A great laugh on a lazy Friday…

ZombieHarmony.

Have an amazing weekend.

Evan

I am noticing a trend in men who I write to or men who write to me online. They are leaving their phone numbers and when I respond with here’s my number, "I’ll be home Monday evening", they just email me back leaving their number again and say "call me". I remember you said it was up to them to call, should I just write them off if they don’t call me or take the first step?  I have tried going ahead and calling a couple and it worked out OK but I really didn’t like the way it made me feel. Is there a protocol that if you are the one that starts communications you should be the first one to call? A couple of guys that did this I wasn’t that excited about I just dropped and they never called. What’s this all about?

Carol

Dear Carol,

If a guy wants to meet with you, but can’t take the effort to pick up the phone, he clearly doesn’t want to meet you that bad.

But there’s more to it than that, which is why I chose to answer your question this week.

Now, to all our readers, Carol is a private client of mine, and, to be honest, a favorite. She’s in her early 60’s, a tough age for a single woman, but she doesn’t let it get her down. She has a can-do attitude, a great sense of humor, and a healthy perspective on this whole dating thing.

When we were working together on the phone, she had great success and lots of dating options. She was also bombarded by men’s phone numbers, so I gave her a technique to redirect them in a positive way.

Any man who is serious about you can pick up the phone to show it.

If a guy offers his phone number, but you want him to call you, you have to give him a playful counteroffer – one in which he feels encouraged, not rejected.

Dear Fred,

Thanks for the email. Sounds like you have big plans this weekend with your daughter. Let me know if you’re looking for a good restaurant in the Berkeley area.

Anyway, I’m flattered that you offered your number and very much look forward to speaking to you. But, call me traditional – I’d like it even more if you called me. My number is 555-1212 and I’ll be home after 8pm on Thursday night. Look forward to hearing from you then.

Carol

Thus Fred gets what he wants AND Carol gets what she wants. He’s not being rejected. He’s being complimented and encouraged to continue his advances. All Carol asks is for him to make a further investment in her. And she makes it real easy for him by warmly and confidently giving him a window to call. Fred’s job, at that point, is to either call her or to give her another time he can call her. If he ignores her email, she has her answer. Any man who is serious about you can pick up the phone to show it. …

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Your FREE 18 page eBook is now available, with fresh perspectives on the most important questions you’ll face in dating, including: 

Why Figuring Out What You Need Is More Important Than Chasing What You Want

How to Date Multiple People at the Same Time

How to Keep Perspective When You’re Looking for Love

Why Speaking Your Mind on a Date Isn’t Always the Best Policy

How to Read Between the Lines in an Online Dating Profile

How to Have a Relationship Discussion That Works

How Being Picky Might Keep You Single Forever

To acquire your copy of 7 Secrets for Dating Success, click on the link below, or cut and paste it into your browser: http://www.evanmarckatz.com/newsletter.html. Oh, and by the way, by downloading the free eBook, you will also get a subscription to my free newsletter with more empowering articles about dating and relationships.  

Enjoy!

Your friend,

Evan

Was at Coachella Music Festival this past weekend. Catching up on work before my big vacation with the girlfriend. Will try to crank out some more blog posts before I go. But first…

Check out Chemistry.com’s Blog, “The Great Mate Debate”. Sorta catchy title. But what makes it really worthwhile is that they sought out the opinions of five relationship experts not named Evan:

Helen Fisher, the mastermind behind Chemistry.com
Dan Savage, the superstar sex advice columnist
Wendy Shalit, who calls herself the Modesty Maverick
Ed Young, pastor and founder of Ed Young TV
and Greg and Amiira Behrendt of He’s Just Not That Into fame

It will probably come as little surprise as to which of these pundits have a similar take as I do. Actually, I take that back. I think most of them give really sound, commonsense advice, although some are a little funnier/blunter than others.

Check it out and decide for yourself.

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No, not really. But in John Tierney’s continued analysis of dating behavior, he cites some interesting studies that suggest that women are far less open to dating men of other races than vice versa.

Black women were the most averse to interracial dating, Asian women were the most open to it, and Asian men didn’t fare all that well.

I’m not going to hypothesize why - after all, I’m a dating coach, not a social scientiest - but this very much corresponds with what I’ve heard from clients.

With one exception. I’m a bit surprised at men’s openness to interracial dating. While I’ve personally dated women across the racial spectrum, I’ve only had a handful of clients who ever expressed preferences for women of other races. Then again, the demographics of my clients are probably a bit skewed towards upper-middle class white people.

Any readers with interracial dating experience care to weigh in?

Money quote:The researchers found that most women speed daters said yes (meaning they’d like to see a man again after the four-minute speed date) less often to men of another race than they did to men of their own race. Here’s how much less interested they were in the other races, as compared with their enthusiasm for men of their own race:

African-American women said yes about 30 percent less often to Hispanic men; about 45 percent less often to white men; about 65 percent less often to Asian men.

White women said yes about 30 percent less often to black or Hispanic men, and about 65 percent less often to Asian men.

Hispanic women said yes about 20 percent less often to black or white men, and 50 percent less often to Asian men.

Asian women didn’t discriminate much by race (except for showing a very slight preference for Asian men over black or Hispanic men).

Click here to read the whole article:

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Finding silver in the silver singles set

Baby boomers are the fastest-growing demographic

By Heidi Dawley
Apr 10, 2007

When it comes to online dating, one would think it a world dominated by the young, web-savvy folks in their 20s or 30s looking for love and the mates of their lives.

There’s a lot to that. The young do very much dominate online dating. Yet increasingly dating sites report a surge in older people, what they call silver singles, folks in the 50-plus set. Indeed, they say it’s now their fastest-growing demographic.

And no surprise, it’s also the most lucrative. Dating sites report that plus-50s are willing to spend more money in their search for love.

Click here to read the full article:

===============

50% of my clients are over the age of 45.

And it makes sense.

Your friends are married. Dating at work is tricky. Bars have lost their appeal. Online dating, while flawed, presents a terrific option for busy adults to put themselves out there.

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John Tierney of the New York Times reports about a study that I cited last year, in which the follies of shallow online daters are dissected for the world to see. To his credit, because he’s a Times columnist, he dug up a study I hadn’t seen before, covering the behaviors of speed daters, who, not surprisingly, are even MORE shallow.Among the selected highlights:

Women who speed date are selected by half the men.
Men who speed date are selected by one-third of the women.

Money quote: “Women were not only pickier than men, but also more realistic about their own appeal in the dating market. Correctly divining that men put a premium on looks, the more attractive women set a higher bar for their partners than less attractive women did. But the men set about the same bar for their partners no matter what they looked like themselves or how successful they were professionally.”

You mean below average men actually think they have a shot at at above average women? Really? Who knew?

But guys aren’t the only ones to be single-minded about their preferences.

Ordinary looking men whose picture is in the median in attractiveness would have to make $143,000 more than a guy in the 90th percentile in order to have the same success. Similarly, a 5′ 6″ man would have to make $183,000 more than a 6′0″ man if he wanted to level the playing field.

Finally, fewer than 1 percent of online daters rated themselves as having “less than average looks”.

Who says that people lack self-esteem?

For more on these fascinating studies, click here:

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(from The Chicago Tribune)

Dating, offline and online, isn’t easy for anyone. But imagine if you were disabled.

Just south of Joliet, Ill., 54-year-old Suzie VanDyke struggles with a painful muscle disease called fibromyalgia. Sometimes, she feels like her neck, shoulders and legs are on fire. When the pain flares up, she’s in bed for days at a time.

For 15 years, VanDyke has dealt with fibromyalgia. She tried dating but eventually gave up on it.

“When I would tell people I have this disorder,” VanDyke said, “they’d push me aside. I wouldn’t get a call again. It’s just too much rejection.” The big dating Web sites weren’t any help, either.

“I don’t know any other way to say this,” she explained sheepishly, “but those guys are just looking for sex. That’s not something I’m looking for. I’m looking for a committed relationship.”

Dating4Disabled.com is the site that Ms. VanDyke used to find her husband. It caters to singles with multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, spina bifida, cystic fibrosis, stroke recovery, hearing and sight impairment, brain injuries, paralysis, amputation, polio, arthritis, learning disabilities, epilepsy, depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder. A number of people identify themselves as “not disabled.”

A very important niche, ably filled.

Click here to read more:

Click here to go to Dating4Disabled.com

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The women who appear in Web ads for the dating site True.com almost certainly do not need to look online for a date.The buxom and often barely dressed models, posing next to slogans like “It’s nice to be naughty,” are plastered across the Internet these days, and are hard to avoid on the social networking site MySpace.

In part because of its provocative ads, True.com, based in Irving, Tex., has seemingly come out of nowhere to become one of the most visited sites in the $700 million-a-year online dating industry, attracting 3.8 million people last month.

True’s rise has been controversial. The company has riled competitors like Match.com and Yahoo Personals, which say that True’s lowbrow advertisements clash with its high-minded lobbying and legal efforts. True, which conducts criminal background checks on its subscribers, is the primary force behind a two-year-old campaign to get state legislatures to require that social Web sites prominently disclose whether or not they perform such checks.

I’m not sure I can say anything about True that hasn’t been said before. Unlike sites like eHarmony and Match, it’s apparent that True doesn’t care one bit about the well-being of its members. True has proven, time and again, its willingness to take the low road in its cynical advertising by assuming the worst of people. Cheesy sex-oriented ads? Check. Warnings about felons that lurk on dating sites? Check. And what you’re left with is a site with really no identity apart from being the scourge of the dating industry. If you’re gonna be a sex site, be AdultFriendFinder or SexSearch. If you’re gonna be a clean site for relationship oriented people, be eHarmony or PerfectMatch. But with True’s pure mission statement and its sexed-up advertising, what consumers are left with is positively nothing. tt seems that True found out what many have discovered before - that pandering to the lowest common denominator is a much better moneymaker than providing safety. Too bad.

Read the full story here:

YOUR THOUGHTS?

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According to a new dating survey by Internet dating site yesnomayB.com, only 2% of women and zero per cent of men rate their friends’ opinion as having any influence on who they date. Instead, the study reveals that singletons value their own first impressions far more. A staggering 78% of males and more than half (56%) of women seem to make up their minds within the first five minutes of meeting someone. (39% of men claim to make a decision in the first 5 seconds!)

What’s more, we also believe that our first impression is correct. An overwhelming 71% of male participants, and 57% of female participants, said their first impressions mostly stand the test of time.

“In those first few seconds that somebody looks at you in a restaurant, bar or a photograph on a website, they’re only seeing a glimpse of you; but to them, that represents everything they know about you. This is all they have to work with, so it’s important to make sure that glimpse truly represents who you are,” says Amanda Tsinonis, co-founder of yesnomayB.com. The dating survey was conducted by yesnomayB.com with a sample of 1,000 singles.

Other results of the survey showed that the size of your bank balance is the least attractive trait when it comes to online dating. Just 2% believed money makes the best first impression, compared to nearly half (42%) of respondents that put personality in the number one slot and 22% voting for sense of humour.

The survey also found that an overwhelming 82% of women would be far happier to settle for a good relationship with lukewarm sex, while almost half of all men (45%) would happily stay in a cold relationship if it came packaged with good sex.
——————————————-The sex results aren’t that surprising, nor are the money results. People like to think they’re less shallow than they really are. I am, surprised, however, at the lack of sway that friends had over people’s decision-making. I guess this would explain the phenomenon of everyone hating their friend’s boyfriend, and not telling her until they broke up.

Your Thoughts?

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