Men in their 40s and 50s are the fastest growing part of Australia’s living-alone population – and according to new research many of them are lonely, struggling, and hoping their solo state is temporary.

The increase in men alone is due to more never having married, and many more getting divorced but not living with their children, according to a recent Sydney Morning Herald report.

A survey of 2006 census data, and a related La Trobe University project shows the proportion of people aged 40 to 49 who live on their own has risen 75 per cent from 5.2 per cent to 9.1 per cent.

Living Alone in Your 40s

People in their 40s are now more likely to live alone than those in their 20s or 30s.

Living Alone in Australia, shows that for people under 60, living alone is mainly a male phenomenon, and the men have become older.

The middle-aged men who were living alone were on average less well-off, less educated and in lower-status jobs compared with middle-aged women living alone, or other men, the paper said.

They also tended to say they were lonely. ”They are considerably more socially disadvantaged,” researcher Professor David de Vaus said. ”It might be they find it harder to partner, or re-partner.”

Have Your Say

Are you living alone, or have you had a period living alone in the past? Which do you prefer? What are the pros and cons of living with someone else? Give us your ideas on what you enjoy the most.  If you’re a man who’s worried about starting a new relationship help is at hand at with a new natural sex enhancer which  could give you a new sense of confidence.

Hollywood bachelor Hugh Grant is having nightmares about turning 50.

The Bridget Jones Diaries actor –who famously long-term dated actress-model Elizabeth Hurley and socialite Jemima Khan but never married either of them – fears time is running out for him to get married and have children.

Hugh – who turns 50 on September 9, 2010 – told Britain’s Daily Mirror newspaper: “It’s not a good number 50, and we all have age terrors sometimes in the middle of the night.

Men’s Biological Clock Ticking

“I think I might have made a sort of pact with the devil in which I think I can have fun now and sort everything later. But then he comes back and says, ‘Times up and I’m taking you to hell as you’re going to be a lonely, sad old man.’”

Like many bachelors in their 40s, Hugh still savours fantasies of being a great Dad. He says he’s good with his nieces and nephews and “I have no doubt that I’d be a marvellous father.”

Research shows men in their 40s do feel the biological time clock ticking, dream of having children, and they almost unanimously pictured themselves as fathers of sons, doing active male things – fishing, kicking ball.

Chances are though, even with those dreams of fatherhood, if he’s over 40 and never been married, he’ll stay that way.

Less Likely Older Man Is

Dr Charles Waehler, author of Bachelors: the Psychology of Men Who Haven’t Married, says his

research showed:

• The chances of a 35 year-old man who has never been married, to marry is 50/50.
• After 40, the likelihood that a never hitched man will marry, drops to 1 in 5.
• These bachelors tend to be only children or only sons and/or men whose parents married later in life.

Relating Style That Isolates

Dr. Waehler found that confirmed bachelors are not woman-haters, they are not fixated on a parent, and they are not workaholics or wild playboys.

Rather, they relate to people in ways that end up isolating them.

Dr. Waehler said everyone has styles of behavior to help them cope with the anxieties that relationships can produce.

Bachelors exhibit three defense mechanisms — avoidance, isolation and distortion — that keep other people at arm’s length. By staying single, the bachelors prevent these defense mechanisms from being challenged, he said.

Fatherhood Might Make Them Marry

The most important reason these men had for marrying was that if they waited much longer, they wouldn’t be able to be active fathers.

So women: if you meet a man in his forties who tells you he’s eager to have a son so he can do those male-bonding things, know that these things are very important to him, and they’ll dramatically increase his readiness to marry.

Otherwise, the chances of tying him down are not high.

“If you get involved with a never-married middle-aged man, don’t expect him to change,” says Dr. Waehler. “If you both value independence, it might be okay,” he said. “But if you want marriage, stay away.”

As for Hugh, time will tell just how important those kids are to him. And it goes without saying, he’ll be marrying someone significantly younger than himself to be able to have those adorable children.  But that’s a whole other story!

I thought this was an interesting article that I wanted to share with all of my single friends. I agree that being single made me more self-reliant.  If you can identify with this article in some way, let me know.

HealthDay article by Kathleen Doheny

SATURDAY, Dec. 5 (HealthDay News) — Pity the poor single people who pass their 40th birthday without ever tying the knot, since research has shown that never-married adults have more health woes than married folks. And, um, isn’t there something wrong with those who go it alone anyway?

 Not so fast.

 A new study looking at psychological measures shows that never-married people aged 40 and up can be just as resourceful, psychologically speaking, as their married counterparts.

 Wait, there’s more.

 ”If you look at never marrieds who are high on mastery — they feel like they are in the driver’s seat and in control of their lives — and high on self-sufficiency — they know how to take care of themselves — they actually have better emotional well-being than married people,” said study author Jamila Bookwala, an associate professor of psychology at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa. Her report is published in the Nov. 30 issue of the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.

 For the study, Bookwala drew on data from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States, looking at responses from more than 1,500 Americans aged 40 to 74. They identified themselves as married or never married. Most, 1,486, were married, while 105 had never married.

 ”What’s new here is the never-married individual is getting attention,” she said. Sometimes in research, she explained, they are combined with separated, divorced and widowed people as singles, but in her research she looked at never-married individuals only and compared them with married people.

 Among her findings are that never-married adults, overall, do report lower levels of overall emotional well-being than their married counterparts in the same age group. But they are comparable when it comes to psychological resources, the stuff that helps humans deal with life challenges.

 Bookwala looked at three measures of psychological resources, including personal mastery (the degree people think they have control over things in life, which is important to avoid depression), agency (the tendency to focus on oneself, which is good for mental health) and self-sufficiency (a sense of autonomy, which is also linked with better mental health).

 The never-married participants do tend to have fewer social resources, she said. “In general they tend to report less [perceived] support from families than marrieds.”

 But the higher the never-married individuals scored on those psychological resources, the better their emotional well-being, she found. Better, even, than the married folks, if they scored high on those measures.

 ”In that sense, we find our study debunks that myth of something being wrong with the never-married individual,” Bookwala said.

 In fact, high levels of self-sufficiency may work against people in a marriage, she noted. “For a marriage to work well, you need a certain amount of interdependence,” Bookwala said. It could, in fact, explain why some never-married people decided not to wed.

 Or, she said, they may have developed self-sufficiency the longer they stayed single.

 The study suggests that marriage — often touted as the best lifetime relationship goal — may not be best for everyone, said Patrick Markey, an associate professor of psychology at Villanova University in Villanova, Pa.

 For most people, marriage might be a desirable goal, he said. “But there might be a subset of people, the ultra-independent individual, for whom this may not be the best life course.”

 He’s referring to those people who Bookwala found high in self-sufficiency. “They might actually be happier because they didn’t get married,” Markey said.

But, he pointed out, the sample size of never-married participants in the study, a little over 100, is low. So, it’s possible that a larger study with never-married people might produce different results.

“I am 54yrs old, never married, rent a small room and nothing brings me joy expect my art. my best is far from good, since I have no one to share it with, let me share it with you”

- reddit user Reredrum_Ladicimoh

I don’t know if this is legit, but here are a few sweet paintings posted by reddit user Reredrum_Ladicimoh. They’ve been uploaded to McSearcher.com

pathway

preview

pentagon

getaway

cornersy

alonetworc

I don’t know if you know who Emerson Fittipaldi is, but he is one of the world’s greatest car racers.

A number of years ago I was in Jake’s bar in downtown Portland and there were a bunch of race car drivers in there as there had been a race in our area. One older guy kept hanging around me and even asked me to go to dinner with him. 

He was from Brazil. Anyway, he wasn’t coming on strong, more just curious about me. He was telling me all about who the other drivers there were and how good or not so good they were as drivers.

He became the famous Emerson Fittapaldi  in a few more years!

You know what he said to me? He asked me if I had ever been married. I said no. He said YOU ARE TOO SMART TO GET MARRIED.

But, a lot of smart women do get married. But, they marry the right men if they are smart enough, I guess.

But, imagine…Emerson Fittipaldi. If anyone asks me why I never married I will simply quote him….and if they know anything about the sport of car racing their jaws will drop! What a way to shut someone up on this topic! I love it!

More than a third of Americans over 50 are divorced, widowed, separated or have never married.

·         According to internet research, more and more seniors are dating online.  18 percent of all internet daters in January 2005 were 55 years or over.  That’s 4.8 million mature market daters! “Date.com says sign-ups of members age 65 and older increased 78.5 percent from January 2004 to January 2005, one of the biggest online dating sites, in January attracted 704,000 visitors age 55 or older, up from 606,000 a year earlier.”

Source:  Young adults aren’t the only ones trying online dating (article), http://www.dating-services-and-tips.com/online_dating_in_the_news/

·         A 2003 AARP study of 3,501 singles aged 40 to 69 showed that about one-third of those surveyed were either in a relationship or dating one person exclusively. A comparable percentage had dated one or more people in the previous three years. But of those who were dating, just 8 percent listed “to find someone to marry” as their reason for doing so. Indeed, 49 percent said they were simply looking for someone “to talk to and do things with.”

 Source: CNN.com

I was watching a television game show and I’ve been following this competitor who is male and African American for weeks.  They had his wife join him for the finale.  She came out and I caught myself having a reaction to the fact the she was a white woman.  I just had a conversation with my son regarding interracial relationships so I decided to address it.

There are over 59 million interracial marriages in the US and the rate of dating is, of course, higher.

When African Americans and White’s marry there is over 2.5 times more likely to be an African American husband and a White wife. 

With an Asian and White situation, it is just over 3 times more likely for the husband to be White and the wife to be Asian.

African American and Asian relationships are rare.  when they do marry, it’s over 6 times more likely that the husband is African American and the wife is Asian.

18% of Hispanic wives are married to non-Hispanic men.  15% of Hispanic men have non-Hispanic wives.

In marriagesinovlving Hispanics and Whites, it is just over 1 times more likely that the wife is Hispanic and the husband is White.

What does all this mean?

While the majority of all races still marry within their race, it can seem like members of your own race are being chosen by another race.  This can be an issue for you if you only want to marry within your race.

African American women seem to be the most vocal regarding women of other races being with African American men but Asian men are actually statistically worse off than African American women.  For every 1,000 married Asian women, only 860 Asian men are married.  In comparison, for every 1,000 married African American women, there were 1,059 married African American men.

This data suggests that Asian men prefer to marry Asian women and African American women prefer to marry African American men while their counterparts are likely to marry members of a different race leaving them less to choose from.

Now I know we have people that are dead-set against mixing of the races.  In general I’m not one of them.  As I said earlier though, I did have and have had before, reactions to black men and white women.  Honestly… I’m not sure why but I thought it was worth having the discussion.  What are your thoughts?

Only Love,

~M2

I have a confession to make.  My name is M2 and I’m a Reality Show Junkie!

Yeah, Flavor of Love… a total of about 60 women fighting to win the affections of Flavor Flav.  Flavor of Love 1, when Flavor Flav chose Hoopz and she dumped him on the reunion show.  Flavor of Love 2, when Deelishes was really the one… for a couple of months anyway.  Then Flavor of Love 3, when Flav finally found his Ms. Ghetto Fabulous Good-Girl… Thing 2.  Just to realize that he really wanted to be with one of his babies mammas, dumped Thing 2 and proposed to his most recent baby momma on the reunion show.

Now everything that I’ve seen of Flav leads me to believe that he is a really beautiful person… on the inside.  Good looking is different to everyone so lets jst say he’s not mainstream good looking, when means the average person probably wouldn’t think he’s good looking.  This is one of those times that I just have to ask… Do looks really matter?

I would like to say that looks don’t matter to me but they do.  I’m just not that mature.  I can say that I’m not shallow because you must have more than just good looks, but good looks must be present.

One of the spin off shows from Flavor of Love was a show call Charm School.  Six contestants from Flavor of Love 1 and 7 contestants from Flavor of love 2 competed for the title of Charm School Queen and $50,000.  There is also a new show out called From Gs to Gents… 14 gangsters determined to become gentlemen while competing for $100,000.  The question that comes to mind with these shows is… Can people really change?

I think that to change who you really are at the core, you would first have to believe that something is wrong with that part of you and really want it to change.  I think that if you’re changing for any external reason… for money or because someone else wants you to, you can do it but it will be temporary.

One of my favorite shows is Big Brother.  As in Big Brother is watching.  Groups of people are isolated in a house together for about three months.  During this time they can only interact with each other, have no idea of news happening outside of the house, have their every move recorded 24/7 by cameras located every place in the house except the stall where the toilets are located.

Could you stand the scrutiny of being watched all day every day, having people pick a part your every word and action?  What about the deceit?  The manipulation required to be the last man standing and receive the grand prize.  Does the end really justify the means?  Can you treat people any kind of way just because you have a good reason?

Now Next Food Network Star, Top Chef and Hell’s Kitchen are all cooking based reality shows.  Most of the contestants are already doing well in their hometowns as chefs and they come together competing for fame and fortune to be judged by the best of the best in their industry.

Are you confident enough in your skills to compete with others who do what you do and think that they are better at it?

Personally, I would love the opportunity to compete against other wedding planners.  For the past 20 years, I have been perfecting all areas of my service and would confidently put myself and my team up against anyone in the industry.

The next show, The Fabulous Life, features the life of Kimora Lee Simmons, ex-wife of Russsell Simmons, their two daughters and all of Kimora’s fabulosity.  Kimora is most definitely a drama queen but she is about her business.  If you work hard for her (and you will work hard) she will promote you and give you a chance to shine on a higher level… where you will continue to work hard for her.

Do you believe in giving people a chance just because they work hard and you believe in them or must they come to you degreed up with lots of experiences?

I am very big on knowing who a person is.  If that person has proved themselves to be a loyal, hard worker and I believe they can do the job… I would give them the opportunity.

OK, the final show is Extreme Makeover Home Edition.  The show does major sometimes complete renovations to homes in need.  There is a big story hitting the headlines because none of the houses that received an extreme makeover is in foreclosure.  In 2005, an Atlanta family had their home demolished and completely rebuilt by the show… 1,800 people helped to build this four bedroom mini-mansion worth $450,000.  the family also received $250,000 in contributions for scholarships for the children and a home maintenance fund.

Now what happened is that the family took out a $450,000 mortgage on the house to fund a construction business that failed.  My questions is… should certain gifts have strings attached?  Did they have the right to gamble that home away that was given to the?  Or is your view that it was a gift, it was theirs, if they messed it up… oh well?

I’m kind of torn on this one… a gift is a gift so technically it was theirs to loss.  At the same time, I think that they owed it to the people that worked hard for them to be more responsible with that gift.  What do you think?

Only Love,

~M2

I had a conversation iwith a young lady who is in a situation where she and her boyfriend, who are both 18 years old, come from different religious backgrounds.  It’s not particularly an issue for them day to day but as they begin discussing their future, family holidays and raising their potential children they definitely have some issues.

The biggest issue is that she celebrates Christmas and he doesn’t.  During a conversation with her mother, she was told that she can just come home and celebrate Christmas with her family.  She doesn’t want to give up Christmas or the boyfriend and thinks that this is who she will end up married to.

My response to her is that these are the things that need to be ironed out prior to marriage.  The answer is simple in a dating situation… you do what you want to do together, the things you don’t agree on are just done separately.  Hermother’s suggestion my work fine for a while; but what happens when they have children?  If he is dead-set against the children celebrating Christmas because it goes against his beliefs, it could cause a major problem in the relationship if she does it anyway.  On the other hand, she may be resentful if she and the children are forced not to celebrate. 

There is no right or wrong answer but compromise is the key.  If you’re starting your life together with an issue as big as this, you definitely want to discuss it before you get married.  The conversation may effect your decision to marry.  While I don’t make a habit of telling people not to listen to their parents.  When making decisions regarding you and your significant other, you can take into consideration advise from a parent but it has to be what works for the two of you.  Talk it out!

Only Love,

~M2

I have been thinking about the people wanting to declare their independence from the relationship that they are in.  The difficulty attached to declaring your independence depends on your situation.  If you are a teen or an adult that is involved in an unhappy dating situation, in most cases its as easy as having a conversation around the fact that the relationship is no longer working for you and its over. 

If you’re in a situation where the other person refuses to let you go, your solution may be closer to this…

If you are married, leaving is a serious thing and should be treated as such.  I think the worse thing you can do is leave and then regret it because you didn’t do all that you could to work it out before you left.  If there is anything that can be done to make it work, that should be explored first.

Even if you are tired of the situation and don’t feel like working on it, don’t leave if you are still in love with your spouse, if you are angry, scared or confused.  If any of these situations apply leaving would be an emotional decision.  You don’t want to make such a major decision based solely on emotion.

The bottom line is that there is no one right way that will work for everyone.  If you are a teen and are in a situation where the other person won’t let you go… seek help from an adult (preferable a parent).  For everyone else, you need to consider everything involved and make a decision that your head and heart can be in agreement with. 

Only Love,

~M2

I receive a lot of questions from people regarding relationships.  I answer them on the phone, email and sometimes on my Internet talk radio show… TheAceMan Show.  I actually addressed this question during a relationship show but I thought I would share it here as well.

The young lady who sent the question and her boyfriend have been together for three years.  He currently lives at home with his mother to save money.  She wants him to move in with her and for them to get engaged with a plan to marry in 2 years because she feels like shes invested too much time for this not to go anywhere.

Her question is “Should you push a man to marry you?”

My response to this question is absolutely not.  the first reason is that this man is still living with his mother for whatever reason.  He hasn’t proven that he can take care of himself, let alone have a wife and/or family.  He needs time to get himself together first. 

The next reason is she is trying to manipulate the outcome that she wants.  He hasn’t proposed to her, he hasn’t even indicated that he wants to live with her.  They have been together three years and hes not in a conversation regarding the progression of this relationship.  There is a book titled “He’s Just Not That Into You.”  I’m not saying this to be cruel in any way but sometimes we tend to overemphasis our importance in other people’s lives because its what we want.

My final reason is that you should have enough respect for yourself not to want to be with someone that you have to force to marry you.  Marriage is challenging enough for people who actually want to be married.  Forcing someone into the situation is just a recipe for disaster.

Only Love,

~M2

Sunday was Father’s Day and being the true Daddy’s Girl that I am, I spent the day with my dad.  Since then, I have been thinking alot about what Father’s Day means and what being a father means.  Father is defined as the male parent of an offspring.  Is that in and of itself something to celebrate?

To me we should be celebrating Daddy’s Day.  The difference, in my opinion, is that once you make a baby, you’re a father.  But its the man who’s there, raising you through the good and the bad; who teaches you everything he knows that will make you a better person, who spends time with you and loves you unconditionally… He is the Daddy!

While there are women raising children on their own and doing a fine job.  Children need a dad or at a minimum a “dad figure” in their lives.  Boys need a man to teach them how to be a man.  And girls look to their dad’s to learn how to relate to men.  The first time a girl hears that she is pretty or special from a guy, it should be her dad.  The first time a girl receives a nice gift from a guy, it should be her dad.  This teaches her that she is worthy of such things and that she doesn’t have to give herself to a man because he said she was pretty or bought her something nice.

So if you are a father and you’re not involved in the lives of your children… Get Involved!

To the dad’s who are active and making a difference in their children’s life;

To the dad’s who have stepped in, excepted someone else’s children and are raising them as their own;

And to my dad… the Best Dad Ever…

Happy Daddy’s Day!

Only Love, ~Ms. M2

What if rain or shine, no matter what, you and your partner, well, never parted? That is the case with Michael Roach, 55, and two decades younger Christie McNally, two Buddhist teachers who are literally attached at the spiritual hip, so to speak, and took vows to never be more than 15 feet away from each other. Oh and P.S.: They’re celibate, too.

In fact, believe it or not, according to an article that profiles them in the New York Times, it’s that whole celibacy song and dance that actually makes them a controversial couple within the traditional Buddhist religion. Roach is one of a handful of Westerners who trained in the same Tibetan Buddhist tradition as the Dalai Lama, and became a monk in 1983. The problem: Monks must take strict vows of celibacy, and living with a woman, no matter whether they claim to be celibate or not, is a scandal. However, the couple claims that in order to attract more followers, their traditions must appeal to Westerners who might otherwise be turned off by any hint of gender divide within the religion. Hmm… Sounds suspicious to me, but anyway…

So how do they cope with that sticky old 15 feet rule? Half of the year, it’s fairly simple, since they both live in a tiny, 22-foot yurt (or tent) in the middle of the Arizona desert, where they read books at the same time and follow each other like shadows. (They first moved there to do a silent retreat, so from 2000-2003, they lived in complete, silence and meditation.)Things do get a bit more complicated when they travel. For example, if they can’t get seats next to each other on a plane, they simply refuse to board. If one gets up to go to the bathroom, the other must follow and stand outside the door. Creepy much?  Many devout Buddhists claim this behavior is too extreme.

Ok, I saw this article written by Erin Flaherty on Yahoo and all I can say is that is just way too much of one person.  I believe you should have things in common and spend as much quality time as you can with your mate.  I also believe that you should have outside interests and some time to and for yourself.  I’ll be watching to see just how long this marriage lasts.  Any thoughts?

Only Love,

~Ms. M2

SYDNEY (Reuters Life!) – Bachelor Carl Weisman got fed up of being classified as a playboy, a loser or a commitment-phobe so he set out to find out exactly why he and a growing number of eligible men were steering clear of marriage.

He concluded that most men were not afraid of marriage — but they were afraid of a bad marriage.

“Men are 10 times more scared of marrying the wrong person than of never getting married at all,” Weisman told Reuters in a telephone interview.

“This is the first generation of people who have grown up with bad divorces. People assume there is something wrong if you don’t marry but these are men who have made a different choice and not given in to social pressures.”

The release of his book “So Why Have You Never Been Married? – Ten Insights into Why He Hasn’t Wed,” comes amid a growing trend for more people to stay single, with less social or religious pressures on men — and women — to tie the knot.

Weisman said U.S. figures showed that in 1980 about 6 percent of men aged in their early 40s had never married but this number had now risen to 17 percent.

AFRAID TO MAKE MISTAKES

Weisman said his online survey found there are three groups of bachelors — about 8 percent who never want to marry, 62 percent want to marry but of which half won’t settle for anything less than perfection, and about 30 percent who are on the fence.

Four out of 10 bachelors did not want children compared to three out of 10 wanting to be a father. The rest were undecided.

But while 72 percent of respondents said they were not afraid of marriage, about half of them said the situation that scared them most was marrying the wrong person.

“It’s so important to these men to get it right. My best advice to single women after bachelors is to be patient. If you’re in a hurry to get married you’ll be frustrated,” he said.

Weisman also found that financial issues, both positive and negative, played a large part in men’s fear of commitment.

“Those with little money said they would have nothing to offer a partner, with some suffering self-esteem issues and withdrawing from the dating pool,” said Weisman, an engineer-turned-author with two books now published.

“While those who are financially sound were terrified what a bad divorce could do to them.”

Weisman said his research blew away any idea that single men were unhappy.

“A compelling issue was how many of them had found contentment in a never-married life,” he said. “They had created lives full of careers, friends and ambitions. It was not like they walk around all day worried about not being married.”

For him, researching the book made him also look at himself — and he ended up living with a girlfriend for the first time.

“Now we’re looking at getting married. As I researched the book I found I was looking at men 10 years older than me and it was like looking into the future. If I didn’t change, nothing would,” he said.

Click to hear my view on Same Sex Marriages.  If you would like to hear TheAceMan Show in its entirety, please visit www.BlogTalkRadio.com/TheAceMan.

What’s that you say?  You want to know about my forthcoming book?  Okay, it’s titled So Why Have You Never Been Married.  The subtitle is still subject to negotiation.  I want the subtitle to be Ten Insights Into Why He Hasn’t Wed, because that is what the book is about.  But the sales people want the subtitle Ten Insights Into Why He Won’t Wed, because they think that will sell more books.  It’s more controversial.  You can probably already guess who is going to win this battle.  Did I mention that publishing is a business? 

When a publisher commits to publishing a book, especially the book of a relatively unknown author (i.e., yours truly), one of the things they do is “pitch” the book to their sales force for feedback and suggestions.  Sometimes those suggestions involve changing the subtitle, the book cover and even the contents of the book–all of which happened to my book.  Now the way it was told to me is that when these sales people walk into Barnes and Nobel or Borders and speak with the buyer there, they represent maybe 200 books at any one time.  Out of those books they will “push” only a handful, and if you want them to push your book, and perhaps see it on the bookshelf of your local bookstore, you pretty much have to do what they say.

Dilemma number one: you spend the better part of two years working on the “book of your life” and when it comes time to pitch it to the sales people, they request that you make major changes to the book that dramatically impact it—and not to your liking—but it will increase the sales prospects for the book.  What do you do?  There is no right answer.  But I decided to listen to the sales people and accommodate their wishes for two reasons.  First, I want as many people as possible to read my book, even if it is not 100% to my original vision.  And who is to say that my original vision for the book was right on anyway?  Perhaps the new, modified version of the book is actually a better book.  The other reason I decided to go along is that I know there will come a time in the future, several books from now, that I will not have to be as flexible.  Remember, I have a lot of books in me.

So Why Have You Never Been Married is a book of conversations with never-married men over 40 who have not yet taken the plunge.  My interest in the topic is purely personal: I am one of them.  But even though I am one of them, I could not readily articulate exactly why I have never married, and I really did want to know the answer.  The first thing I did was search for a book on that very subject.  I found exactly one, written over ten years ago by a psychologist.  It did not answer that question for me.  I figured if I could just ask the question that became the title of the book to enough other similarly situated men, I would hear my answer from at least one of them and then I would know.  That’s when I decided to write the book.  And what two questions did I need to know the answer to before I began to write?  Question 1: who will read the book?  Answer: never married men AND women over 40.  Turns out there are about 12 million of them.  Not a bad niche.  Question 2: why will they choose my book?  Answer: because the only other book readily available on the subject is over a decade old.

In the course of writing the book, I placed a survey online for never-married men over 40, and to my pleasant surprise over 1,500 men responded by taking the survey.  From that group I randomly selected 33 men and had conversations with them to discover why they had not married.  Those conversations comprise the bulk of the book.  (Surveys and interviews are types of research and if you ever hope to be an author, you should learn, no make that love, to do research.  More about that later.)  But the book is not just about the research and the conversations, it is also a journey of self discovery.  It is about my own quest for the answer to the title of the book.  Do you want to know what I found?  You’ll have to read the book.

Now you probably think that with such an interesting topic, a well-defined market and so little competition, the agents and publishers would welcome my book with open arms.  Not so fast grasshopper.  I contacted 66 agents with a pretty darn good query letter (more about those later) if I must say so, and guess how many turned me down?  All of them!  I contacted about a dozen publishers and guess how many of them turned me down?  All but one.  I was extremely lucky.  There are no sure things in the publishing business.

I am proud of the book and I cannot wait until the publication date: April 28, 2008.  But that is still a long time from now, and the best way I know to make the time pass quickly is…you guessed it…to start writing something else.  And since I am soon to be a published author of two books, both on very diverse subjects (how many authors do you think are out there who have written books on high technology AND relationships?), I feel as though I now have “permission” to write about anything, regardless of whether or not I am an expert on the subject.  I give you that permission too.

What is keeping you from writing something right now?  I don’t want to hear from you; I want you to write something.
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I was watching a show on past lives and past life regression and I want to discuss it with you all. They were saying that unexplained irrational fears can be connected to tramas in your past life.

For example, this lady had a fear of dolls. She couldn’t be anywhere around them so her daughter isn’t allowed to have them. She went to daycare to get her daughter, walked in the door, her daughter was dtanding in the middle of the room with a doll. She could not touch her daughter as long as she was holding the doll.

This doctor took her into a regression session where she was able to connect two things. The first was that in a past life she was in a car accident with her children and she died hearing them screaming for help. The second thing was when she was a baby she had to stay in the hospital so they put a doll in with her. She could hear babies around her crying without being consouled. She connected the crying babies to her previous children and with the doll being the only thing she could see, she connected crying babies to the doll.

Thus dolls brought back the fear of leaving her children.

During the regression she was able to see that her children weren’t killed and that they were ok so now she has peace in that area. I found this so interesting and wanted to know your thoughts on this past life thing.

Only Love,

~M2