How to Date Men

There is something I want to share with you that I am not proud of. I've kept it concealed for many months, but during an evening of feeling clever, I decided my secret would make for good blog material. So here it is: I own a book titled How To Date Men. My mother gave it to me for Christmas. It was not on my wish list. Needless to say, I was offended, because I have never really thought that I would be bad at dating. I am just really good at acting like a complete goon around boys I like, which results in them staying away and not touching me with a twenty foot pole. Minus that time I was in the wave pool, almost drowned, and the lifeguard extended a twelve foot pole to me for assistance. For some reason, my mother thought a pink book with a picture of cupid on the cover would help me with my game.

If the book had been turquoise and featured a typewriter graphic, I may have been more interested. As it was, I shelved the book immediately by cover color, meaning, it sat next to my other pink books. You know, the other titles my mom had given me like You and Your Period and Cinderella.

In a moment of inspiration, I grabbed the dating book, opened a random page, and decided to add personal commentary to it for entertainment value. So friends, I bring to you what I hope to make a weekly feature: "Joelle's Thoughts on How To Date Men."

Feature one. Prompted from page 78 from the chapter "I'll pick you up at seven."

The text reads "Warning! What you are not obligated to do after the first date is invite him in. This opens up a lot of complications. You have to worry about your roommates, your cats, and the piles of stuff strewn about your place when you were getting ready...a person can tell a lot--and may jump to the wrong conclusions--by the things a person owns."

The last line really stuck out to me because it reminded me of a book I read called Snoop: what your stuff says about you. I read this book to hone up my detective skills and to be able to recognize when someone could potentially be a murderer. I found it quite useful and revealing.

If it were up to me, I totally would want to peek inside the living room of whomever I just went on a date with. I would rather discover the telling signs about him while I am still skeptical of the whole relationship. For example, if I noticed that on the ledge of his kitchen cabinets he had empty alcohol bottles lined up, I would know that he is still embracing his college past and has poor decorating taste. If, however, he has an old typewriter sitting in his living room, I would think that our ribs probably shared the same bone marrow.

If I went on a first date with you, I probably would not invite you into my house just because I wouldn't want you to think I like you too much. This is also the reason I rarely talk to the guys I like; I don't want them to think I like them too much. My strategy usually works to the advantage of the other girls hanging around aforementioned guy.

But I have nothing to hide in my home visit. Unannounced visits are definitely the most revealing, because you will get to see that my house is reasonably orderly on a daily basis. You can deduce all you want from my ownership of disguise glasses, wigs, globes, maps, and choice of towels. In fact, you don't even have to come into my house to do so, considering that I posted pictures of all the rooms in my place when I did my home tour feature (if you are curious, go to March 2011 in The Vault, or you can begin the tour here).

While How To Date Men author Janis Spindel advises against letting a man see your place after the first date, she says nothing about peering into the windows of his home or car to find clues concerning his personal habits. Cleanliness is just one tiny aspect that you will discover. If you take my advice and use the pages of How To Date Men for the creation of a paper mâché piñata and instead begin reading Snoop: what your stuff says about you, I believe you will enter into your next relationship a bit more cautiously.