Alice Judge-Talbot married her university sweetheart at 23 and had two children, before their happily-ever after crumbled and she found herself a divorced single mother on the dating scene.
Here, she shares an exclusive extract from her new book 'The Back-Up Plan'...
As a married person, I always enjoyed meeting new people and discovering new things, so I reckoned my dating life should be no different.

I expected glittering conversation over bottles of wine,
It sounds like, when she got divorced, she expected a "Grass is always greener" reality.
interesting individuals who would change my perspective on life and love,
She is owed fun, and adventure.
and I figured that as an approaching-30 mum of two with only two evenings off a fortnight my spare time was precious: I didn’t want to spend it with men who didn’t fit my idea of perfection – or, at least, who didn’t get close to it.
Her expectations are high. i'm willing to bet her expectations have always been high.
Taken out of context this sentence is fine, but with the context added back in, she's a perfectionist. This is one of the problems.
"Well I have these limits, so the world will deal with it and give me what I want."
No.

So focused was I in my quest for the perfect man that I decided to draw up a list of things I wanted in one.
She was on a "quest". She was "driven".
Was her thinking work including what she offered to a partner? How she was going to charm one?
Nope. Putting all her work into: "setting expectations very high".


My thought was that, if they didn’t tick off at least half of the things on my list, then they probably weren’t going to be the one for me.
Again no talk of how she was going to get this man. Just talk about how perfect he needed to be.
I mean, if methodical, precise and ambitious worked for me at work, why wouldn’t it apply to my love life, too?
here we go. "muh career". I'm sure she's curing cancer.
Thinking hard, I drew up 18 points...

The strange world of post-divorce dating as a lonely single mother
"Oh well, sorry you picked wrong."
Alice dated everyone from CEOs to comedians
CEOs went first. This is not an accident.  
1. Intelligent, or at least well-educated.
There we go, in the name of equality and current year, "socio-economic status", right at the top of the list.
Liking a smart guy, hey I think that's great. "or at least well educated". So he can be a dope but have a degree..?  

2. Tall, preferably taller than 6 foot.
IIRC average height of a man, depending on what "Data" you see is 5'8" to 5'10". If you use 5'9",  6ft isn't THAT common. I think like 20% of the population of men falls into that.
Now add in the job prestige/degrees (don't be a 6ft tall construction worker) and that % shrinks.  

3. Older than me, probably between the ages of 32 and 40.
She dated a 25 year old, so you might as well throw this one out the window  

4. Doesn’t live at home with his parents.
5. Lives near me.
6. Likes music, but not bad music.
She is high in disgust sensitivity. Having different tastes in music is grounds for being fired?
I'm thinking she initiated the divorce, and dragged this guy emotionally for the duration of the marriage.

7. Has a challenging career that he loves and is passionate about.
8. Likes fancy food and to be cooked for. And cheeseburgers.
9. Respects and encourages my career.
10. Likes children, maybe has some – but doesn’t advertise them to the weirdos stalking their profile.
....?
11. Has a great sense of humour (by which I mean ‘laughs at my jokes’).
There we go, she's the center of the universe again.  
12. Hot (duh).
"I dated a 25 year old, ohh I know i know" Wow I wonder why?  
13. Plays some sort of sport or at least goes to the gym.

14. Is fairly cultured, or at least likes to pretend to be.
15. Looks good in a suit.
16. Looks good out of a suit.
17. Understands the value of a nice pair of shoes.
Tall, fit, handsome, smart, doesn't challenge me on anything, meets my expectations - he's kind of a modern man

18. Believes in chivalry.
Modern old-fashioned man.

And so I set about my dating game. I went out with investment bankers, entrepreneurs, CEOs,
Right at the front of the list again. "See I dated high status men, ugh, and wouldn't you know it, none of them were good enough!!"  
25-year-olds (I KNOW), journalists, comedians, marketing executives, academics . . . you name them, I’ve dated them (probably). I sat through endless hours of strangers regaling me with stories of their ‘colourful’ lives (I’ll be the judge of that, pal).
First, I doubt she did the work when dating aside from working on her expectations.
They offered, she said yes.
She had the great task of going with them on dates they brought her on. (Oh the horror).
They were not meeting her expectations, so she says. Yet she lists allll these "impressive" job titles?
Sounds like job title was more important than inter-personal compatibility to her.
What jerks they are, dating a single mom of 2 that's a 4.5/10 and has a post baby body!
Don't they know she finds their lives boring?! Dumb rubes.  

I drank red wine in at least four different counties and in front of 16 different open fires, and the only reason I didn’t start a blog about all these awful dates was because my mum told me it would have been mean.
All these dates she was forced to be on.
I'm sure if she wrote one up and men recognized her, they would jump at the chance to be torn apart on the internet if she didn't like the date.
On top of her being a single mom of 2, a 4.5/10, with high expectations and a bad attitude.

It’s amazing how sterile and calculated the process started to feel.
I’d meet someone and immediately assess them for the points I was looking for. If they didn’t fit? Game over.
And did she fix this?
Right it's a problem, it's mechanical, she's picking people based on job title and not the human qualities, and there were no sparks.
And it's allll their fault.
She did what to fix this? In her infinite wisdom, did she re-think her list, or her tactics?

Men were desperate to settle down with a woman who’d cook for them and massage their egos. Lonely as I was, I just wasn’t up for that
"men are desperate"
"I was lonely".
Projection. Next, this is a look into her value system. She's a "modern" woman who doesn't want to do what she perceives to be, the "traditional" wife stuff.
And this includes being nice to her man
"massage their egos".
She was in such a rush to tear people down, the moment the guys got a whiff of this, they bolted. They were done.
If the choice is her, or some other single mom that's fun to be around, kind, isn't blabbing on about needing to be impressed? She is going to lose. I suspect many of the men who "met her minimums" had no interest in her.

In the course of my dating I met many 30 and 40-somethings who were just desperate to settle down with a woman who’d happily cook for them and massage their egos for the rest of their lives and, I have to tell you, as lonely as I was I just wasn’t quite down for that.
"I didn't want to put work into the relationship, I wanted the prestige of a CEO husband with certain degrees who excited me physically".  

To be honest, I had my own ego to take care of
Finally some self awareness, from the 4.5/10 woman.  
and there really wasn’t going to be time to look after anyone else’s.
Bingo. she doesn't have room in her life for a someone else.
For the happily married people on this site, you couldn't image talking about your spouse like this.
She's throwing this around like it's normal.
This is a looking glass into how fucked up she is.
I started to understand my single girlfriends’ wails when they’d come to me complaining about how they couldn’t find a boyfriend. Granted, the dates seemed to be easy to come by, it was just the quality of them that was a bit dubious.
Damn, sounds like hard work saying yes to dates alll the time.

Really, I just wanted to meet someone with whom I’d share a bit of chemistry and perhaps some interests and hobbies.
"all I want is this man who meets an 18point fantasy check list and requires me doing nothing different, changing, or being more available emotionally, is that so hard to ask??"  
When I first became single I hadn’t thought that was a huge ask but, as I got deeper into my experiences of dating, I started to feel more and more envious of the 18-year-old me who’d met her perfect match in the most innocent of ways.
There we are. Grass is always greener again.
And now she's looking back at what she had. Met a guy at 18, At 23 she's married, 2 kids, then divorced at 29.
I'm wondering if she called the shots on all of the above. Wanted the marriage early, hubby did it to make her happy.
Kids early, hubby did it to make her happy.
Divorce the doormat because he's a doormat now, hubby crushed not knowing what he did wrong.
No idea if that's what happened, but miss expectations who never thinks about what she gives to the other person (or at least never expresses it), I think there's reason to suspect it did go down like that.

I understood that I was an adult now, a mother, and had different thresholds and expectations when it came to the opposite sex, but why was this finding-a-man thing so freaking hard?
She "will only date" a man that's .001% of the population.
she's 29 going on 37, she's got an "eh" face and a "eh" body.
She has 2 kids already and is divorced.
She's mean, unflexible, comes with baggage, lack of self-awareness, and chasing men with options telling them how it's going to be.
She's prone to making herself unhappy when left alone, and is ensuring she's repeating the kind of thinking that got her here.

I was a good person: where was my Prince Charming, Mark II?
Prince charming has dating options.
What does she offer him?
"Muh career and I'm funny sometimes".
And if he's not interested in that?
She expects 18 things and offers 2?