Ripe Pickins

It’s Friday, and my thoughts are turned to another weekend with few to no plans. Ugh. I’m not sure what’s worse, the soul-sucking drudgery of the work week or the wasted potential of a weekend with no plans. I’ll go to yoga on Saturday morning, so I have a 45-minute stretch to look forward to.

It’s cruddy – last weekend there were three or four things going, and I had to pick and choose. This weekend, sadly, not so much. I guess I’ll turn my thoughts to beer and catching up on Netflix viewing and email reading.

One of my favorite email newsletter topics for the past year or so has been relationships. I read Rory Raye and Christian Carter, who advise the women on what to do, but only with teasers so we’ll fork over the ducats to buy their CD programs. It’s interesting. Carter is all about telling the girlies how to “Catch Him and Keep Him.” To balance my reading, I also read the newsletters for men by David DeAngelo and Bobby Rio, featuring helpful tidbits on how to pick up women just about anywhere, also in teaser fashion so the reader will buy the program. Yes, I’m spying on the enemy. So what?

Here’s what I’ve noticed – first, three out of these four relationship program writers have the lovely alliteration thing going with the name, which makes me wonder if they took pen names. You know, like the writers who publish their romance novels under a pseudonym so as to not dilute the weight and seriousness of their writing careers in nuclear physics or economic theory. Or are those the names given by their parents at birth, and because I lack a cool name with alliteration or a reference to a hopping spot (Rio!) does that mean I can never be a newsletter writer for relationship issues? These are the things that keep me up at night. Ok, not really. I am more likely to be kept awake at night turning lovely phrases in my head that I will not remember in the morning.

The second thing I’ve noticed is that these writers actually have some interesting and valid points (once I weed through the spelling and grammar errors). For example, I have read many times in DeAngelo’s “Double Your Dating” that attraction is not a choice (although I could have told you that one a hundred times over). I have also learned that women tend to view relationships on a timeline (after dating for this amount of time, that landmark event should have happened) and for men, there is no such timetable for falling in love or wanting to be in a committed relationship.

There may not be a timetable for falling in love, but according to Rio, there is a season for scoring a girlfriend and that season is now. Forget about Alfred Lord Tennyson’s lovely and poetic proclamation that, “In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love” (it’s in the poem Locksley Hall, if you really care). According to Bobby Rio of TSB Magazine, “You need to be taking advantage of this PRIME TIME for pulling women off online dating sites. The fact is, no woman wants to be alone for the Holidays... so the single ones are STARVING to meet someone... And we all know that quickest way to score is to get in front of a starving crowd.” (FYI, TSB = The Seduction Bible).

So, single girlfriends of mine, if you really are 'starving' as Rio puts it …. get thee to an online dating site. And single guys, I guess you would be wise to do the same. And if you really want a deep, lasting connection (and not just an arm to cling to at your company Christmas party) I recommend eHarmony, not because I have experience with it, but because I have friends who met on it last year and are getting married in December. Sweet!