As I am writing these words the statistics are piling up against me. The UK office designed to follow and report on demographics shows that one out of every five women chooses to have a career over having a family and kids and websites such as Sugardaddy and its copycats are walking a fine line between the dictionary definition of prostitution (i.e. exchanging money for sex) and a stylised service-industry approach to finding no-strings attached companionship for a while.
The web, it's instant access, always-on culture and relative anonymity has, apparently, managed to not just make it easier to consume porn and engage in the sale of sex than easier before but also to turn the tropes which up to now have made relationships socially acceptable, into pure commercial transactions which threaten to kill any notion of love, romance and mystery.
All of this threaten to make romantics, romanticism and romantic love so last century that even admitting to knowing what it is and what it stands for threatens to typecast you into an antiquated age-bracket. Yet, I really believe it should not be this way. Finding someone to love and having that love reciprocated is a deep-seated, primal drive that has more to do with instinct and less with intellect than we would comfortably ever admit. We all want to have someone. We all feel the need to be loved. It is this drive which, as we try to take the fear of rejection and the uncertainty of commitment away, gives rise to all the other forms of transactional, hi-tech, instant-gratification love' we encounter.
So, I can almost hear you say, what's the answer expert? The honest answer is that there is not one. If you are really looking for an A-B-C guide to romance, love and relationships you are really doomed to being fooled and getting disappointed all the time. In order to get the most out of a relationship you need to do the unthinkable: you need to be honest, first with yourself and then with your partner. This means that you take a risk, open yourself up to getting hurt, become vulnerable on purpose. It also means that you build trust. The kind of trust that's hard to come by in any other situation apart from within a relationship with your partner that is emotionally, physically and psychologically satisfying.
That is the only chance you really have of developing the kind of relationship that will make you happy, fulfilled and help both you and your partner develop. So forget the gimmicks, the recipes and the various websites promising some kind of transactional deal for a painless relationship. Instead, do what you deep down know you need to do: get real.
Alisa Miller is a relationship counselor and relationship author. Her articles on relationships and how to have the perfect marriage have appeared in newspapers and magazines all over the world. She is the author of the Ultimate Guide to the Perfect Relationship which is being translated into three languages and has been read by thousands all over the world. It can be ordered through Amazon or any good bookshop and it is available as an eBook from most quality online eBook outlets. She has written a guide on How to Talk to a Girl you Like which is available to buy from every online eBook retailer as well as her own website, which she runs herself and which contains hundreds of articles with useful tips and advice.She admits that she spends more time online than she should.
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