Well, just because it looks like you're going to be single for a while now that doesn't mean that you have to become a monk and if you've got friends telling you that you're a free agent now and you shouldn't be moping over some ex when you could be out there taking advantage of your freedom it's their way of telling you that it's not that bad and probably better than saying that you're better off without her mate, although that's basically it. It's a step to moving on anyway.

Well, you obviously can't get much chance to talk to someone that's selling popcorn in a busy cinema. And I guess that some of these chains have a policy where fraternizeing with customers is a sackable offence.

It's a girl that goes to the cinema with her parents and has a crush on a good looking young man that sells popcorn. I can't imagine something more wholesome and you're making her sound like a floozy. Worst thing that can happen is that he's not interested or is gay or she never does anything about it and never finds out.

She asked about how to get to know this guy and he's the guy she's interested in. She asks how to aproach a guy that sells popcorn that she likes and you tell her that she might meet a better kind of boy at college and that's somehow more appropriate. I imagine that you're the sort that would tell any girl that what they want is a college boy. Maybe he does go to college. We don't know and we don't know if she's into college boys. Maybe he's into college boys. He wears his pants like he might be that way I hear.

That's really preachy as usual and actually unfair to the OP, as she said that she's interested in his writing and the fact that he's at least got a job. It isn't a crime to think that someone looks gorgeous and lollol to a young guy worrying that he might lose his popcorn vending job because girls keep hitting on him. If worst comes to worst they've probably got vacancies at McDonalds.

Because it's good stuff.

"These days" you can get good bud anywhere and you know it's clean. I wouldn't smoke hash anymore because there's all sorts of crap in it but it was all you could get before they made a science out of hydroponically grown genetically modified strains of cannabis and homegrown weed stopped being a joke.

Alcohol is worse for your health and most other recreational drugs are as well. It's only psycologically addictive and you won't get sick if you stop taking it. The effects are known and it's much safer than "legal highs" because you don't know what's in them. You don't know what's in powders or tablets either if you bought them on the street.

Oh and switching to weed is one way to cut down smoking. It's more expensive than tobaco but you can't really smoke as many joints in a day as you can smoke cigarettes. I'm down to less than ten a day now.

I remember an ex of mine telling me that we needed to make a story up if people asked us how we had met. I was really fed up with the dating scene and the women that I was meeting at the time. My mum had met some woman when she was out walking the dog, told her about me and got her address and phone number.

My mother is one of those people that can meet a stranger somewhere like that and find out if they're single and what they do and all of that and it's only embarrasing if she does it in front of me and makes the matchmaking too blatant. I tend to keep to myself though and my neighbors mostly just know who I am because they've probably met my mother sometime.

She was just round for a quick visit just now and we took the dog to the park and then I asked her if she could go to the shop for me because I didn't want to go through the usual performance, with trying to make the Pakistanis understand what I want. My mum was taking a while, so I went to the door of the shop, where these women were standing chatting and my mum decided to ask the Pakistani guy his name and she introduced me to him as if I was ten years old or something. I mean, she made a point of saying that I'm nice and I could only laugh about it because it was right in front of these women. Well, one of them seemed to find it amusing and she said goodbye to me when we left. My mum asked me who she was and I said that I don't no. She had just introduced me to her by making that little scene there, I said.

It depends on what you mean by exhaustion. I've spent years doing university courses and there's a different sort of pressure with things where you have to use your brains. It's usually pressure that you put on yourself because you want to do well and not just get the job done, unless you're already mentally exhausted.

I mean, it's been years of slogging away, trying to achieve something and even though people tell me that I've got brains I don't always feel that I'm achieving my potential, or if I do have that potential. You can feel so mentaly exhausted that you just don't want to go on anymore and a bit of rest or sleep won't make any difference. Physical exhaustion can seem trivial in comparison because I suppose that you assume that the physical excersise is always going to do them good and they will feel fine and ready to go again soon enough.

Great advice above there in response to the how to aproach a guy question. "Don't and start acting your age."

Super helpful as usual there Joyce.

Well, I'm trying to answer this question as a guy that's had a few women saying that I'm hot and is a bit vain about it.

I flirt with women in places like that all the time and don't read much into it. They don't know anything about me, apart from whether they think I'm good looking or not and it's all superficial. I'm vain, so I'm going to take it for granted that they find me atractive on a superficial level, or they must be a lesbian or something. What I'm not taking for granted is that even if a woman's giving me a 10 on looks and charm that she'll in any way be interested in getting involved with a guy like me.

This guy sells popcorn for a living. What league does that put him in with a girl that goes there with her parents?

I'm just telling you what works on me. If someone's friendly or flirty with me it's nice but it doesn't tell me anything that I didn't already know. On the other hand, if they actually come out and say that they fancy me (or get someone to tell me) I think, "Great. It's good enough for them that they think that I'm hot. Here's somebody that's just looking for a hot guy. I can do that."

Here's my advice and you can take it or leave it. If you don't know how to get anywhere with this guy get your mother to go there sometime and tell her to tell him that you like him and think that he's very handsome. If he's interested he'll give her his phone number or ask for yours.

Well, looking at your profile, if it was like that when he got in touch with you I agree that he's messed you about a bit if he's not looking for a relationship. You say that you want friendship that will lead to a relationship and then marriage, so a guy that's not looking for a wife and doesn't know what he wants is arguably a time waster.

I think that you said that he's in his forties, so if he doesn't know what he wants by now he probably never will and I think that all that I was trying to say was that a middle aged man would probably think that he had done pretty well for himself to have a young lady like you if he was looking for a wife.

Yeah, I still think that you're maybe going too fast for him but you've done the friendship bit on here and if he isn't coming to meet you as a suitor you're probably right to break it off now.

Good luck to you though.

I suppose that I am someone that gets emotionally involved easily and I've not had a lot of luck with relationships. I think that I spent about two weeks getting to know the woman that I had my longest relationship with and she just changed as soon as we became lovers. It's not that we stopped being friends but that was when all the drama started.

I've had dates with women that say that they're looking for friendship "and maybe more" but when I didn't have sex with them they weren't interested in more dates or staying in touch as friends, even when we got on alright and most women tell me that I'm good company and easy to talk to.

I suppose it's fair to say that I'm fast with women because I would rather not live with regrets of wasted opportunities. Relationships haven't really worked out for me but the ones that I've had have been significant to me and it's true that I do tend to feel quite strongly about the physical act of love and become atatched quite easily. Most guys will tell you when you're broken hearted over a woman to just get another one though and the problem is that when you're still in love with someone else you're not ready and people probably won't see you as being "available" and all you'll get is more people that won't want to get involved and maybe more sex.

I don't think that you can know how a relationship with someone will work out by just getting to know them as friends and at best you can make an educated guess. You may see red flags but ignore them anywayand sleep with that person because at least you're getting that out of it and if it's not going to work out it's not like there aren't other women.

Well, David Cameron was Margrat Thatcher's protege and Thatcher was Enoch Powel's. Enoch Powel was notorious for wanting to send the blacks back and for his "rivers of blood" speach, so it's all scarey stuff and we've got this arse in number 10 again because he made promises to reduce imigration, which he failed to meet.

Yes Crystal, even before this recent crisis there's been massive disruption due to all of the people trying to enter the UK illegally by crossing the Channel from France. They stow away on goods vehicles and damage them, so something had to be done about it and it's difficult and dangerous for them to get here and the government are trying to make it harder for them to claim benefits.

You hear other stories though. There was this woman on the news the other day saying that a refugee boy that she had fostered was being sent back where he came from because he was no longer a child. All of his family over there are dead and this is his home.

I know what you mean about how there are people speaking foreign languages everywhere now. That does my head in as well and I've ranted before about how the Pakis that run my local shop can't speak proper English and the service is terrible, even when they're not rude. I've got a Thai lady living upstairs though and her lot are so integrated that her granddaughter even has a Scottish name. It's just that Muslims haven't really integrated, on the whole and then you feel like your country is full of aliens. And now we've actually got "British" people fighting for this Islamic State lot and a British drone killed one of them today.

Immigration really hasn't been a massive problem until recently and those borders were opened as part of an economic plan to create a more prosperous Europe. Those Poles and the rest of them do crappy low payed jobs that nobody else wants to do. They're economic migrants that we're exploiting. There's actually a shortage of skilled workers here and it's not like the eighties, when there were no job prospects. We've still got millions unemployed though and we're still spending billions on nuclear weapons that we're never going to use and we're going to have a proper navy again with these aircraft carriers that have been comissioned.

The "Muslim problem" is like the new "Jewish problem" but you don't even need fascist nutters to make you scared about this. We've dealt with terrorists before in the UK. I grew up with stories about bombings in Belfast and that's only really stopped because the government went back on its policy to never negotiate with them.

Maybe at least part of the problem is the language barrier then? How's he supposed to clarify and assuage your worries by email if you only speak pigeon English?

Didn't you say that you've been discussing this all with the guy though anyway? Correct me if I'm wrong but if you contacted him first and are the one doing all of the running (so to speak) does it really make sense to ask him what his intentions towards you are?

Whose idea was this holiday and meeting? You say that you're desperate to meet him and desperate people don't really have a lot of room for dictating what they want. You could scare him off by browbeating him about his intentions and you're already confused about that after emailing for ages, so you may never know unless you actually meet.

I understand that it's a tricky situation because it's not like a normal date and a guy doesn't usually go half way around the world just to have a chat over coffee. You probably feel that if you don't make love with him he won't come back but also that he might not anyway. I would look at it this way though: He's the one prepared to do the traveling to meet you and he may well think that he's punching above his weight with you. The guy's in his forties you said. If I was him I would be concerned that you just have an internet infatuation and that you wouldn't feel the same when we met. It is incredibly flattering though when a young lady takes a shine to a middle aged man and that could explain why he's been so "sweet" to you, without actually saying if he knows if you can be more than friends.

Well, I don't tend to have much luck with conventional dating, so I quite like to get to know them a bit as friends first. I don't act as if I just want to be friends though. They're women and I don't treat them the same way that I would treat a male friend.

The only real difference though is that I don't do much conventional dating and I don't really have any time for stand offish people, so I'll look for someone that's friendly and chilled out enough to just come round for a coffee or whatever, without there being any awkwardness. I don't consider it to be more than friendship until you've been intimate though anyway, so the question is kind of moot.

Don't know you well enough to say if I think you're stupid or not mate but pretending to be stupid is trolling. It can be funny sometimes and I'm going to award you five internets for making me think that you're a tard that actually thought that you had to put "commas" there.

I sometimes have lucid type dreams and I'm aware in them that I am dreaming usually, or that I might be. I had a scarey one recently where I somehow ended up in the middle of nowhere and my dog was electrocuted by a fence and all her fur went white. Then when I went for help these guys said that they would give me a lift in their pickup truck but they turned out to be lunatics and they kept driving through fences. By this point I had realised that it was a dream and managed to wake up and my dog was lying at the bottom of my bed, fine.

Another thing that happened during dreaming recently was that I walked to England and I was sure that I had done that before and I think that I have but only in dreams that I've forgotten. I found that interesting; having a dream life that I can remember properly only when I'm dreaming.

Look. This is the way I see it. I'm about this guy's age and I sometimes get girls like this contacting me on here. I bet she contacted him first and it really isn't the case that he's been pursuing her. If someone from that far away contacts me it's so unlikely to develop into anything more than friendship that I don't entertain ideas about that. She has though and now she's stuck on him and upset over somebody that she's never even met. Supposedly he's sweet talking her but also just saying that he wants to be friends. I don't blame him and his not wanting to talk about a possible relationship doesn't prove anything. It's going too fast when you don't even know how that would work. He doesn't even know if she's not a scammer and that's what scammers do; they act like they already love you and want to be with you when you don't really know each other and have never met.

What is it that you want from this guy? He's not going to fall in love with you if you never meet him. What sort of a relationship do you want? I just don't think that a mature individual would do anything to lead a young girl on in this situation if he hadn't made up his mind if there's any future in it and how does he know anyway that she'll feel the same when she meets him for real? You guys are making him out to be some sort of player when all he's apparently done is be friendly to her. She's the one desperate to meet him but now she's saying that it's no good if he just has a good time over there and she doesn't get a commitment out of him. This is why I don't reply to people from these places.

We don't know where this guy is from but he's from another country and he's met a Philipino girl online and agreed to go for a holiday over there and meet her. Why should he raise her hopes by saying that there might be the chance that it's going to lead to a relationship? He hasn't met her and he hasn't got to know her properly and he just knows that she's a young lady that's besotted by him and that if he says anything about there being a chance of a relationship that's leading her on a bit and a maybe is a yes to someone that just wants to hear yes.

Some people don't allow themselves to get emotionally involved with people that they only know on the internet. What do you expect him to say when he hasn't even met you yet? He's said that he does want to come and meet you and he does know that you have feelings for him. If he was really up to no good he would be more likely to have made you all sorts of promises but he hasn't done that.

If it was me I wouldn't make you any promises either and I would just wait and see how we got on when we met. I certainly wouldn't want to get off the plane to find that you had told your whole family that we were in love and that they were already planning our wedding.