Principle #8. Things happen – make sure you're there when they do.

Put yourself in a position often enough where the things you want to happen can happen and eventually they probably will. Things happen — make sure you’re there when they do!

It's easy to psych ourselves out of attending any sort of event - a dance, a party given by a friend, a blind date, speed dating – by making up a story in our minds about what we THINK is going to happen - "There probably won't be anyone interesting there," "I never meet anyone," "No-one will be attracted to me because I'm _______," etc.

The fact is, we don't really know what's going to happen - and we never will, unless we show up and give it a try! Most, if not all of us, can look back on our lives and recall times when wonderful, unexpected things DID happen, people WERE attracted to us, we DID have a good time when we took a chance. And things like that can happen again at any time! (Less likely at home in your living room, however, than out in the world.)

One time I was at a dance and saw a woman I'd seen on a few occasions before, standing alone, back to the wall, before the music had begun. I was just about to dig into my just- arrived tofu sandwich, but thought, "Now is my chance," and got up and walked across the dance floor to talk to her.

Now first please understand, this woman was my idea of the embodiment of female pulchritude – as far as I was concerned, one of the most beautiful women in the world – well, my world, anyway. Second, you should know that I rely more on my wits than on my looks to make my way in the world of women, and am definitely on the shy side. I'm not in the habit of even approaching women just based on their looks, and usually wait for some other connection before broaching a conversation.

But, I was trying out a new dating strategy – not planning or worrying about what I was going to say, but just walking up to women, opening my mouth, and seeing what came out. (This is actually the only time I can remember giving that a try, but, with the results I got, I'm surprised I didn't keep doing it!)

As my sandwich aged on its plate, I walked up to her and said – now guys, listen to this opening line very carefully –"Hi!" She gave me a big smile and said, "Hi!"

Within the week I was kissing her neck as she sat on the desk in my office. Our brief affair brought to my attention all the potential relationships I must have missed in my life due to negative self-talk and resulting lack of boldness.

Had I not been at that dance, I would have missed out on one of the most romantic experiences of my life. It would have been easy to run lots of negative scripts in my mind about what was going to happen at that dance – I've been to many others, and it's true – USUALLY nothing like that happens.

Having experienced this and other special evenings like it, I try to be aware of the negative messages I run in my mind before deciding to go, identify them as just fantasies about what I THINK might happen, and realize that I really don't know what's going to happen, or whom I might meet. And, there's only one way I'm going to find out what will happen –and that's to get myself out of the house, attend the event in question, and be ready to act should an opportunity present itself.

As hockey great, Wayne Gretzky once said, "I miss 100% of the shots I don't take. (And, if you've got nothing else, give, "Hi!" a try. I recommend it!)

We'd like to hear about your experiences. What do you tell yourself to get yourself out of the house? Have you had experience with self-rejecting behavior, or times when you were able to transcend negative self-talk? Tell us about your challenges and your successes! Click "Comments," below to see what others have said, and/or to add your comments.

And, if you, like many of us, find yourself between relationships, you can meet single women and men at one of our innovative Bay Area singles events this week. We never leave conversation to chance!(tm) Click to see our schedule: The Meeting Game Salon.

Principle #7. Don't Interview Your Date

In the course of getting to know a new dating partner, there are important details you’ll want to find out — some significant ones earlier, rather than later. Most people don’t like the feeling of being “interviewed” on the first date, however. A good way to get some of the information that’s important to you is to ask your date what their 5-year plan is. If you want to start a family and your date wants to sail around the world, those differences will likely be revealed in their answer to that question.

Some single women and men have indicated they prefer the direct approach – "Why not just come out and ask them what you want to know?" they say. While there's always something to be said for being straightforward, many people on a first date prefer not to be confronted with questions about their interest in having children, what they like to do in bed, what kind of car they drive, or "where do you stand in relation to menopause" (all reported to have been asked by one gender of the other on first dates).

Personally, I prefer the patient, tactful approach to divining the answers to questions of interest, and would prefer to start with topics such as, "Do you have work that you enjoy? (which avoids another of the "qualifying"-type questions of "what kind of work do you do?" Qualifying questions like this can be a surreptitious attempt to determine your socio-economic status. (One time I even had dating candidate ask me about how I "plan to handle retirement" – and she wasn't talking about golf!)

Remember – you're not required to answer every question that's posed to you. A good response to questions you may prefer not to answer – at least early on in a dating relationship – such as those about where you went to school, what kind of work you do, what kind of car you drive, and any other inquiries you may like to defer for a time – is, "I'm not sure I know you well enough to discuss that quite yet." – accompanied by a sincere smile, of course!

I also like, "How do you like to spend your time?" as an alternative to "What kind of work do you do?" This gives your dating partner an opportunity to speak about something about which they're enthusiastic – be it work or play. "What's the best thing that happened to you today?" One of my favorites that's good for almost any topic – work, travel, or any other reported experience, is, "What surprised you about ______?"

Have you been confronted with questions you didn't want to answer, early on in the process of getting to know someone? How did you handle them? How would you handle them if you had it to do over? How do you find out what you want to know from your dating partners on the first, or first few dates?

We'd like to hear about your experiences. Click "Comments," below to see what others have said, and/or to add your comments.

And, if you, like many of us, find yourself between relationships, you can meet single women and men at one of our innovative Bay Area singles events this week. We never leave conversation to chance!(tm) Click to see our schedule: The Meeting Game Salon.

Principle #6. Nurture your partner; set your limits; teach your partner how to treat you.

Men: In order to properly nurture your partner, to come from a position of strength and power, you must first be able to set your limits — to set and maintain appropriate boundaries. (“Boundaries protect us by keeping our definition of ourselves separate from the ideas others have about us.” — Mapping the Terrain of the Heart by Stephen Goldbart and David Wallin).

In other words, if what someone else thinks about you becomes more important to you than your feelings about yourself, you'll find getting your needs met in your relationship more difficult than it needs to be, and your partner increasingly less respectful of you and less satisfied with you.

Women: In order to nurture your partner without feeling resentful, you must be aware of your limits — and not extend yourself beyond them. Negotiate at the time of the transaction if there’s something you want or expect in return. Don’t keep a "secret deal” going — don’t do things for your partner for which you expect repayment, unless you negotiate the repayment at the time the “debt” is incurred.

Be mindful that members of each gender sometimes have a secret deal going on — men sometimes expecting sexual favors early in a "relationship" in return for money they've spent, for instance. Many women, having been brought up in a culture in which getting their needs met directly was, to say the least, not encouraged, may do things for a man in the course of their relationship for which he is then, unbeknownst to him, “indebted."

If and when a man is presented with such a “bill” it’s an opportunity to practice nurturing his partner, setting his limits, and teaching his partner how to treat him.

One man, having attended one too many boring – and regularly recurring – afternoon barbecues with the in-laws, in response to the latest invitation told his wife he didn't feel like going, whereupon he was met with her insistence that he accompany her, and presented with a long list of all the things she had done for him – to her way of thinking, running up a "debt" which was apparently payable on demand (a debt he didn't even know he had!).

Without the ability to set his boundaries in a healthy and flexible manner, this man may have been subjected to feeling guilty that, yes his wife did do lots of nice things for him, and maybe he should really go to the event even though he didn't want to (and even though he knew that she didn't really enjoy those gatherings, either!).

A man with healthy, flexible boundaries may have mustered the ability to respond in a loving manner, "Sweetheart, I'm sorry to disappoint you this time. I'm happy to visit your family occasionally, but not this weekend. I didn't know you were doing all those wonderful things for me in exchange for some expectations you had about me. I hope you'll let me know when you do things like that for me in the future so we can both be clear that you're doing me a favor for which you expect to be repaid." Or, some other variation on this basic, “I’m sorry, sweetheart; I didn’t understand that when you did ____ you were expecting me to _____. I wish you'd have asked me at the time if that’s a trade I was willing to make.”)

(Then, of course, if he wanted to have sex with his wife that week, he'd have got up and gone to the barbecue!)

This "secret score keeping" often presents itself in people of either gender who feel uncomfortable with pursuing their own agendas in a more direct fashion; though men in our society are encouraged to get their needs met directly and women have often been discouraged from pursuing that course.

Many, if not most, women have encountered men who have their own secret deal going – one of the most common (in both senses of the word) being, "I'll buy you dinner and you sleep with me." This works best, of course, on women who are uncomfortable setting their boundaries.

A woman with healthy, flexible boundaries might respond to an insistent man, "It's been a lovely evening. Thanks again for dinner. Good night!" Whereas a woman without healthy boundaries may be more likely to give in to whatever psychological games such a predatory man might employ. (Thankfully all men aren't like that, are they? Are they...?)

Teach Your Partner How to Treat You
Simply put, if you let people walk all over you, many of them will. Setting your boundaries early lets people know you are someone who doesn't put up with that type of treatment. Treat yourself and your needs with respect and you'll command respect from others – and attract them into your life. (And if you lose some people along the way who don't consider your needs to be just as important as theirs, well, you won't have lost much.)

From who pays, to negotiating the safe sex talk, to asking for a pre-nup, boundaries come into play. Best to get started early in the relationship – once people get used to mistreating you they really get upset when you insist they stop!

Have you encountered dates or relationship partners that have a "Secret Deal" going on? Do you have an experience where you recall having to set your boundaries? We'd like to hear about your experiences. Click "Comments," below to see what others have said, and/or to add your comments. (Check out John Bradshaw's Bradshaw: On the Family for an eye-opening, life-transforming book on boundaries.)

And, if you, like many of us, find yourself between relationships, you can meet single women and men at one of our innovative Bay Area singles events this week. We never leave conversation to chance!(tm) Click to see our schedule: The Meeting Game Salon.

Principle #5. The best way to impress a woman

Men: The best way to impress a woman is to be yourself. Don’t brag. Let her get to know all the wonderful things about you gradually, as they come up in conversation. You’ll get farther by asking her questions about herself than you will by telling her about you. If she doesn’t like YOU, the things you own and the things you’ve done are ultimately not going to make a difference.

Of course, we're speaking here about a relationship with a woman of quality. There are always people who are playing a different game entirely – women who are willing to trade their beauty and charm for the benefits that come from associating with a wealthy man, and vice versa.

That being said, as male animals, we're genetically programmed to put on a display to attract our mates. The male peacock's tail has one purpose and one purpose only – to attract a female peacock. Other than that, it's actually a burden to the survival of the male – heavy and unwieldy (not to mention all the time spent grooming it before a date!). Still it survives.

Even those of us past likely reproductive age are still governed by the same forces that guided us in our choice of mates when we were looking to reproduce. Men look for women who appear fertile, and women look for men who can support a brood and are likely to be around through the child rearing process.

(One of the reasons men and women have so much trouble creating and maintaining modern relationships, of course, is that, evolutionarily speaking, men's best strategy is to spread their seed as widely as possible, while a woman's best strategy is to find one man who can help care for her and her child/ren.)

I still say the old advertising aphorism, "don't tell me, show me," yields the best results. Go ahead – wear the Rolex; drive the BMW – just don't talk about them. Just as you can demonstrate yourself to be a person with class by your actions, but if you call yourself "classy," (in a personal ad, for instance, where that phrase is often found), you are by definition, not.

If you're a wonderful person, the woman in whom you're interested will figure it out, just by being around you. And, she's more likely to arrive at that conclusion if, when you're with her, you take a larger interest in her than you do in yourself.

Now, to find someone in whom you might take such an interest! If you, like many of us, find yourself between relationships, you can meet single women and men at one of our innovative Bay Area singles events this week. We never leave conversation to chance!(tm) Click to see our schedule: The Meeting Game Salon.

Men: How do you go about letting a women get to know all the wonderful things about you? Women: What are the things that impress you about a man upon a first or second meeting?

Click "Comments," below to see what others have said, and/or to add your comments.

Principle #4. Women: Offer to pay your share on the first date.

This is your first values test — an opportunity to display your generosity of spirit. If he takes you to dinner, assume you’ll split the check when it comes. If he declines when you proffer your share – as he should – you pay for the movie, the next dinner out, or make him dinner at home. (Debts like this keep for about a week or two, after which time they go into a “Resentment” file. “Would you like some help with that?” when the check comes is not considered by most men to be a sincere offer, but rather, a test.) Don’t trade sex for dinner or other trinkets or gratuities — either by design, or out of a misplaced sense of obligation. No obligation is incurred by spending time with a man, no matter how much money he may have spent on you.

That being said, while some men are quite traditional, and really do prefer to pay for the woman, from my experience in leading our dating discussion group, the number of men who prefer to pay all the time, without some sort of reciprocation from their date, is few and far between. Bottom line, all men want to feel appreciated, and, in this era of women in the workplace, having made demands on men to give up many male privileges over the past thirty or forty years, many men feel resentful when women revert to expecting them to pay every time you go out. (Read Warren Farrell's The Myth of Male Power ("The women's movement has done a wonderful job of freeing women from sex roles, but no one did the same for men.") and Why Men Earn More, for a fascinating discussion of men and women in the workplace.

Some modern women really do prefer to pay for themselves, of course. Match an independent feminist with a traditional man and watch them argue over the check! The idea here is that who pays is one of the first ways men and women send subliminal signals to each other. Frequently, if a man wants to sleep with a woman, he'll be happy to pay for the date. If he's not interested he's less likely to pay. Many women report being more willing to let a man pay if they are interested in getting to know a man further, than if they are not.

Bottom line, if he wants to sleep with her, he'll buy. If she thinks she may want to sleep with him, she'll let him buy. Like others in the animal kingdom, we have elaborate courtship rituals that signal interest and intent. Paying the check is one such ritual – a ritual filled with danger and possibility; the danger of playing your cards poorly and sending a signal you didn't intend to send to your dating partner, or playing your cards well and advancing the relationship to the next step.

Our goal in this forum – and even more effectively in our dating discussion group – is to take control of the signals we're sending and learn to better decipher the signals we're getting. We trade these signals to advance our dating agendas, and to protect both our own feelings and those of our dating partners. (One result of participating in elaborate signaling to each other is to avoid having to reject someone to their face. The, "Sorry but I'm busy," response to an invitation is a rudimentary example.)

Prefer, as some men and women have stated, not to play these games? Unfortunately, if you're dating, the game is being played and you're a part of it. You can ignore it, or pretend that it's not going on, or you can learn to control the signals you're sending and interpret the signals that are being sent to you – and improve your results!

But first, you've got to meet someone with whom to trade signals! If you, like many of us, find yourself between relationships, you can meet single women and men at one of our innovative Bay Area singles events this week. We never leave conversation to chance!(tm) Click to see our schedule: The Meeting Game Salon.

See Principle #3 for the man's financial responsibility on the first date.

How do you handle who pays on the first – and subsequent dates? (Click "Comments," below to see what others have said, and/or to add your comments.)

Principle #3. The man pays for the first date, period.

Men: The man pays for the first date, period. Not doing so is, according to one woman, failing to successfully negotiate a “failure opportunity.” This is your first “values test” — a test of your generosity of spirit.

If you never want to see her again, go ahead and accept her gracious offer to split the check, if proffered, or suggest, “Shall we just split this?” (unless, of course, your share of the bill was more than 50%.) Take her somewhere you can afford to go. I suggest coffee, rather than dinner, for a first date, and in that case, guys, just let your generosity of spirit shine.

One man reports that, when the check comes on a first date, he asks the woman he's with how she'd like them to handle the payment. He says it's one of his "screening devices." I say that, if you have more dating candidates than you can handle, this is an excellent way to eliminate many of them!

While there are probably some women out there, somewhere, who appreciate this approach, the women who have participated in our dating discussion group overwhelmingly report a different preference.

Personally, if I were a single woman, I'd be looking for a man who is capable of taking charge (but doesn't always insist on doing so), and has the generosity of spirit that would allow him to extend himself enough to buy a gal a cup of coffee or a dinner; and who's smart enough to know to take the lead, instead of creating a financial negotiation on the first date. I don't know – call me old fashioned!

See Principle #4 for the woman's financial responsibility on the first date – and more about this, our most enduringly controversial dating topic.

How do you handle who pays on the first – and subsequent dates? (Click "Comments," below to see what others have said, and/or to add your comments.)

If you, like many of us, find yourself between relationships, you can meet single women and men at one of our innovative Bay Area singles events this week. We never leave conversation to chance!(tm) Click to see our schedule: The Meeting Game Salon.

Principle #2. Eventually, we all have to deal with the issue of settling.

"I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch; he said to me why do you ask for so much? I saw a woman leaning in her open door; she said to me why not ask for more?" – Leonard Cohen

Eventually, we all have to deal with the issue of settling; we have to weigh what we have against the possibility of something better. There is a difference between the settling which comes from a mindset of scarcity, as in "this is the best I'm going to get, so I better grab it,” vs. the settling which comes from maturity, as in, "there will always be someone hotter, and the person I am with has their flaws – as do we all – but I love them anyway and could be very happy with this person.” In other words, pretty darn good.

A woman who attended many of our events told us a story of having brought a girlfriend along once, who had just broken up with her boyfriend. She came to the door, took one look inside, and, referring to her relationship with her boyfriend, said to herself, "We can work this out;" then turned immediately around and went home.

Now we get a normal cross-section of attractive, presentable, well-dressed, professional single women and men at our events, and this is no bump on them. But this person, when faced with the prospect of all one has to go through to find a new partner, realized that what she had with her current boyfriend was actually pretty good – and worth holding onto.

Found someone you're attracted to, who's fun to spend time with, and who treats you well? Is there a feeling of comfort and excitement about them? Is s/he worthy of your trust? When you've spent a Saturday night together and you're hanging out on Sunday afternoon, do you feel like you really need to be alone, or do you feel like having dinner together? Does s/he know how to ask for what s/he wants? What happens if s/he doesn't always get it?

How many relationship candidates have you ever met who could rack up a good score on all the above variables? Would you pass up a person who could? Would you settle for less?

What questions do you ask yourself when you're considering settling down or moving on?

(Click "Comments," below to see what others have said, and/or to add your comments.)

If you, like a lot of us, find yourself between relationships, you can meet single women and men at one of our innovative Bay Area singles events this week. We never leave conversation to chance!(tm) Click to see our schedule: The Meeting Game Salon.