About this site

Why it exists

Most advice on this subject falls into two categories: written twenty years ago, or written to sell a subscription. Neither is much help when what you want to know is where people actually go now, whether the thing you keep reading about works, and what to expect.

What we do not do

• We do not run sponsored reviews. Nobody pays us to be recommended and no ranking on this site is bought.
• We do not invent statistics. Where we cite research we describe what it found; where no reliable figure exists we say so rather than producing one.
• We do not publish invented personal stories. There are no fabricated testimonials here.
• We say when something does not work — including the places every article on this subject recommends and nobody has ever met anyone.

How it is funded

Through affiliate links. If you create a profile on a platform we link to, we may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. That is the entire business model.

It does not change what we write, which is why several pages here tell you plainly that offline routes exist, that you can look without doing anything, and that most conversations go nowhere.

Editorial approach

Where something is contested we describe the disagreement rather than picking a side and presenting it as settled. Where something is genuinely unknown, we say that. Where the honest answer is discouraging — that most online conversations go nowhere, that it usually takes months, that the pool in a small town may genuinely be too small — we give it anyway.

One theme runs through most of it: the difficulty people describe is almost never about them. The social machinery that supplied introductions in your twenties stops working somewhere in your forties, and that is structural rather than personal.

Who this is for

Adults, mostly over forty, who are looking to meet someone and have found that the way they used to do it no longer works. It is written for people starting again after a divorce or a bereavement as much as for anyone who has simply been single for a while.

Corrections

If something here is wrong or out of date, we would rather know. Get in touch and we will look at it.