OPINION: Female friendship impacting on love life

Hanging with your mates might be getting in the way of love

Stop the pack mentality if you want to meet someone of the opposite sex. Picture: Digital Vision.

I AM suspended in a strange world of yin. Everywhere I go, I am surrounded by women. Great groups of women. Huddles of women. At cafes. At dog parks. At eateries.

I have somehow wandered into a single sex world although I know that there are men out there, because I see them on TV, playing football or running the country and, in Bunnings, pondering DIY supplies.

A friend who runs my favourite cafe tells me the women congregate to eat and talk while the men go off to do their own thing.

Ah, the great Australian marriage. I can't explain the dog park, or the restaurants, except to say 1) I live in a regional area 2) Maybe all the married-with-childrens are at home.

Where are the single men? And do both sexes prefer this sort of optional segregation and is it a social trend - one in four Australian households are now lone households.

According to eHarmony's dating and relationship expert, Mel Schilling, a dating culture really doesn't exist in Australia. "We have very much a pack mentality in Australia,” she told a dating seminar. "You will see groups of guys and girls, and never the two shall meet.”

While we might not be able to change the culture, Schilling suggests that if you are interested in a bit of interaction with the opposite sex, you put yourself in the pathway of potential interests by signing up to clubs. Cycling. Tennis. Abseiling. Political debate. Doesn't matter really. Nuts and screws at Bunnings. Coffee around the same time as women converge.

I'm just suggesting we mix a bit more yin and yang, get the balance right. Go a bit European. Live and love the opposite sex a bit more.

Who knows how a bit more interaction, apart from all the 20-somethings hooking up on Tinder, may thaw the pack mentality.

Originally published as OPINION: Female friendship impacting on love life