“I can’t believe I fell for another jerk!”
I was sitting in a café in Georgetown having breakfast with my best friend, Adison. On that particular morning she had dragged me out of bed to talk about her most recent relationship, which, like many before, was headed downhill fast. Before I could even order a cup of coffee, she declared that her latest would-be boyfriend, Gavin, was the offspring of a female canine and then proceeded to give me the play-by-play of their relationship.
“He never calls when he says he will. He acts like he likes me one minute, but then I don’t hear from him for days. I am just so fed up with men and their games!”
I listened, as good friends do, as Adison vented her frustrations. She rambled on about Gavin’s commitment phobia, how his hot and cold behavior drove her up the wall, and how the next time she saw him, she was going to give him a piece of her mind. But somewhere between the words jerk and player, I realized that this most recent relationship disaster sounded a lot like her last one. In fact, when I thought about it, it seemed like getting dumped was becoming a pattern for her.
As Adison was about to call this guy a dog for the tenth time, I suddenly realized something: maybe it wasn’t such a coincidence that all the guys she dated turned out to be jerks. Maybe there was an actual reason for it. It did seem a little odd that every guy she liked drove her crazy and eventually ended up missing in action, especially since they were all so different. Yet somehow she kept getting the same result. Then, like a ton of bricks, it finally hit me. I knew what was happening. There was only one common denominator in all of Adison’s relationships, and it wasn’t the men.
“Adison,” I said. “Do you ever think maybe it’s not him, it’s you?”
Adison’s jaw dropped. As soon as the words left my mouth, I cringed and waited for her reaction. I was supposed to be her friend. I was supposed to be on her side. I was supposed to call this guy a selfish bastard, not bruise her already damaged ego. In fact, I was just about to recant my statement when she said, “Really? You think I’m making him act this way?”
Up until that moment I truly believed that Adison and I had just been picking the wrong guys. Whenever our relationships got rocky, we would blame the guy for being insensitive, unavailable, or just plain shady. We truly believed that most men were frogs, and we were just going to have to kiss a lot of them to find our prince. But now I had seen the light. Men weren’t the cause of all our headaches—we were. If a guy didn’t act exactly the way we wanted him to, we would freak out, overreact, and drive him away.
Take Adison’s new relationship, for example. This guy, Gavin, did like her. There was definitely a mutual attraction when they began dating. However, Adison started assuming that they were in a relationship after only a couple of weeks, whereas Gavin was still simply getting to know her. She switched into full girlfriend mode before she and Gavin had agreed to be exclusive. So when she started coming on strong, calling a lot, and making all-weekend plans with him, he started to back off.
I was no angel either. I had been just as guilty of overestimated expectations. Yet I continually wondered why men who started off interested in me seemed to always stall on taking that final step toward commitment. Hot and cold were the only two temperaments I’d ever seen from a boyfriend. In fact, the guy I was currently dating seemed to only like me on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
Adison and I spent the next hour dissecting all of our previous relationships. In almost every instance, we realized the guys we had thought were jerks were really not so bad after all. We just blamed them for the fact that our relationships had gone awry. We had come up with every excuse in the book for why they behaved badly, when really, we just didn’t know how to act with someone we liked. It didn’t matter that we were smart, attractive girls. The way we behaved completely turned guys off. What an epiphany! I had to laugh at all the crazy mistakes we had made throughout the years. Looking back, I wondered how I could have been so oblivious.
Suddenly, Adison became panic-stricken.
“Oh my God, Jess, do you know what this means?” She shrieked. “I have been dumped three times in the last year, and I am now realizing it’s because of something I’m doing. I’m turning guys off. All this time I thought I was just dating the wrong kind of person. It never occurred to me that I might be bad at dating. Now what am I supposed to do?”
Good question. At the time, I didn’t have the answer. Adison and I were fresh out of college and just beginning our lives. If the past was any sort of indicator of what our future would bring, I saw us sitting home a lot of nights, sobbing into a pint of Chunky Monkey. How would we turn things around? Who had the answers? All of our friends back then were suffering from their own dating dilemmas, and most of the books at the time only explained the “why” behind a guy’s behavior and not what to do about it. The more I thought about it, the more I feared for the worse. If something didn’t change, we might be alone for the rest of our lives.
Ten years after that pivotal conversation I was sitting on my couch wondering why my cell phone had suddenly lost service. It was the great snowstorm of 2009, and I was waiting for my boyfriend, Erik, to shovel us out of the driveway so that we could attend a family Christmas party. I had met Erik the year before while out with some friends and became immediately smitten with him. He was all the things I wanted in a man. He was smart, handsome, and apparently quite handy in inclement weather. I was in love, and for the first time in my life, I believed I had found the person I was meant to be with.
That day Erik joked that like me, my phone was probably just allergic to the cold, but I would find out later that he had purposely hijacked my SIM card so that no one would call me and accidentally ruin the upcoming surprise.
We had finally made our way out of the driveway when Erik suddenly realized he had left his wallet inside.
“I’ll be right back,” he said as he tore off back into the house.
I sat there still confounded as to why I could not make or take any calls. Erik’s phone worked just fine, why not mine? As I sat there pondering, time ticked on. After what felt like an eternity, Erik poked his head out of the house and motioned for me to come in and join the missing wallet search party.
I climbed up the front stairs quickly and flung the door open, ready to tear the house apart one couch cushion at a time. In my hurried state, I nearly knocked over a lit candle on the floor. What was that doing there? I looked up to see many more candles and flowers placed beautifully around the living room, and Erik standing there in the middle of it all. He was smiling at me, and I suddenly realized what was happening. The moment I had always dreamed of was finally here. The man I loved was going to ask me to marry him.
As he took my hand and got down on one knee, Erik promised to love me, support me, and spend every day trying to make me happy. He slipped the most beautiful ring on my finger and asked me to spend the rest of my life with him. I, of course, said yes.
Turns out, the Christmas party we were headed to was not actually a Christmas party at all. It was an engagement party. All of our family and friends were there to congratulate us on our big news. Erik had dismantled my cell phone because the party had been temporarily postponed due to bad weather, and he didn’t want to risk someone calling because they assumed he had already popped the question.
When we arrived at the party, Adison ran up to me and hugged me tight.
“The moment I met him, I knew he was the one for you!” she said. “You are so lucky you found each other.”
I gave my friend a smile. “Now you know as well as I do, luck was only half of it.”
The Girl I Used to Be
The truth was that relying solely on luck had kept me single and in the wrong relationships for many years. In college, I had an on-and-off-again relationship with a guy named Shawn. I really liked him, and when we started dating again my junior year, I thought we were finally on the same page. I asked him to my sorority formal, which happened to fall on my twenty-first birthday. I was very excited that I would be spending such a big night with a guy I really liked. On top of that, all my friends would be there to celebrate. However, two days before my birthday, he called to tell me he couldn’t go with me anymore. The girl he said he “really liked” had just asked him to go to her formal on the same night. I was devastated. I felt rejected. I never wanted to see him again. Unfortunately, he was my next door neighbor.
Another time I fell hard for a Sigma Chi who lived upstairs from me. He would come over all the time and we’d eat, watch TV, and make out. We never defined our relationship, but since we hung out so much, I figured there was no need. He was my boyfriend, as far as I was concerned. Then one day I overheard a couple of girls on the quad talking about him. I listened in and learned that he had been pining away for one of their cheerleader friends who finally decided to go out with him. The next time I saw him, he was holding hands with C-H-R-I-S-S-Y from the squad.
Then there was Danny. I dated Danny for eleven months. I call that time period the Crash of ’99. I was head over heels for him. Funny thing was, at first he chased me. He wanted to take me out and I kept turning him down. He called and pursued relentlessly. Eventually I caved in and went out with him. After seeing him a few times after that, I was hooked. The tables were turned, and now I was the one pining after him while he scheduled me in between rounds of golf. My entire week revolved around Danny. If he wanted to hang out, I dropped everything and ran over. I never knew when I was going to see him again, so I took every chance I got. I stopped making plans with friends because I didn’t want to be somewhere that I couldn’t leave in case he called. It was a disastrous relationship. I was absolutely powerless, and I didn’t know how to regain control. So eventually, after many tears, I finally left Danny. He had a new girlfriend three days after we broke up.
So as you can see, I’ve had my fair share of sad stories. Even after my “It’s not him, it’s you” epiphany, I still had a number of boy problems and was nowhere even close to getting married. Realizing that I didn’t know how to date was only the beginning. I knew that I had a problem—I just didn’t know how to fix it.
Fortunately, shortly after college I stumbled upon the formula for dating success. I figured out how to get men interested, stay in control of the relationship, and secure a commitment. My love life started gaining momentum, and guys who had never noticed me before began asking me out. Many of them were discussing exclusivity after a matter of weeks, and several were even talking about marriage. I couldn’t believe the change. I was the same person I had always been, but now I was getting the response I had always wanted. The days of being dumped, stood up, cheated on, or left in limbo were over. I no longer had to settle for the few guys that showed interest in me. If I wanted to meet someone, I had a foolproof approach that allowed me to do just that. And, thankfully, it all paid off the night I first saw my husband.
Without my newfound dating strategy, I would have surely blown it with him. He was exactly the man I had been searching for my whole life, and with that kind of pressure, who knows what sort of I Love Lucy shenanigans I would have pulled to get him to like me. But luckily I knew how to approach him, how to show him I was interested without being too eager, and how to keep my crazy self from face-stalking my way right out of the relationship.
So what’s my secret? How did I finagle a fairy-tale ending from a series of sob stories? It’s all laid out right here in this book. And what exactly is the difference between this book and all the others out there? Simple. This book is not based on opinion or secondhand advice. It will not just help you understand men and why they do the things they do. It will teach you exactly how to gain control of your love life and make you effective in dating, regardless of who you are or what you look like.
Now be prepared. This book presents some rather unorthodox advice. But that’s a good thing. How many other dating books have you read that have done absolutely nothing for you? This book is different. It won’t be like The Rules. It does not contain outdated advice passed down from someone’s grandmother. And it’s not like He’s Just Not That into You, because honestly, by the time you’re done reading this book, he will be. No longer will you sit around with your girlfriends analyzing text messages and waiting for phone calls. You want to land a boyfriend? You want to get married? Well, you can. I am going to show you how to use proven techniques to get the guy you want.
The Secret to My Dating Success
Many years back, when I had just graduated from college, I was trying to figure out what to do with my life. Flipping through the Washington Post one day, I saw an ad for a sales job at a local marketing firm. I had never done sales before, and frankly, the thought conjured up visions of used-car dealers. But time was slipping by, and my funds were dwindling, so I went for an interview. I was immediately sent into the field on a ride-along with an established female sales rep. She was my age, sharp, pretty, and had a phenomenal attitude. As we pulled up to an office park in Bethesda, Maryland, I asked her who we were going to see. She replied, “I have no idea. I never set appointments.”
Now I was completely curious. She was going to walk in, unannounced, and try to meet with the business owner? How was she going to do that? I watched her as she walked into the first business cold—without calling first, without a contact name—and within minutes was meeting with the man in charge. I was amazed at how she approached her potential customers with no warning and soon had them eating out of her hand. She closed three customers that day. None of them knew we were coming, but they all signed a contract before we left. She created a relationship out of thin air and made it seem so easy to do. Even the customers that didn’t buy that day were laughing and smiling when we left. By the end of the day she had made three hundred dollars in commissions. She was so confident, so in control, so powerful. I was sold. I wanted to learn everything she knew.
After I got the job, I immediately began training. It was all so foreign to me—I felt like a fish out of water. But I was amazed at all that I was learning, and the more I practiced my sales techniques, the more comfortable and natural they became. After a few weeks, I was closing my own deals, and after only a few months, I noticed a big change in my attitude. I felt more confident, more secure, more logical. It wasn’t that I had just learned to sell a product. I now knew how to get people interested in what I had to say. I knew the best way to get them to like me. I figured out how to win them over.
Then one night after work, I decided to meet up with a guy I had just started seeing. I liked him, but I didn’t know how much he liked me. Prior to working in sales, I was always nervous before I went out with someone new. This time was different. I wasn’t worried about what he was going to say or how I would respond. I felt totally at ease and completely sure of myself.
Suddenly it hit me.
All the sales techniques that I had learned were applicable to dating! In fact, dating itself was nothing more than a big, fat sale. Salespeople don’t just sell products; first and foremost, they sell themselves. There was no difference between winning over a customer and winning over a man. The same strategy applied. Every time I went on a date, all I was doing was trying to sell myself. However, until I landed my job and learned the art of closing the deal, I’d been doing it all wrong. That evening, armed with my secret strategy, it wasn’t long before my date was asking when he could see me again.
Spreading the Word
Once I figured out the secret to successful dating, I shared it with everyone. Soon all my friends were using it to meet men and develop their own relationships. I remained in sales for the next several years, and even opened my own sales training business, but I quickly discovered that I wanted to teach what I had learned to as many women as possible. So I left the industry and opened my own date coaching practice. It was a risk, but what started with just four clients quickly grew to more than a hundred. Suddenly, girls that had never been approached before were being chased down in grocery stores. Ladies that could not so much as leave a toothbrush at a guy’s apartment were being asked to move in. Women that had given up all hope of finding that one great guy were finally making their wedding plans.
Over the last several years I’ve worked with a bevy of clients. I’ve worked with men and women, both young and old. Some are truly unaware that something they are doing or saying is giving off the wrong impression. Others fear being alone so much that it impairs their good judgment. The rest simply think they are dating the right way because no one has told them otherwise.
Regardless of the reason, there are a lot of smart, funny, beautiful women out there who continually get dumped, not because of who they are but because of what they do. The truth is that it doesn’t matter how great of a person you are. You could have a double MBA, play the piano like Alicia Keys, and have legs like Stacy Keibler. If you say or do the wrong thing in the beginning stages of dating, you are impacting a man’s perception of you. And his perception (as far as he’s concerned) is reality. If you’ve ever wondered how a guy didn’t see how fabulous you are, it’s because you showed him a variety of negatives that ultimately, in his mind, override your good qualities. If a guy senses that you are desperate, needy, overly emotional, unnecessarily angry, or insecure, he will end his pursuit before really getting to know you. Therefore, it is imperative to learn how to present yourself appropriately so that doesn’t happen.
Let’s be honest. No one goes to school to learn how to date. There are no classes that teach how to appropriately build a relationship with someone. Most of us are just going off our own instinct, or we are doing what we have learned from our parents or peers. The problem with that is that while parents are well intentioned, they dated in a different era. And while all your friends may be following a certain protocol, how many of them are actually in happy, healthy relationships? When asking for advice, you always have to consider your source.
There has only been one time in my life when I actively studied and participated in the fundamentals of relationship building. If you have ever been in the industry, you know as well as I do that sales is the art of creating relationships. It’s a craft dedicated to stirring interest in people. It’s a process that focuses on how to read them, relate to them, and secure a lasting commitment with them. Doesn’t that sound like something that could help you with men? It certainly helped me.
Start Strong, Finish Strong
I know what you must be thinking. There is no way you can sell someone on loving you. And you’re right. You can’t use this strategy to manipulate someone into loving you. But what you can do is make sure you keep seeing a guy long enough for him to get to know who you really are.
The beginning, when the ground rules are being established, is a critical time in any relationship because it ultimately determines the direction the relationship will take. To finish strong, you have to start strong. It’s what most women have missed, and salespeople have learned: a rewarding relationship, just like a sale, begins at hello.
Most women I know say or do something early in the relationship that ruins their chances of ever being taken seriously. Even if the relationship carries on for months, or years, the fact that they didn’t handle themselves well in the beginning often dooms the outcome. But now you can learn how to date effectively so that you better your chances of a healthy relationship from the very start. You can master the skills needed to peak interest. You can gain the knowledge needed in order to present yourself in the most flattering light, and you can understand the “dance” that happens when two people begin dating, and you can learn to lead it.
Where You Lose Him
Salespeople know if they lose a deal, it’s because they did something wrong—no one else! Sure, you will hear some of them complain that the customer was too difficult or the territory was too tough, but a good salesperson can tell very quickly who is a good prospect and who is not. A lousy salesperson continues to waste their time on a customer whose chances of buying are slim to none. Either way, the fact remains: when dating, all success and failure comes from you and how you handle yourself.
You will learn in the following pages that just because someone is initially attracted to you does not guarantee that his interest will be sustained over time. At any point in a relationship, you can lose a guy’s interest by either using bad judgment or making a poorly thought-out move. Some women lose men after sex. Some lose men on date three. And some women, whether they know it or not, lose men at hello.
If you aren’t having any luck in love, whether your obstacle is attracting men, holding on to them, or getting them to commit, your luck is about to change. If you aren’t getting the results that you want, you are doing something wrong. We must find out what that something is and change it. What I am about to teach you isn’t rocket science—it’s just smart salesmanship. And this book will teach you the tricks of the trade so that you will never lose him again.