Dating after 40: shrewd ways to urge your prospects

By Casilda Grigg 1200PM GMT nineteen March 2010

Lady in red Paula Rosdol binds one-on-one coaching sessions written to urge dating prospects Photo ANDREW CROWLEY

In a new Woman"s Hour programme on primary date etiquette, spaghetti, oysters and lobster were only a little of the dishes described as understanding breakers. Men were questionable of women who systematic salad ("heavy communication competence take place with the refrigerator after on") or displayed sincere fervour ("if she flies at the food, she competence fly at alternative things"). Women disliked men who were bold to waiters, or showed no aptitude for the art of conversation.

Yet the Radio 4 programme finished no anxiety to the thousands of people for whom dates are similar to needles in haystacks. If you can"t recollect when someone last asked you out, it isn"t the minefield of how to handle in a grill that causes anguish, it"s securing a date in the primary place.

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Former corporate high-flier Paula Rosdol, a London-based American, specialises in assisting women in midlife and over relaunch themselves onto the dating scene. "I wish women to feel they"re fascinating and hot," says Paula, who is 51 but looks younger. "It"s all about giving goal to women who feel they"re on the throw heap."

With this in mind, one-to-one sessions are set up in the tea bedrooms of the capital"s tip hotels. Current clients all womanlike embody release officers, psychotherapists and investment bankers (age range 30-70), who find her recommendation on all from how to piquancy up their internet form to how to handle on a primary date. Her approach, formed on selling techniques gleaned from years operative in big corporations, isn"t romantic, but she"s assured it works.

""You"ve got to see at yourself as a product," she says, tucking one impeccably well-spoken leg underneath the other. "You"re competing in a unequivocally swarming marketplace full of alternative singular women. But if you on all sides and package yourself appropriately, the contingency will work in your favour, rather than opposite you."

As someone who antiquated some-more than 100 men in 10 countries prior to she met her soulmate an English divorc called Paul Paula feels some-more than competent to suggest others. Experience has taught her to worth her trait and femininity, and she is penetrating to pass this summary on. ""Women do themselves a antipathy by charity to separate the cheque,"" she warns. Nor should we jump in to bed with any man who asks. Sex triggers a fastening hormone called oxytocin, she says, and this can fool around massacre with the womanlike psyche. ""If you have sex prior to you"ve turn intimate, you put yourself in a unequivocally exposed position."

"The greatest inapplicable designation women make," Paula adds, "is in meditative men are similar to women. They contend "Why can"t a man love me for who I am?" But men are visible creatures. They"re drawn to beauty and youth. It"s all about evolutionary psychology."

Bad headlines for women over 40? Not at all, she says. You only need to outlay a bit of income on yourself. Often it"s a elementary box of tooth whitening (""it knocks off five years""), Botox to well-spoken scowl lines or unchanging trips to the beautician to censor the grey roots. She additionally recommends switching to subtly graceful make-up brands, such as Bobbi Brown or Mac.

She is, she says, rebuilt to make use of "tough love" when the incident calls for it. A new customer was "fat with corky hair", for example. "But once I"d restyled her," she says, "she was a goddess."

The subsequent jump is some-more wily how to equivocate scaring men off. "One complaint is that women have to rely on masculine appetite to get on in the world," Paula says. "They"ve finished well in their careers and they"ve lost hold with their femininity. But men cite women who are not confrontational or shrill and who have a soft lilt to their voice."

No disbelief she"s right, but such constructed stratagems go opposite a sure Anglo Saxon straightforwardness and there"s something uncomfortably Stepford about all that bathing and pearly dentistry. Paula"s proceed is additionally brash, focused and formula driven, when British women lend towards to cite subtle, banterish and elliptical. But if it helps women find love, when all else has failed, does it unequivocally matter? Clients contingency arrangement a steely finalise in their office of Mr Right by taking advantage of multi-pronged dating "strategies" rather than sitting at home watchful mournfully for the phone to ring. "Use each channel," she urges.

Whether it"s the internet, key agencies, singles events, special seductiveness groups such as Classical Partners, charitable/church organisations, or commercial operation networking, no mill contingency be left unturned. Reluctant friends contingency be dragooned in to wheeling out singular men. It might receptive to advice burdensome and maybe even humiliating, but it worked for Paula, who is right away happily married.

"It"s all about carrying joie de vivre, being light and feeling that hold up is fun," says Paula, who believes that no lady is over hope. ""You"re never as well old to love and to be loved.""

Paula Rosdol (0779 499 6414; paularosdol.com) charges �85 for a one-hour conference (an primary fifteen mins is free) and has clients via the UK.