Lonesome this Valentine’s? Disillusioned by bar and scene? Beating Soho’s streets, solo, gazing in at all the queer candlelit couples? Try our alternative Top 10 Tips for finding long-term love…

1. Join a gay sports or social club! From rambling to wrestling, from choral singing to classic cars, LGBT sports and social groups are a great way to meet other gay guys with shared interests, well away from the prevalent, pressured smoke-filled, sex-fuelled scene. Sporty stuff’s great for your health too! For clubs and events in London and the UK, sift Circa’s own fab community and events listings, or check out www.gmfa.org.uk/theguide! Or, if shy but into reading, simply hang out at the gay sections of larger bookshops and strike up conversations with guys browsing interesting covers!

2. Volunteer! A great way to meet other people who have more than one thing on their mind – themselves – whilst putting something back into a gay community you at least occasionally get something from! From HIV buddying (www.tht.org.uk) to Switchboard (www.llgs.org.uk), thumb through Circa’s own brill community listings to see what tickles, and get in touch.

3. Campaign! What better way to meet a real hero - whilst helping the cause of global gay rights? Keep apace of gay news by reading your very own Daily Circa and get involved in rights issues that affect you and those around you. Many’s the time true love’s ignited under fire – demos are full of heroes - or romance has bloomed behind bursting barricades. www.stonewall.org.uk; www.petertatchell.net

4. Mix business with pleasure! Join and fully immerse yourself in a gay social professional network club like Circa (www.circa-club.com) – which meets regularly in the flesh in central London, and has thousands upon thousands of other contacts online! Especially useful if you’re looking for an ambitious, high-earning, career-minded type - and more than just a business partner!

5. House party! The latest retro chic. Not vast warehouses on urban fringes! Parties around people’s homes are coming back in vogue. Large bars and clubs are ace; but it’s hard to beat a good old-fashioned house party for meeting, and actually spending good time chatting with friends and, more to the point, friends of friends – in an intimate setting with fewer distractions; and all for less cash! So get back on the domestic circuit fast. Accept every domestic invite you get! Or throw a party yourself!

6. Take Pride! But for the really big annual parties, and a whole day of breezing past, and getting to know, new people: Pride Season is mere months away; so get ‘em in your diary! Buy or borrow a dog to take along with you: never fails! 2009 listings at: www.gaytoz.com

7. Speed date! Intensive get-to-knows! Cram them in! Meet-and-grill as many men as you can probably stomach at these fun, fast and furious events: www.pinkdate.co.uk

8. Date online! As if sifting and filtering out all the thousands of potential business and life partners at Circa (www.circa-club.com) weren’t enough! Europe’s largest serious gay and lesbian dating site, www.gay-PARSHIP.co.uk, now boasts well over 330,000 members, and counting! The unique PARSHIP psychometric compatibility test uses simple questions to gauge the ways people think and interact with others. When matched with someone with the right balance of similar or complementary characteristics, it’s more likely to last!

9. Go celibate (temporarily)! Don’t they say “abstinence makes the heart grow fonder”? And what better way of breaking the “addictions of the flesh” and refocusing the mind than with a healthy, albeit temporary, stint of voluntary celibacy? According to gay abstainers, you save years of time and mountains of dosh not hunting down men. You put megatons of physical and emotional energy thus saved into other more creative interests and wider, deeper friendships. Plus: doesn’t no sex beat bad sex? And: the right man tends to come along when you’re not quite so desperately looking for him.

10. Enter therapy! If you have been unhappily out-of-love for too long for your own liking, or stumbled from one too many stalled relationship to another - and suspect you may be your own main obstacle to a sincerely-sought fulfilling partnership - you might seek advice from a good friend, or even from a professional councillor or therapist (www.pinktherapy.com). Although, you may well also reach the conclusion that you are – in fact – genuinely far happier: as a singleton!

Adrian Gillan