Daily Dating Advice Relationship tips and advice for dating.

…Will do my best to post while traveling.

See below for parts 1-5…

Date Like a Man by Myreah Moore and Jodie Gould contained some good information. I appreciated the fact it went straight to the point, especially in the chapter, “How to Have Sex Like a Man: Sex Tips from Men That You Can’t Live/Date Without,” where they go from the difference between love and lust to frank advice about deep-throating and masturbation. But it is still very rules-based: more planning what to say and when to say it. That feels controlling and unnatural, and doesn’t leave enough room to be yourself.

Finally, I turned to the granddaddy (or grandmother) of them all. I spent about 20 minutes skimming through The Rules by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider, before I became completely overwhelmed. Laying it aside, I remembered that The Weekender had called and left a message. I decided to call him back, breaking Rule 5: “Don’t Call Him and Rarely Return His Calls.” According to the book, if I am “following The Rules religiously, there is no reason to call him.” Being the feisty sort of gal I am, I decided to take my chances and take a walk on the wild side.

I could almost hear the Helen Reddy song “I Am Woman” playing in the background. As I dialed his number there was no heart racing, no butterflies in my stomach and after a few rings he answered, happy to hear my voice. I mentioned that I was breaking “Rule 5” and asked him what he thought about that. “It is absurd. If you never call a guy back he will think I you are not interested and not call you.” Interesting. That’s what I was thinking, too, especially in this age of internet dating and the like.

Hanging up with The Weekender, I realized what I really needed was the Man-O-Pinion. While I have clear ideas, I needed to go straight to the source. I enlisted 8 of my male friends, some of the men I have dated, and a few strangers, for a total of 16 men, to get a wide array of opinions.

As with all of my studies, the sample included men of varying age, race and relationship status. From a variety of dating books, I assembled these “rules” women are told to follow. I presented each man with 10 survey questions, derived from several dating book scenarios, and asked for their frank, honest opinions.

First I gave them a sample from Date Like a Man:
Step #1: Date Him. Do you like the guy? Do you think that you have a lot in common? Go out with him two or three times to see if you click. Let him woo you.

Step #2: Disappear. Make yourself totally unavailable. He’ll call you and get your answering machine. If he drops by your house the blinds will be drawn. Keep him in a state of deprivation for about a week.

Step #3: Reestablish Contact. After a week’s hiatus pick up the phone and pop back into his life. Don’t apologize for your absence or make excuses. Just tell him you’ve been very busy. Then ask him,” What is new with you?”

This goes back to the age-old question: who calls who and when? In my thinking, a whole week is out and out wrong. In my experience, a guy worth being a mate would think it was weird and scary, almost mean. If you went out with someone a few times, had a really good time, and he disappeared, how would you feel? If a man did that to me, I would not want to see him again. A man who is attracted by this kind of manipulative behavior is not a “keeper”. The authors of Date Like a Man say they “learned these steps from men,” but who are these men? The men I surveyed had other ideas.

Sixty-three percent of the test group feel there should be “no rules on how many days to wait,” and agree that the burden of calling rests equally with both the man and the woman, although, as Man #1 responded, “It’s nice to have a girl make the move once in a while. “ Almost all the men surveyed expressed dislike of “playing games, or sending and receiving false messages, like the whole disappearance thing. Either you are interested or not, simple,” Man #13 stated. But there were a few diehard traditionalists in the group: “The man must be the one to make the call two to three days later. If you really like the girl, four days is the best.”

To be continued..

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See below for part 1-4…

A good way to get beyond the advice gurus: begin with a healthy belief in yourself. It is important to always follow your heart and gut, and much more important to do what feels right to you than to do what the media, or other people tell you to do. Throughout the course of my own life’s discovery process, I have mopped up a myriad of tears with countless rolls of Green Forest toilet paper seeking to find my own answers; I have also laughed at myself and enjoyed the journey. We all have the answers inside ourselves, but sometimes it’s hard to sift through the internal and external static to find them. For me the journey has made me the person I am. I embrace it as a positive. What I realize is that it’s more about the journey than the end result. In life, and in relationships, we are constantly learning, changing and evolving. Every end is a new beginning, and when the door hits you on the butt on the way out, a new one will open.

Most of the dating books on today’s market are more concerned with how we behave than what kind of person we are. Why base a relationship on behavior that is not your own? Why pretend to be someone you are not? How long will you be able to keep up a charade like that? And what will happen when you finally start being yourself?

These are the questions the dating books do not answer. As I combed through countless pages of advice, it became even more evident that the answer is to not play by someone else’s “rules,” but truthfully follow your own heart and do what feels right for you. That is my advice. And debunking some of the more outrageous myths about “what men want,” or “how to be a great date,” is an ideal place to start.

In How To Make A Man Fall In Love With You, Tracy Cabot, Ph.D. outlines what she calls “The Love Plan.” It is an approach that she swears by, her method is to attract and keep love. The cover of the book even claims it is “The Fail Proof, Fool Proof Method!” How do you fail proof and fool proof love? She goes on to say that it has worked for her and “everyone else who has tried it.” You cannot force love or attraction.

I read on though I was annoyed that Dr. Cabot would suggest “a plan,” a map for love. While Dr. Cabot did make some good points, much of her plan consists of manipulation and pretense – trying to elicit certain reactions by using what she calls “spells” and positive reinforcement. That feels like game playing to me. I closed the book when I came to the section “Why Indifference Works.” More games. Life is complex. It cannot be broken down to simple games of checkers or chess. Love and life do not fit into black and white squares.

Dr. Cabot’s book is in complete contrast to one I found that offered practical, common-sense advice for women, The Real Rules: How to Find the Right Man for the Real You, by Barbara De Angelis, Ph. D. Real Rule 4 is “Don’t play games.” She goes onto say, “The dictionary defines the word game as a form of play, or sport, a scheme, plan or trick … When love becomes a game, everybody loses.” No one wants to be tricked into love.

To be continued.

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