So he shoulda put a ring on it, but now he’s gone? Ginger Briggs offers some sage advice on maintaining your dignity while looking for love. Her new year’s resolutions hit list is for all the single ladies.

I am 42-years-old and single. 

By way of explanation, it wasn’t ever thus. I’ve had a respectable number of boyfriends and a respectably sluttish number of one night stands. At 34, I met the dude who, for better or worse, I threw my lot in with. Sadly, it was worse. He was and is lovely, but we spent most of our relationship trying to have a baby, and for reasons too anatomical to be any of your beeswax, could not. I got the Black Dog, and took to the couch for two years. My partner eventually pointed out that he had little to do, if I was just going to do that. Then he moved out.

Well, touché. But this isn’t a pity party — he made the right choice. And I eventually realised that yearning for the life I couldn’t produce was a waste of the life I already had. A happy shrink and a wise Labrador dragged me through grief, and, like Jim Morrison, I broke on through to the other side.

 Eventually, my ex got bored of paying rent for a house he no longer lived in. (Yes, he did that. Told you he was lovely.) So my old friend The Cobbler[1] moved in. When The Cobbler told her friend that she was moving in with me, the friend volunteered that she found that “a bit sad”. Two single women in their forties[2] sharing a house. Bless the poor spinster lasses. 

Well, lady, screw you and the horse you came in on. We have heaps fun round ours. We get drunk. We watch 30 Rock. Sometimes we get drunk while watching 30 Rock. Our lounge room sports two couches. Yes, that’s right. One each. 

In sum, I’m happy now, but still undeniably single. And it occurred to me some of you might be too, in which case we could commiserate together, week by week, until one of us gets laid[3]. So, to kick off the discussion, here is my provisional set of new year’s resolutions to help negotiate singlehood[4].

 I will not internet date.

When you’re single, all your married friends think you should immediately feed your vital stats into Dexter — or the new-fangled one… whatsit… RSVP.com.au. Appalling idea[5]. For a start, neither Cameron Daddo nor Tiffany Lamb have anything to do with it anymore. They don’t tell you that when you sign up, do they? And have you seen the humanity on offer there? All the men are “genuine”, and all the women are better looking than me. Stuff that for a joke.

I will not ask my friends to set me up with their attractive male friends.

Honestly, do you want me to die of embarrassment[6]? Just please don’t.

I will not try to pretend I’m still part of youth culture.

The Cobbler went to an outdoor “party” in Sydney — the kind where you don’t know anyone and pay to get in. As two young be-boob-tubed, be-hot-panted hotties walked past, one stared pointedly at The Cobbler, then said to the other, “You didn’t tell me you were bringing your mum.” Avoid this type of adolescent taunting at all cost.

 I will not lie about my age.

I want to look good for my age, not old for my age. I know! Nuts, right?

 I will not become a cougar.

Urk. Revolting term. It pains me to use it. Nevertheless, a number of girlfriends have amusingly informed me that I’m only as young as the man I’m feeling. Lulz indeed. To be honest, having spent the summer at a surf beach, I can see why I would want to sleep with a 25-year-old man. I just can’t see why a 25-year-old man would want to sleep with me. Do I want to find out if one does? If rejection is an option, no.

 I will neither look nor not look for a boyfriend.

People often say that love finds you when you’re not looking. A friend even suggested I would get a boyfriend simply because I am writing about being single. O SRSLY? As far as I’m concerned, this is bollocks of the first order. When you are not looking for the remote control, do you ever find the remote control? No. And even if you do find it, you haven’t “found” it, because you were not looking for it in the first place, and therefore unaware of having lost it. Same with men[7].  On the other hand, if you are looking for a boyfriend, you won’t find one either, because, as so depressingly nailed by conventional wisdom, men will smell the desperate on you.  Easiest, then, to do something else entirely.

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So! Dunno about you, but armed with these canny, no-fail strategies, I’m off to bag a boyfriend. I’ll report back next week. (Or when I can be bothered; whichever comes last.) Will I, as my friend predicted, have coupled up by then[8]? Ooo, suspense! Please add your own resolutions. And remember to let me know if you get laid, so I can stop writing this depressing column.

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[1] I call her The Cobbler because that’s what she is. Makes shoes, innit?

[2] EARLY forties.

[3] And by “laid” I mean sober sex. Ok, relatively sober. But if you can’t remember it, it didn’t happen.

[4] Do not adopt any of these resolutions yourself. They will not help you find love. If anything, the opposite will occur.

[5]  And I apologise to The Cobbler, who I forced at drunkpoint to do this when I was the married friend.

[6] As you’ll discover soon enough, I live in perpetual fear of embarrassment, and I find a wide range of human behaviour embarrassing. I even find being embarrassed embarrassing. Please don’t tell me to get over it. Staying indoors and waiting for life to knock on my door is a perfectly valid strategy.

[7]  Just go with it.

[8]  I’m going to go out on a limb and say no.

Ginger Briggs is a writer and editor. She has claimed to have a book coming out this year every year for the last four years. This year it really might. Or next year. Follow her sporadic tweets at @MissSchlegel, or read her rarely-updated blog.