A girl I know has recently come out of a five-year relationship which has left her with a rather bruised and battered heart and a two-year-old child. I know from talking to other friends who are single parents that having a small child is not generally regarded as A Good Thing when it comes to the mating game. They have tales of men showing an interest who run faster than Sonia O'Sullivan when they hear about the kids, and they also have tales about men who are rather obsessed with the idea of the mother and child but who are rather unsympathetic if the child means the mother can't come out to play at night. Yet the general consensus is that this friend of ours will have found a new partner within weeks.
It's not that she's particularly stunning looking - we all think she's gorgeous but then so are a lot of my friends who've been single for ages. Nor is she slightly mad, a quality which I've always found to be a sure-fire winner when it comes to attracting men. Women who are rather hysterical, cause scenes, make extravagant claims and get messily drunk ought to be anathema to men, if books like The Rules are to be believed. Yet nine times out of 10, you'll find that women who are calm, understanding and independent are knocked flying as men rush to fall in extravagant and painful love with the most psychotic woman you know. Such is the lure of excitement over comfort, but I'm hoping that such irritating behaviour is going to decline as I get older.
I know I'm already starting to appreciate a man who can put up a shelf over a man who may have a drinking problem but writes beautiful poetry. Anyway, this particular friend is neither mad nor maddeningly beautiful, yet I think she's unlikely to be on her own for very long. She has always been one of those serial monogamists, who come out of one relationship only to fall directly into another one, seemingly by chance. Meanwhile, myself and other friends follow a different pattern; we come out of a relationship, have a great time being single and then wake up one morning, realise it's autumn and think it's high time we found ourselves somebody to cook and provide videos for the winter. Of course, there's divil a bit of one to be found and only then do we start to look at our much more energy efficient, serial monogamist friends and wonder how on earth they manage to conjure up another mate when they want one, rather than waiting until one drops out of a tree.
It's hard to put a finger on just what it is that the serial monogamist does differently, particularly because the really successful ones are like my friend who has no idea she's doing anything at all. Still, there's a set of attitudes and beliefs that many SMs I've met, do hold in common. They are usually truly independent types who couldn't be clingy if they tried but who somehow manage to make men feel protective. I wish I knew how they did this, but I have a nasty feeling it's something you're born with. Most of us are unable to inspire protectiveness without feeling, and possibly being, terribly needy.
Within relationships need is a necessary and powerful emotion, but as a wooing technique it's a bit of a wash-out - male or female, no-one is attracted to the desperate. Feeling protective is another thing altogether and seems to be one of the strongest aphrodisiacs I know.
It seems to make men feel terribly good at being male and I suppose I can understand it because I love men who make me feel feminine. Without exception, SMs are also good at flirting, and again, this has to be a particular kind of flirting. The kind where you wear very short skirts, laugh with abandon at everything and throw your hair around like in a shampoo ad can often yield very good results in a wine bar but is not the kind that the SM specialises in. Hers is a very unconscious flirtation that seems to make a man feel he's quite the most charming, hilarious, devilishly attractive person in the room, while simultaneously implying that the girl with whom he's talking is slightly intriguing, yet unavailable.
I'm not so bad at the old flirting myself but I seem to have stalled at the advanced beginner stage and am nowhere near this kind of Premier League flirting. To suggest both extreme attraction and unattainability while drinking a cappuccino is multitasking taken to a new art form.
The key to this kind of flirting is belief - self-belief and belief in the end result of flirtation. You'll usually find that the serial monogamist puts a high price on love and sex, seeing it as an entirely essential part of their own existence, unlike their more easy-going sisters who are perpetually astonished when it arrives in any shape, and make little effort to pursue it. Of course, it's a good thing to spend some time on one's own, but I'm beginning to wonder whether the balance hasn't been tipped too far in the other direction. When you come out of a relationship, your rush for independence can often mean you boisterously disregard the natural human need for love and affection, while you prioritise fun or self-discovery or self-sufficiency.
This is fine for a while, but it might be a mistake to think that love will come looking for you when you're ready; instead, you probably have to go most of the way to meet it. I'm not suggesting that single women should throw themselves into an orgy of blind dates, Thursday-night visits to urban supermarkets or car-maintenance classes, more that it might be a good idea to lose faith in the notion that some man is going to whisk you off your feet. For a start, it makes you feel terribly powerless as you sit around waiting for Mr Right to stop falling in love with mad women. But also, you might as well get used to pursuing love yourself because in my experience, Irish men are just appalling at making the first move.
I'm not the only one of this opinion either, as both friends and women I've met while writing this column have asked me to highlight this terrible state of affairs. Most girls were brought up to believe that men are only after one thing, and that much of their adult life would be spent fighting off unwelcome advances from the opposite sex. Instead, we find ourselves dressed up to the nines, armed to the back teeth with witty conversational gambits, wondering when any man is going to make any kind of move at all.
It's not that they're not interested - when you finally suggest the One Thing yourself, you usually find they've been thinking along the same lines themselves.
When I cross-questioned a couple of male friends once, they said that they honestly believed that it was the woman's place to set the pace; it was more respectful. Now this is all very well in theory, but personally, I'm beginning to get a little sick of it in practice. We've managed to swing gender values around so much that men are scared to make the first move and women are made to feel they should be finding themselves and letting love find them.
Unless you're blessed with the arcane and subtle skills of the serial monogamist who actively seeks and finds love, neither of you is likely to get even a sniff of the One Thing at all. And if there's one thing that irritates me, it's that.
Louise East can be contacted at wingit@irish-times.ie