I taught myself how to write various things, including songs.
I'd suggest for a rank beginner, that you don't make your challenge any harder that you need to, to get started.

Basically, you can decide that you want to write to an existing format you like (blues, rap, etc), and then try to get your words to fit into the format you like, or you can come from the side of things where you start from the words you want to say, and then let the words generate the song.

One of the methods I use for my own stuff, is to begin by writing the first line that comes to mind, or with the core thing I want the song to say. Then I SPEAK those words out loud, and repeat them, listening carefully to how my voice naturally rises and falls, due to how I happen to speak naturally.

That provides the beginning of the melody, and of the pacing of the song to be. By only slightly exaggerating the natural rise and fall of how words are spoken (such as, ones voice tends to rise in pitch at the end of questions, and to fall in pitch at the end of statements), a writer can "sing talk" the words to get the melody started.

From there, the chords to back up the song can be found in various ways (assuming you want a melodic song), including picking out the notes of the melody and playing them all at once, or looking up chords in a chord book or reference, and trying each one out until you like the way it sounds. That part depends on what your other musical skills are.

If you are JUST a singer, and want someone else to play your music, you'll need a partner who can play, and who has the patience to put up with you saying "no, that's not right, try something murkier" or whatever.

This is all based on the songs I grew up enjoying the most. When I set out to write my own, I started by figuring out why the songs I liked, sounded as natural as they did. And that's how I noticed that with a lot of popular songs, the melody comes directly from the normal way people say the phrase.

Simple example in time with the season: "All I Want For Christmas Is You."

That phrase itself, as sung (especially by Mariah Carey) is EXACTLY as anyone would say it as a spoken phrase.

What sometimes gets me going, are the unintended messages that commercial writers include, and hapless business owners then pay to put out.

Like the series of commercials a little while back for a sugar coated cereal, where the kid eating it goes to school and sees a piece of cereal on his shoulder, telling him the answers to teachers questions.

Like any REAL parent would want their child to eat something that makes them incapable of telling reality from a drug-induced hallucination.

I think what you are describing from a current day, internet-centric perspective, is the same basic frustration most people looking for compatible mates have struggled with forever.

That is, that people who are still in the process of learning about themselves, and are therefore changing in their understanding of everything...have only STATIC DESCRIPTIONS of themselves and of each other, to use as "sorting" or "sifting" tools.

This was true throughout the existence of humans. Before the internet, and before the age of using written or spoken words to try to define ourselves and each other, we faced the same problem.

If we were all multi-dimensional beings, simultaneously living many lives all at once, and we didn't have death to concern us, we could all experiment together entirely freely. Draw NO conclusions about others before meeting and interacting for a long enough time to tell the difference between who each of us WISHES we were, and who we ACTUALLY are.

But we are all finite beings, with only one moment and one existence to work with to do whatever we might. That singular fact, means that there are all sorts of things about life that we just have to accept. Limitations of time and space and distance and understanding.

And that includes that we have to accept that sometimes we'll guess wrong, about ourselves or about each other. We'll turn away from people who might have been wonderful with us, and lose time chasing people who would never work out.

Since being upset about that inherent limitation within the nature of existence uses up even more time that we can't get back, it's best to notice it, recognize it, and then accept it and do our best in spite of everything.

Mm, yeah, that's what was being said during the lead up to the 2008 collapse.

The problem is always in WHY the economy appears to be doing well.

For example, during the 1950's, the American economy seemed to be going gangbusters, and people liked to attribute it to how inherently wonderful we are. But in the 1960's and 1970's, that all came apart, because the REASON why the fifties was so good for us, was because the rest of the industrial world had been bombed into dust during WW2. When they finished repairing and rebuilding, twenty years later, American products lost a lot of their exportability, just due to basic normal peacetime competition.

The economy SEEMED to be going great before the 2008 collapse, because there was a TREMENDOUS amount of FAKE WEALTH being traded back and forth, and worse, used as collateral for more loans.

Right now, there SEEMS to be wealth expansion going on, but a lot of it is being fueled by the huge tax cuts, which are not being paid for. That's what made the 1980's expansion seem so good, and also made it collapse.

When REAL wealth is being created, an economy can expand in a sustainable way. When only FAKE wealth is being created, it always falls apart.

I just wish that the season caused me to become more desirable.

A tenfold increase in the number of women looking for a handsome prince, won't help us peasants.

Actually, there are a lot more ways to interpret what you are asking about here, than you may realize.

For example, one kind of "desire women they cannot have," is where a guy gets a crush on someone who they can't possibly get involved with (due to their being happily married to someone else, for example), but stick with the crush anyway...because it's SAFE. When you KNOW you can't have someone, you can have all the fun of mooning and pining for them, without ever having to risk them being disappointed in you, or risk having the rest of your life disrupted in any way.

The idea that a guy is chasing or waiting for someone who YOU don't think they can possibly "get," is an entirely unrelated situation.

And then there are pure psychology things in this, such as men or women THINKING that they really want someone who they can't be with (again, for logical reasons), who actually are fighting an unrelated personal battle: they go after someone who they SHOULD NOT go after, because they are angry at someone else entirely, and are chasing THAT person, basically to thumb their nose at the perceived "authority" who told them not to.

Those films aren't old!!!

The Sea Hawk! Errol Flynn! 1940!

Gunga Din! Cary Grant! 1939!

African Queen! Bogart and Hepburn! 1951!!

I suggest you consider things from other peoples point of view with this. I know people myself, who have gone into some sort of hibernation or another, and been offline (to the site anyway) for long periods of time, only to return, every bit as earnest about seeking a mate as they were to begin with.

Stuff happens. Life happens. Accidents happen. How would you like it if you were thrown by a horse, and couldn't reach the site for several months, and learned that you had to start all over again from zero?

Oh and one thing I can tell you for certain, the site would NOT move faster if all temporarily idle profiles were deleted or blocked as you want. Profiles are NOT what slows things down.

Well said. It's among the most difficult saying to use for all humans.

In fact, I suspect that a GREAT deal of human literature and vocabulary was the direct or indirect result of people trying to AVOID saying those exact words, but still express positive emotional or intellectual interest in someone else.

I want to take what everyone put in, including the article from Psychology Today, and ESPECIALLY what RockGnome mentioned, and try to draw it all together.

We have a few things that we commonly refer to as discrete emotions, but which I have come to see are actually not at all.

Jealousy is one of these (guilt is another).

The reason why jealousy feels as it does, AND why it causes as much confusion and resentment as it can, is because it is NOT an emotion, in and of itself. It is a confusion and conflation of emotion (mostly fear, but often combined with anger)that has been turned inside out or twisted around back on itself, due to the person also being unsure of how to react.

It most commonly arises, or is said to exist, in situations where someone's mate is behaving in a manner that the other did not expect, and which they worry (or fear) means that the relationship is in jeopardy.

That jeopardy isn't always straightforward either. In fact, the confusion that causes what would be straight fear or anger to be turned INTO what we call jealousy, is often due to the person experiencing it being uncertain of their own sense of how things SHOULD be.

In other words, someone who has (as the OP specified at the beginning) never been betrayed by another person can very much experience jealousy in a situation where their mate behaves in a way that simply doesn't match what they expected, and which they aren't sure whether they should object to or not.

That is what I think RockGnome was talking about.

If you are in a relationship, and have been enjoying that your mate and you flirt back and forth as a part of it, the first time you witness your mate performing the same friendly flirts with someone else, and start to recognize that they don'T ONLY flirt with you, the confused fear that gets called jealousy is likely to result. You THOUGHT that the flirts from your mate, were direct indications that you were special to them. When you see that they also do the same things with strangers and other friends, you suddenly understand that YOU WERE WRONG. Their flirts with you were NOT indications of love or dedication.

And this is where things like guilt and jealousy screw themselves up even more: because most reasonably intelligent people DO know that THEY are the one who made the mistake in thinking the flirts meant other than they did, they don't feel at ease in putting a stop to their mates behavior, nor are they at all happy with it. So they stuff the fear and anger inside themselves, very uncomfortably, while they try to come to a new understanding of their situation, and that's VERY unpleasant. And it often leads quickly to an explosion of confused anger or resentment.

By the way, I strongly disagree with anyone who proclaims that all jealousy is a sign of immaturity. It most certainly is NOT. If anything, believing that all jealousy is inherently "immature," indicates that someone hasn't looked closely at jealousy themselves yet, and has "maturing" of understanding to go through themselves.

As the article says, the sensation of jealousy, as with all emotions and emotion-linked reactions, is an INDICATOR that something need to be looked at.

I suggest using the modern dashboard "Engine Light" as a simile.

Most cars still just have an Engine Light that comes on, and tells you NOTHING by itself. It just means "something's wrong." You need to hook up a reader and get the associated CODE from the car's computer, then do some more research to figure out why your car might say THAT.

Same thing with jealousy or guilt. Do NOT ignore it, do NOT declare that it's proof of "immaturity." Look directly at what you feel, and allow yourself to sort out the fear from the expectations from the resentment from the fantasies, and then address the REAL detailed concerns, one at a time.

In many cases, many of us find, unfortunately, that our feeling of jealousy was an indication that our mate was NOT compatible with us after all; that they did NOT really love us, they only liked or enjoyed some aspects of how we lived.

And so the next step to take, after identifying what our jealousy actually translated to, is that we depart from the relationship. But because we DID do the work to figure OUT what was and wasn't really true, we feel much better about ourselves, and often, about the person who we then leave behind.

And sometimes, as I think Riverspirit alluded to, we discover that our jealousy IS over something from our past, which we have already mostly resolved, and we can allow our fears to drain away and we can stay with the new person as they are.

When it comes to whatever you need to do to seek a mate, it's best not to think of it as "wasting time."

Think of it as "investing time."

And as with all investing, it takes time and usually mistakes, to learn how to do it wisely.

In every serious business place that I am aware of, sexual flirting at work is a fireable offense. It's against the rules in several areas, not just potential sexual harassment.

And no, I find extramarital dalliances to be reprehensible on multiple levels, and would NEVER come anywhere NEAR participation in such.

You want to know the real reasons why this perception and partial reality keeps coming up?

I warn you, the real answers are complicated, subtle, and VERY boring.

It has to do with a mix of the complex nature of normal human development (including parent-child antagonism), cultural factors, and even a bit of politics.

It's not as simple as "bad boys are more honest" or "more aggressive."

It's not as simple as "nice guys finish last."

It's not as simple as "Girls just want to have fun too."

It's not even as simple as "there are different definitions of what a bad boy is."

I think your title got cut off. I see a lot of that here. It makes it seem as though you were saying that it's cruel to move on, but I'm sure you were trying to say it's cruel to dismiss people by telling them to move on, as though it's a simple matter to do so.

Anyway. I completely agree with your analysis of why it's a LOT harder to find a mate, even in a supposedly "target rich" environment, than some realize. Especially for someone who is more thoughtful and detailed about what they want or need in a mate.

But I don't think that a shortage of new potential mates is any reason NOT to move on.

In my thinking, the idea of "moving on" really only comes up when one recognizes that an existing relationship is functionally over. It's as logical and necessary as accepting that the car that was stolen and turned into junk, rather than staring at the empty driveway and wishing it were never gone.

But the fact that such a person NEEDS to move on, certainly doesn't make it easy to do so. It is a bit rude to tell someone that giving up on love altogether is a simply matter of wiping something off with a tissue and getting back to the party, and worse, it's flat out false.

In all situations of lost love, there are lessons each person has to learn, and they are rarely simple and obvious lessons. Each person will have different amounts of time, and different additional experiences that they have to go through, in order to learn them.

So "moving on" isn't always entirely within our individual control. Only WILLINGNESS to do so, is up to us.

mmm. Well, I don't know. I see lots of repeated words and phrases from people on dating sites. I think it has more to do with the way most humans behave overall.

Mainly, most people learn to express themselves by copying each other. Especially when they are in a new situation, whatever they think the official or common "way to talk" is, they will follow.

Therefore, lots of people use the words "real" and "genuine" and "serious," because they see lots of other people using those words, and because their own vocabulary isn't large enough to come up with their own. It's a snowball effect.

Remember when you were a kid in school and your English teacher kept saying to write in your own words? This is why. When you copy everyone else, everyone tends to assume you don't know, or really mean what you are saying.

I think a certain amount of changing behavior is more than normal for would be couples, it's downright necessary. Even the most basic and common "dating" process is an entirely artificial construct that almost everyone discards at the point where the relationship is declared "official." Especially not if people start living together. When you come home to the same house or apartment, you aren't going to sit down to coffee and text your mate while they are sitting there at the same table.

And yes, I did go through at least an acting out of being told I needed to act like "we were dating again," as one of my now ex-wife's complaints about me. What that meant wasn't really clear, since as I said, it was impractical to act like I was living across town.

Perhaps a lot of it isn't the details of behavior, so much as it is the sensation that the person who is disappointed has about how they feel. One thing I've noticed about most of the things that people complain about in relationships, comes down to the fact that when someone actively WANTS to be with someone else, pretty much anything they do seems charming and romantic; but when they really don't actively want them anymore, they'll start to deduce that the exact same behaviors now mean bad things.

By definition, gods are SUPERNATURAL.

That is a very old word, which is commonly misunderstood these days. What it actually means when something is said to be SUPERNATURAL, is that it is "above nature;" and understanding that, depends on one recognizing the old definition of "nature," which has also changed over time. It used to refer to "the logical, mechanical world of normal perceptions," and not exclusively to non-human constructs as it does now.

Thus, gods being SUPERNATURAL, means that they are defined as NOT SUBJECT TO LOGICAL OR PHYSICAL ANALYSIS OR PROOF.

Which is a long and careful way of saying that NO ONE CAN PROVE OR DISPROVE THE EXISTENCE OR NON-EXISTENCE OF SOMETHING THAT BY DEFINITION, IS OUTSIDE OF THE RULES OF PROOF AND DISPROOF.

With all individual facts, it is CONTEXT that gives meaning.

Someone seen carefully washing a bloody butcher knife in a sink, can sound sinister by itself...unless you know the CONTEXT, which is that the person is a professional cook, and the sink is in a Steak restaurant.

For these two imaginary situations, there's no CONTEXT to provide a reason to react at all.

I remember that "no remote control for the tv" was why some people had children at all: make a small replica of yourself that responds to shouts and threats, who will crawl to the TV and turn the knobs for you.

I remember how the first remote controls had no batteries, because they were actually made with little tuning forks and tiny hammers.

In addition to my being inherently rebellious, I've also had experience after experience that has shown me that this social interaction and love stuff is more nuanced than most people seem to recognize.

Anyway, having been searching for a mate throughout the Great Transition from Before Internet to After Internet, I know that there's no difference between getting an "online crush," and getting an "offline crush" on someone. A crush is a crush is a crush, no matter what else you might call it, and regardless of the exact details of how it comes about.

People can think they've fallen in love with someone else for all sorts of reasons. Before the internet, instead of falling for a well written profile and a photo, people would fall for someone based on how they dressed, what car they drove, how they walked, speech patterns, foreign accents, and on and on. All that the online stuff changed, was that people can be further away and still allow others to see them (virtually).

People have always been prone to what you might call "Instant Fantasies" about other people. When those fantasies end up working out well, people claim that they experienced "love at first sight." When the fantasies don't prove true at all, many people claim to have been actively and purposely deceived by the other person.

I suggest that the thing to do isn't to make TOO many rules for yourself, rather just increase your awareness of what you are doing inside your own head. It's common to HOPE that when someone is pleasing in one aspect of socializing, that they'll be equally pleasing in all ways, but that's actually rare. No need to construct complicated sets of procedures and tests. Just keep your eyes on what you ACTUALLY like about the person, and watch out for jumping to larger conclusions.