Tess's Lonely Hearts Club

I took inventory recently of my bookshelf and I was amused (depressed?) to see the number of books I’ve purchased on the subject of love and dating.

One book, with the embarrassing title of How to Make Anyone Fall in Love With You provided some really good stuff. Here’s what I learned from this book:

The All-Important First Impression Everybody knows that first impressions are crucial. And since you never know when your path will be crossing with your victim--er, your true love--you want to make sure you spruce yourself up every time you leave the house. Don’t be tempted to schlump off to the post office or the bank in your sweats, with your hair and face looking like a scrambled egg.

Cheating Death is the Best Date for Making Love Bloom Better than a simple dinner/movie date is one in which actually surviving the date is not a given. Studies show that the chemicals released into the brain when our life is threatened are similar to those released when we fall in love. So similar in fact that we can’t really tell the difference. Getting your date to feel like she’s in love is the first step to actually getting her there.

The Art of the Compliment There’s an art to paying compliments that bring about feelings of love. Clumsy compliments can make you seem insincere or desperate or retarded. The trick is to pay subtle verbal compliments, while letting your eyes do the heavy hitting. Your eyes should be expressive, with large pupils, intense eye contact, barely able to drag themselves away from her supreme countenance. Subtle verbal compliments would be something like "It’s a long hike but you look like you can handle it." or "As bright as you are, you would have seen it coming a mile away." Save the really big verbal compliments for maximum impact later on.

Don’t Try Dating Out of Your League This piece of advice struck me as the most likely cause for the majority of lonely hearts. Especially for men. As competitive as men are, they want to go for the hot chick that every other man is going for as well.

It’s no surprise that we all have a market value in the meat market of love. Your value is a combination of a handful of attributes: looks, status, money, intelligence, charm, etc. Studies show that successful relationships occur between people who are relatively equal in value. When someone marries or dates out of their league, chances are very high that they will not be as happy as they think they will.

This is because both partners in a couple will subconsciously try to even out the relationship. If the girl is hot and the guy is ugly but rich, an equity balance is created. Each person is getting something. But if one person is much better looking, smarter and more successful than the other, he will subconsciously attempt to create balance by withholding things such as affection, respect and other things needed in a healthy relationship.

While it is possible to fool your victim into thinking that your market value is higher than it really is, you’d be a lot happier if you set your sights on someone who brings little more to the table than you do.

As I said, this is especially true for men. Every lonely man I know is alone because he wants what every other man wants: a young, thin beautiful woman with brains and charm who is a demon between the sheets.

So make a fair assessment of your own market value and try to select your dates from the same pool of prospects.