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Three books to guide you past the pitfalls of dating
REVIEWS BY LINDA STANKARD
By Dr. Georgia Witkin Broadway, $19.95 192 pages ISBN 0767920503
By Mary Corbett and Sheila Corbett Kihne Adams Media, $12.95 256 pages ISBN 1593374003
If you, or someone you know, has the dating game blues, 50 Boyfriends Worse Than Yours by Justin Racz can lighten things up with its oh-so-apropos photos of 50 boyfriend types and their hilarious accompanying bios. For example, there's the "Tortured Artist," who's "very sweet and thoughtful when the inner demons and voices in his head subside." His place is "cluttered with mannequins, dolls, paint, love letters, mason jars filled with his own tears, and unpaid bills," and though one of his "benefits" is being a "generous gift giver during courtship," one of his "drawbacks" is that those gifts include "Popsicle sticks glued together." Other boyfriends not on the A-list include Mister "Sensitive Tattoo Man," "Better Looking Than You," "Roommate Turned Boyfriend," and "Man with Cats." Hey, wait! That's who I'm dating!
By Justin Racz Bloomsbury, $14.95 108 pages ISBN 1596910569
Linda Stankard writes from Nanuet, New York.
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Being happily single is wonderful. Many of my long-married women friends talk wistfully of their single days—evenings spent with a stack of movies, a glass of wine and a huge bowl of popcorn—no real cooking, no one to answer to, and no one to nix their choice of "French with English subtitles" in favor of something with more action. Even while searching for a soul mate, the ability to savor that solitary state is important. In her uplifting, boldly pro-woman guide to dating, It's Not You, It's Him: The Zero-Tolerance Approach to Dating Dr. Georgia Witkin tells readers, "If you love who you are and are happy with yourself, then don't change a thing. . . . There's nothing wrong with you and nothing about you that you should change just to meet a guy." An assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at New York's Mount Sinai Medical Center, Witkin tells her readers, "Once you start assuming that you are perfectly loveable just the way you are, everything will change. . . . You'll start to look at each new man through your eyes instead of looking at yourself through his." She adds emphatically: "Most of all, don't apologize for who you are. Men don't apologize for anything. They don't apologize for being overweight or balding, dressing like a slob or being single. Take a note and take a lesson." But Witkin isn't "anti-relationship"—in fact, she promotes a realistic, tolerant approach, in which women trade "the myth of perfection" for "the math of probabilities." As she so aptly puts it, "A perfect match doesn't exist; the man who loves you does." We think single women will adore Witkin's no-nonsense approach.
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If you've had enough of reveling in your single state and marriage is on your mind, you'll need The List: 7 Ways to Tell If He's Going to Marry You—In 30 Days or Less! by Mary Corbett and Sheila Corbett Kihne. These two sisters (both married, with children) lay out a tough-love, seven-point guide to help women decide if the man in question is a "keeper" or a cull. The sisters contend that when a man's "alarm" has sounded, he will take seven specific actions in fairly swift succession in order to secure the woman he wants. These are: 1) He'll make the first move. 2) He'll call her within 24-48 hours to set up a first date. 3) He'll make the first date easy and fun. 4) He'll call her within 24 hours to set up subsequent dates. 5) He'll want to talk to her every day and want to spend all his free time with her. 6) He'll demonstrate unconditional loyalty. 7) He'll talk about marrying her in concrete terms and he'll propose—or will let her know his intentions. (Pretty specific, huh? Almost scary!) Each item on the list gets an explanatory chapter with case studies, exceptions and clarifications, along with a "Wrap-Up" at the end with insights like this one pertaining to #5: "If a man doesn't want to spend all of his free time with you, it means there has been a False Alarm. It is hard to believe after getting this far on The List that things aren't going to work out. But if he won't give you his time, he won't give you a ring." Ouch. Sad, but almost certainly true.
Misery loves company