that I have a lot going for me, but all the men at the office are married and I am too old, at 32, to meet men in nightclubs. None of my friends knows any fanciable single men to invite to dinner parties or, if they do, those men are in such demand they are hardly ever free. Please help, Mary.
Name and address withheld
A. Suitor-seekers must be proactive and not wait passively for their princes to come. Romance still springs, as it has always done, out of shared references and connections. A 1950s agony aunt would advise you to join a club or go to evening classes, and the same applies today. One 39-year-old raving beauty was partnerless until she joined the Chelsea Gardening Club where she met her highly desirable husband. A 58-year-old met her amusing, 48-year-old social-worker partner when she taught him at night school. A 32-year-old painter began her recent passionate affair when she took a space in another artist’s studio. Advertise for a lodger — kind Polish builders and handsome Afghan doctors can be a better bet than a conceited Englishman who has no incentive to shed his single status. Finally, speed-dating is no longer the nerdothon it once was. One 36-year-old top-of-the-range spinster has just had her first baby, having met her husband speed-dating in Cornwall.
Q. I am an 18-year-old male. I would love to have a partner but I am not that interested in sex. What are my prospects?
Name withheld, Eton
A. Plenty of girls have body dysmorphia and would be only too pleased to proceed on this basis. And who can blame you? The overkill on telly has turned most romantics off — to say nothing of the oestrogen in the water supply.
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