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I suppose that, in this particular context, “not looking” with its implication of “not acting desperate” actually means “not setting expectations”.

If you see someone who you fancy and you decide to go and have a chat with them, don’t have the expectation that the chat will lead to a date.

Have a conversation. Be interested, re-frame your expectation so that the objective is to find out more about them, rather than just whether they fancy you.

If nothing romantic arises (ahem) from the chat, you’ve still fulfilled your expectation. You’ve found out more about them and hopefully vice versa.

That’s actionable. It gives you something to “do”. Your “mission” becomes networking rather than coupling, yet still allows the latter to happen.

Yes, I struggle to understand this. When you’re ‘not looking’, your ideal partner will fall out of the sky onto your head - just stop looking! Simple.

Or does it mean ‘give up hope of finding anyone - and you’ll find someone’? What kind of bastard deterministic fatalistic view is that? I think people mean well when they say it, but it makes no sense.

What Hg said sounds reasonable but it also sounds like acting in bad faith. Because when you want to meet someone, and you fancy them and like the look of them, there’s no fooling yourself that that is what’s motivating you to talk to them.

In that case I’ve not expressed myself clearly. I’m not questioning the motivation - of course you fancy them, that’s the whole point of talking to them.

Let’s try a food analogy. If you expect every restaurant meal to be sublime, you’re setting yourself up for frequent disappointment.

If you go along with a win-some-lose-some mentality, the process becomes more enjoyable. A poor meal becomes a learning experience rather than a failure.

In other words, if you’re not “looking” for the perfect meal, you’re perversely in a better position to recognise it when it eventually comes along.

If you expect every meal to be “the one” then you’re going to eat an awful lot of disappointing, average, unmemorable food along the way.

But of course you’re “looking” because you’re still going out to restaurants every week. This word “looking” is, to continue the food metaphors, a red herring.

Bollocks, of course you’ll be looking. If you’re like me, you’re always looking, so if it’s going to happen at all it’ll happen when I’m looking. It might well be the case that it’ll be in the last place I look, but only because then I’ll stop.

They totally mean “don’t act desperate”. Act how you’d act if you genuinely weren’t looking and if you can manage to get temporarily distracted and act that way naturally then that’s a bonus.

However, I’d go with the “when you least expect it”. Well, slightly reworded: “when you don’t expect it”. Because I’ve become in danger of becoming so bitter and twisted now that though I may always be looking, I simultaneously never actually expect it to happen.

But it’s not a good thing, not something we should be aiming for. I think we’ve got to keep trying to believe that it might come along, to look out for it in unexpected places, to have good expectations and not become disillusioned or with such low self-esteem that when it does come along we might not be able to trust it at all.

While I agree with Hg that it’s sort of code for saying: “Stop acting so desperate.” I think it may also be code for an extension of that, which is that if you can’t be happy and stable as a single person, you may not be ready to be in a happy and stable relationship with someone else. You’ve often said to me words to the effect (I can’t remember exact quotes, unfortunately) of ‘Now I just need that girlfriend thing sorted and it’ll all be okay’ or, as in the post above (and a billion twitters) ‘You couples live in a totally different world to us singles and I just want to get in on that, via some means’.

Now, whether or not the people you flirt with pick up on this vibe from you and withdraw is one issue we shall call ‘covered’ by Hgs’s comment and put aside for now. After all, it’s quite obvious that there are an endless supply of people (the majority, surely- you are not alone) who were not happy and stable as single people yet somehow stumbled themselves into a relationship despite this. Loads of people love to be the person who thinks they can ‘fix’ someone by going out with them. You can certainly be on the patrol for this sort of person, if that’s what you’re after (important to note: They are not going to fix you. You are).

So, back to the original statement. “You always find when you are not looking.” probably means, in your case, that in addition to the fact that you seem to exude a sort of mania about your quest for a partner, and that said mania may be the very thing thwarting that quest (irony!), you also probably need to find a sort of peace and acceptance about just ‘being single’ (and, by implication, being alive and single). Remove ‘being in a couple’ from your top five things to do list. Stop writing endless posts and twitters about how incredibly alone and single you are. Start embracing being alone. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t stop going out and talking to people, but stop making ‘partnering up’ the number one thing on your mind when you do (people can pick up on this). Become Zen about this shit. Easy to say, nigh impossible to do, about many things. But, like many pieces of frustrating, hard-to-take advice, it actually works. There is a reason it’s an aphorism.

I have to admit, it was this concept of partnering up being an “actionable” item that was the most striking thing about your post when I read it. It just seemed so wrong.

The best response I can come up with is this: partnering is a creative act. You’re creating a relationship. It’s in a completely different league to qualifications, etc.

You mention bands setting goals and music analogies are always great. Yeah, a band has to be focused and goal-oriented to get the single or album recorded and released.

But I think creating a relationship is more like the initial process of writing the songs. It’s much more open to chance, emotion and impulse. Less actionable.

That’s not to say you can’t foster the right conditions to make it happen. But you’ve got to write a lot of shit songs before that all-time classic suddenly appears from nowhere.

You should absolutely have “being in a relationship” as one of your goals, if it’s important to you. Just like a band should have “release an album” if that’s what they want.

But you’re not going to be able to schedule the steps required to achieve that goal in the mechanistic way that might apply to other areas of your life, I think.

The songwriter might well put “Monday: write ten classic songs” in his diary, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. It’s more of a tangential process than that.

What advice would one give that songwriter? Relax. Live a little. Get out there. Experience things. Immerse yourself. The songs will come when you least expect them…

I think Hg has a lot of good points. The ‘zen’ avoidance thing is tricky, because the goal is such a desirable one. But the goal is only desirable with the right person. Anyone else could potentially fill the role and mean you get to check the item off the to-do list, but the achieved goal is not what you want.

I might be rehashing the bleeding obvious, but how about looking in a different way? If you see an attractive woman in a bar, you know she’s attractive and you’d like to date her based on that, but you have no idea what she’s like. If you walk up and talk to her with a phone number or date in mind as the goal, you’ve already decided you want to date her. Regardless of how many questions you ask, you have an agenda you want to address, and the conversation will feel different to a naturally flowing chat.

If walking up and talking to her is motivated by discovery and curiosity rather than being a strategy to attain a goal, that comes across, and it’s appreciated. And it keeps you in the process of judgement and consideration, so if you don’t click or you dislike her laugh or her man-hands then you haven’t already staked anything on the encounter. And if you like what you discover then you can simply say so.

Maybe that is more of a practical interpretation to ‘not looking’ - looking to like rather than looking to get…but I say again I could be stating the obvious and even being insulting - which wasn’t my intention I swear.

I also really like Hg’s song analogy.

You won’t always find if you’re not looking. FACT.

The trick is to be looking, constantly, but not to be “looking like you’re looking”. Even the best of us come off as desperate when we’re really looking to find someone. If you’re just looking for a shag, that’s not always a bad thing. But if you’re looking for a relationship, it’s never a good start to come off as being desperate to any future Mrs. Sevitzes.

Although some women out there* are turned on by desperation. So I’ve heard anyway.

*And ALL MEN.

I am currently drafting a blog post about the dream I had about you last night.

In the meantime, I think the ‘not looking’ bit is where you refocus your life. Instead of saying I will do activity x and y because I’m bound to meet a potential partner, you do activity z and k because you really want to do so. You go to pubs and clubs because you want to drink or hang out with mates, not because that’s where you meet someone. You get your life fulfilment out of developing and pursuing your interests, not out of how you relate to potential wives.

I was 32½ when I met Jimmy. Before then I had never been in a relationship that had lasted more than 3 months.

I’m with Hg.

Well, obviously, not, because Mrs Hg and Jimmy might have something to say about that

“Not looking”? Spend a few weeks actively hanging around places you’ll definitely won’t or shouldn’t find a girlfriend. Like the Candy Bar in Soho, the men’s changing rooms of the Grecian Wrestling Club in Vauxhall or Montessori crèches during the daytime.

If you get a girlfriend or even just not arrested I’m be impressed and you prove these bastards wrong. Until you need them to pay your bail.