Dating Help vs. Dating Gimmicks

A lot of dating books and information these days promote some sort of dating gimmick that promises to make your dating life suddenly successful and easier than ever. It sells because it sounds great. Dating can be difficult, tedious, confusing and frustrating, so who wouldn't like to find out that there's some easy trick we can do to make it fun and enjoyable.

Unfortunately a lot of the dating advice out there aims to make people appear less desperate, more confident and therefore desirable. There's books that tell women (and men) when to call, when not to call, how soon to call, how long to wait, how long to wait to put out, when to kiss, when not to kiss, how to act somewhat disinterested in a date to build the chase, how to lie about your ultimate goal so you don't scare them off, how to pretend to be hard to get, etc. etc. How do you keep it all straight? That's not good dating advice, these are ploys, deception and trickery (yes kind of like magic). Eventually the real you will emerge and most likely both of you will be unhappy (sometimes this doesn't happen till after marriage). We need to stop with the gimmicky dating advice and start looking at truly helpful advice. Here are some REAL dating advice to get you started.

1. You must be honest about what your dating goal is, but usually not until the second date. Telling a guy that you want to get married and have kids is way too much for the first date. You should be honest, but a first date is just a preliminary introduction to decide if there's a mutual attraction and iscussing your long-term goals is generally not socially acceptable on the first date. However, honesty about your dating goal is critical eventually, typically by the second date. Just looking to get laid? Be honest. Ready for marriage and kids? Be honest. Not sure about what your future holds? Be honest. Waiting until marriage to have sex? Be honest. Ignore all the gimmicky dating advice that tells you to pretend your not looking for something you are, that will eventually end in confusion and disappointment for both.

2. There's a difference between playing hard to get and not being desperate. Playing hard to get is a game, and one that won't end in success. However, being desperate is absolutely not desirable, yet it sometimes is easy to give into desperate behavior even though you're not a desperate person. So learning to reign in our desperate behaviors that stem from irrational thinking is good. Playing hard to get is bad. Desperate behavior might be calling him repetitively, hinting or suggesting a date immediately following the first. It takes time to get to know someone, and although you might like them right away, you still don't know them, so don't rush this process. Let it play out. You're NOT going to lose the right guy because you didn't call him soon enough, or enough times, or you didn't schedule your dates close enough together. If he's the one, it will come to fruition over time, rushing it might just ruin it. So don't play hard to get, but take your time in the dating process and don't succumb to desperate behaviors.

3. There's a fine line between judging a guy too harshly or putting up with a lot of shit because we're trying to excuse the "little things". Often we women ignore red flags because we're so hopeful that this is the one. We've already envisioned this guy in our head being the one, we've envisioned his face at our wedding, in our house and with our kids. So when red flags come up, it's hard to take that face out of the picture. On the other hand, it can also be easy to write a guy off for something ridiculously minor. It take some balance to walk somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. The best thing we can do is to work on our own self-confidence and think about what things we can and can't compromise on so that it comes more naturally to us and we can balance these two extremes.

4. There are tons of great men out there! Yes I know, this goes against everything you've heard and believed. Well it's wrong! As women, we tend to think that if a guy wasn't for us that he's no good. Well, most of the time that's not true. Most of the time our discards are someone elses dream. There's some girl out there who thinks there's no good guys that is going to be head over heels for one of the guys you didn't like, and is going to grow old with him. And when you find your special someone, there will likely be plenty of women in his past who didn't think he was any good (for them) even though he's perfect for you. It doesn't matter what age you are, there are plenty of great guys out there. The world population is roughly even and as a result the single population is roughly even as well. Because for as many guys are married, that many women are married, leaving roughly the same amount of single people. And as many crazy guys are out there as many crazy women are out there as well. Thus there's a plethora of good guys out there looking for a good woman. The other thing we overlook is that women talk about looking more than men do so it seems like there's more of us because we hear it. Single guys don't stand around together at a bar on Friday night talking about how lonely they are, that's not cool! Women also talk at length about their "bad dates" so we start thinking there are lots of bad apples out there cause we hear about it. We don't hear men talking about and equal number of bad dates because men don't sit around together at dinner discussing their last date. They might discuss if they got laid, but it's not cool to discus why she wasn't the perfect companion for him. So don't be fooled, there's plenty of fish in the sea!

5. Stop trying to act confident, self-assured and desirable and start being confident, self-assured and desirable. Take some time to focus on the kind of person you want to be. Make a list of the traits you want in someone else and start figuring out how you can apply those in your life. Find hobbies that you enjoy that keep you entertained. Read and study up on how positive affirmations and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can help your self-esteem. Treat yourself worthy (not necessarily spending money!) like reading a book in a bubble bath. Work on loving yourself. You can fake confidence and desirability all you want, but at some point that facade will crack and the real you will still shine through. Work on the real you to begin with and let everything else naturally fall into place (i.e. attracting a mate).

6. Where can you meet men? This is vital. You need to determine your life passion and goals and meet men who share those. Thus if your passion is animals, join every animal group and find every animal volunteer opportunity you can to meet as many people who share your passion. Do you like money, go to the country club. If you like skiing, join the ski patrol or a ski team or volunteer at a ski race. If you love reading join lots of book groups. Being happy long-term is much easier if you find someone who shares similar life goals and passions. The best place to meet those people is where those passions and interests take place. And think outside the box, don't just join a local group, volunteer for the national organization of that group, or start your own group (meetup.com), start tweeting about it or attend a professional conference for a trade you're interested in.