We all know the fairytale: Boy meets girl. Girl winks and flirts. Boy reciprocates. Boy and girl fall madly in love. Boy and girl live happily ever after. Picture perfect.

By Kerry Loyson

Cut to reality and it seems such romanticism is best kept for the pages of starry-eyed storybooks. It also seems that such Cinderella-inspired dreams become increasingly unattainable the older one gets.

“The problem that happens when you’re single in your 30s and 40s and into your 50s is that people have limited opportunities,” says Jane Donovan of Adelaide’s singles social club Social 8. “When you’re in your 20s, you’re socialising with friends from school, from university, from your career, your family friends and friends from sporting events. As we get into our 30s and life starts to get very busy, it’s hard enough trying to keep up with a handful of good friends, let alone being out there looking for new ones!”

With South Australia’s own Carries, Charlottes, Samanthas and Mirandas scattered across Adelaide, it appears New York isn’t the only place sprinkled with singles post 30. While these Sex and The City ladies notably conquered single life with a helping hand from one another and the city itself, it seems Adelaide’s single population are turning to such organizations as Social 8 for a little push in the right direction.

Primarily aimed at assisting people between the ages of 30 and 65 within the business and professional realm, Social 8’s intentions are to create a relaxed, simple and easy way to meet new people and expand one’s social circle – and of course for people to “start dating and fall madly in love!”

“What we do is try and take it back to your 20s and then you can play the numbers game,” says Jane Donovan. ”The more people that you meet, in an arena that you feel safe and feel comfortable enough to show who you truly are, then you can start to attract into your life exactly who you should. Everyone talks about the law of attraction these days and that’s what this is – this is putting the action into the law of attraction. It’s placing you in a position where the universe can help provide you with what you’re wanting.”
And Social 8 isn’t the only organisation helping Adelaide’s singles. A decade on, The Adelaide Review’s personals are also in the singles game.

“All the people I’ve met through The Adelaide Review personals are principally broadminded and worldly people,” says Marc, (who like the other singles in this article is using a pseudonym) who after thirty years of marriage found himself searching for another partner through The Adelaide Review’s personals.

“The type of people who mainly read The Adelaide Review are worldly anyway and have a sense of social justice about them and are very philosophical in their outlook.” Having met and found a significant other as well as many new friends through such personals, Marc, who is now single again, believes such a medium to be ideal. “Everything is done for you,’ he says. “It’s a fairly speedy process and not very onerous. Just put a little message together, send it in and fingers crossed that you’ll get a response. I’ve always got very good responses.”

Similarly believing her experiences with The Adelaide Review personals to be generally optimistic, Joanne, while still not having found her prince, has however walked away with positive experiences.

“I’ve enjoyed the contacts I’ve made and it’s been a good thing for me,” she says. “I have been happy in general with the standard of the replies that I’ve received. There was just one oddball and one or two married men and most of the married men are honest!”
Mary, in a joint effort with a long time friend, also placed and responded to numerous personals over the period of eight months for a “bit of fun”. While neither believed they had too much to learn, they surprisingly walked away with some “additional knowledge on men”.

“I’d have to say that the gentlemen we met, if you can call them that, were primarily out for one thing!” says Mary with a chuckle. “They were certainly not people that we had any doubts or worries about being with, in terms of company, but I think some of the ads were put in perhaps because they had a spare weekend, rather than actually wanting a long term commitment.”

With today’s dating climate presumably centring around the Internet, Marc, Mary and Joanne all believe that other avenues are far more appropriate.

“The Internet was recommended by several people,” says Mary, “But I had a friend in England who met someone through the Internet [and after a year] she discovered he had a wife and three kids! So, since then, I’ve just been a bit cautious because let’s face it, you can say what you want on the Internet and you can pretend what you want.

At least we felt with an ad, even if it didn’t express what the person was really like, you got the opportunity to face to face meet - you don’t on the Internet. So, it was more a caution thing.”

And it’s a belief that Jane Donovan of Social 8 echoes. “While I certainly know many people have enjoyed fantastic success on the Internet, I think that the percentage that are enjoying success is getting smaller and smaller,” she says. “What’s happening in more recent times is that it’s unfortunately attracting a lot of predators. It’s attracted a lot of people who are not honest.” While the Internet is renowned for such deceit, Joanne still warns of dishonesty through personals programs.

“I had one really scary guy,” she says. “He replied twice to my ads in January and also my one in June and used a different name each time. He was very aggressive and I kept his letter and I noticed he replied again using a different name, so other women have probably had him respond as well.”  While such encounters are a potential part of such a dating program, Mary, however, believes that commonsense should always prevail.

“When you meet someone, you can generally tell if they’re likely to be the sort of person you’re going to feel comfortable with or not,” she says. “Try and when you meet the person, without being too intrusive, find out a little about them in terms of where they work, what they do and these sorts of things so you’ve got a bit of a background, so you’ve got something to go on.”

And with Social 8’s long line of success stories, Jane Donovan encourages Adelaide’s singles to persevere.  “We’ve had lots of beautiful weddings and lots of successes! One of my favourite stories is about a lovely lady who had been such a good member for a long period of time. She had been going to every dinner that she had been given an opportunity to go to, she never said no, she had a positive attitude and she worked it.

Nobody wanted to catch up with her. But to her credit, she had the most incredible sense of self-belief that enabled her to continue to put herself out there and she did. We had a member, it was only his second dinner that he’d been to and he met her and she was the love of his life and within a very short period of time they announced their engagement! So it can happen when it’s meant to!”