Women spend nearly three years of their lives getting ready to go out, according to a recent survey by Nephria beauty brand.

Before a big night out, women are said to spend 22 minutes showering and shaving their legs, seven minutes moisturizing and applying fake tan, 23 minutes drying and styling their hair, and 14 minutes on makeup and six minutes getting dressed.

That comes to an impressive one hour and and 12 minutes for each night out. Add to that 40 minutes preparing for work in the morning, and aggregate that over a typical lifetime, and you arrive at two years and nine months twirling in front of a mirror and rummaging through a handbag before daring to set foot outside the house.

Men are not let off, either. They spend three months of their lives waiting for wives and girlfriends to get ready for a date, which translates into 17 minutes and 25 seconds waiting for each night out.

Men also spend an average of one hour and two minutes outside changing rooms in stores while the significant other makes more life-changing decisions.

They could, of course, sit down in the lotus posture and use the time to meditate, greeting their lady love with a beatific smile and an indestructible tranquility.

Don’t hold your breath.

The dating scene can be rough at any age, but for those starting out for a second time after divorce the prospect of beginning to date can be both exciting and daunting. Set-ups through friends and casual acquaintances might provide a pool of potential dates to choose from. But if you’ve ever summed up a blind date by saying to a friend “He was a Neanderthal”, turns out you might be right. Scientists recently uncovered evidence that Neanderthal and modern humans interbred.

Busy work schedules and a reluctance to go the way of the “bar scene” have more and more people turning to dating services, especially Internet services. What better way to screen potential dates and get to test compatibility before meeting than corresponding online? But a story in the news this week, points out the ease with which someone can appear to be something he’s not. A Philadelphia man posed as a doctor, an astronaut and a spy when corresponding with women he met through a dating service. He is now charged with having used date-rape drugs to sexually assault 10 women he met online.

Wading in the dating pool before diving into the deep end is probably the best advice. If you consider online dating, make sure the company is reputable and find out as much about potential matches as possible. You might have to forego some of the flashier types - it’s always possible an international spy wouldn’t need to use an internet dating service to meet women.

Increasingly, women in midlife are experiencing divorce and surprisingly, about 66% of midlife divorces are intitiated by the woman. Boomer women are more independent than women of their mother’s generation, often having worked in careers for much of their adult life. The children are grown or mostly grown and although they may have thought about divorce for up to ten years, it is often as they approach their fifth decade that women finally decide to end an unsatisfying marriage.

Getting back into the dating scene is something else altogether. Loneliness is a great fear for women facing divorce in midlife, but many felt lonely during their years of marriage and soon begin to enjoy their new, independent lives. Women tend to have a circle of close friends, and this assuages the loneliness. Still, at some point, both men and women after divorce will consider dating and perhaps, remarriage.

The good news is that according to a survey done by the AARP, most are finding love and happiness after divorce.

During the throes of a difficult divorce, it’s easy to assume that love will never resurface. But it does. The survey found that more than 75 percent of women in their 50s enjoyed a serious, exclusive relationship after their divorce—often within two years. And 81 percent of men in their 50s did the same. In fact, 26 percent of all respondents were dating before their divorce was final.

Read more about the survey at the AARP website.