FEBRUARY 15 — When it comes to dating we’re always told men and women are so different. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus and all that nonsense. 

Well, I just don’t think that’s true at all. It’s a little white lie that we happily tell ourselves to make us feel better about getting knocked back so many times, and trust me, it happens to everyone.

We’re simple creatures really when it comes to dating, both men and women and everyone in between, and yet we’ve published reams and reams of column inches and book pages on the subject of understanding the opposite sex and how to nab one for ourselves. 

I mean, Sex and the City managed a whole TV show about it and two dreadful movies to boot, but we’re not all that different when it comes down to it. 

After all of this endless instruction, what has it actually taught us? So much advice about how to decode the other person, what to make of their every action, the science behind what makes them a good partner, all of this has done nothing but drive a mental wedge between the sexes that makes dating even more daunting than we already thought to begin with. 

It makes us believe that there are unbridgeable gaps between the sexes so when a relationship doesn’t work out we can blame the science rather than the evident fact that you’re just not right for each other. 

Many a person has been guilty of exclaiming, “Ugh, men!” or “Ugh, women!” when things don’t quite go the way they’d hoped, as if an entire sex can be summed up by their petty stance on text messaging or paying the dinner bill. 

And remember, for every time you’ve uttered that exclamation about someone, there’s a fair chance, somewhere along the line, someone else has felt the same way about you. 

Whether you were aware of it or not, at some point in your life someone liked you more than you liked them and, possibly without even realising it, you will have left them hanging and broken their little hearts. Not to get too dark but it happens …to everyone.  

Now with the technological age in which we live we have the added agony of constant communication or, in some cases, the lack of. 

We’ve no doubt all spent hours agonising over when they’ll text or call back. Your mind goes into a free fall of lunacy; you haven’t heard from them, what could have happened, their phone must be broken, maybe their battery’s dead, maybe they’re dead! 

Then there’s anger that is just plain rude not to reply to someone. But the simple truth of the matter is men and women generally react the same when they receive a message from a potential partner.

So ask yourself, if you received a message from someone you liked, you were happy to hear from them and would like the conversation to continue; what would you do?  Reply, right? Well, so would they. So if there’s no reply, it’s not worth your time worrying about it.

When two people get together who genuinely like each other it’s super easy and straightforward. No game playing, no waiting three days to call. 

If you both want to see each other and enjoy each other’s company then the conversation will flow. Let me repeat, no game playing.

So with Valentine’s just past and love in the air, don’t waste your time staring at your phone waiting for it to ring. 

Remember there’s no sitting on someone’s backburner being taken for granted. Love shouldn’t need instruction manuals and checklists and if you get a message from someone you like this Valentine’s... reply!

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.