by John Young
Warning: this article discusses mature subject matter that is inappropriate for children.
Having had over 500 first dates within a three year period, I have had a more extensive dating life than anyone I know. The overwhelming preponderance of those ladies never got a second date for a wide variety of reasons. A friend and member of EAU, knowing of my experience in the realm, passed me the book Have Him at Hello by Rachel Greenwald for my opinions and analysis. Before reading this book, I certainly had my doubts about what a Jewish woman from New York could possibly have to say that could help a white woman’s dating life, but having read it my overall impression is positive and I believe it could indeed be helpful.
The author is a matchmaker with over 750 marriages to her credit. That’s no small feat. Her predominant clients are quite naturally cosmopolitan women, usually over 30 or 35, trying desperately to get a husband before the biological clock runs down. Her milieu is disproportionately Jewish, disproportionately upper and upper middle class, and disproportionately cosmopolitan. Because of this, I cannot unreservedly recommend this book because it implicitly carries certain materialistic values, but if you can look beyond these, the book contains solid advice.
I recently reviewed a book by a pickup artist. Some of my objections to pickup artistry also apply here: though you can justify it any way you wish, this book advocates manipulating men’s perceptions which at the very least compromises their judgment by denying vital information. In this respect, then, it sees men as entities whose perceptions can be manipulated without any concern regarding the fact it can waste a man’s time and effort. Every man mentioned in the book is mentioned like this: First name, age, occupation. The occupation is always a very high-status job because neither the author, her clients nor her predominant readership is interested in welders, mechanics or electricians. Further, she does not even entertain the notion that some women may not be worthy of the men to which they aspire, and thus there is no advice regarding self improvement whatsoever. None of the adverse proclivities men often find in women (such as gold digging) is judged negatively by the author. Instead, the author provides advice on how to hide those proclivities. At least pretend to be shocked.
But if you look beyond these objections, the book contains a wealth of extremely valuable information that I believe women who are actively dating will find helpful. As a man with hundreds of first dates under his belt, I laughed repeatedly as I read examples of practically everything I personally saw a woman do wrong on a first date. The dynamic for dating for women over 30, and especially over 35, is very different from the dynamic for women under 30. As the author’s predominant client base is constituted of women meeting this description, this book implicitly reflects fundamental realities that a lot of women don’t realize. Specifically, a man’s sexual market value, providing he keeps himself in good physical and psychological condition, increases until he is around 50, whereas a woman’s sexual market value starts declining at an ever-increasing rate at age 30. By the time a woman is 40, her fertility is practically zero and if she is approaching a particularly desirable 45 year old high status male, she is competing against women as young as 25 provided those women are smart.
When a woman is 20, provided she is in good physical condition, all she has to do is bat her eyelashes to create a traffic accident. I am exaggerating, but only slightly. Men practically drool in her presence. She is seen as so incredibly desirable that it is almost impossible for her to do anything bad enough on a first date that a guy wouldn’t want a second. The ball is in her court, and she gets to beat men off with a stick. Because the changeover happens slowly, and a woman may be involved in a long-term relationship or graduate school when it happens, if she wakes up at 35 and starts dating, she finds the tables have turned. Though she may still be incredibly beautiful, she finds that the men she dates are very discerning, filtering her through a sieve, and looking for reasons not to schedule a second date. This is something for which a lot of women are completely unprepared, and Have Him at Hello has tips and tools to help a woman navigate that crucial first date.
The author’s purpose is straightforward: make sure the man calls for a second date so that the woman gets to decide whether or not she wants a second date. She runs a matchmaking service, and having noticed a trend of men not calling back her female clients after the first date, she undertook an extensive study, using “exit interview” techniques, to discover why these men didn’t call back.
A lot of self-help authors are full of garbage and make stuff up, but not this one. She divides the errors women make during the first date into ten overall categories, with each category having several variations. I can relate to this because when I was dating — and not calling back women for a second date — the reasons she is listing in the book are the very reasons that pertained. I found myself chuckling as she detailed practically every mistake a woman had ever made with me.
Though a 22 year old virginal man may be awestruck by a beautiful 22 year old woman, by the time men reach 30-35, they are very savvy. By the time they reach 40, they are in the driver’s seat if they have their act together at all. If they are dating at that age, odds are they have already been through a divorce, but whether they have been through a divorce or not, they have encountered their fair share of women who are gold diggers, bitches on wheels, mentally unstable and man haters. They have encountered these women before, and know how to look for the signs.
This book shows that from the very first date and even beforehand, though sometimes the analysis is faulty, men are subjecting their interactions with a given woman to very sophisticated and thoughtful analysis in terms of compatibility and long-range prospects. Men are NOT just horny dogs fooled by a pretty face. They’ll reject even very pretty women in a heartbeat for a variety of very valid reasons.
What this book explains to women is how to HIDE all of these personality flaws long enough that the woman has the opportunity to accept/reject an invitation for a second date rather than the guy not calling back.
I laughed throughout the book. Some of it was “squirt milk out my nose” funny because I could completely relate to almost every single example and even sub-example because I had encountered every one of them at some point. I could completely relate to the guy who owned both a Corvette and a Prius, but drove the Prius on first dates to weed out the gold diggers. Keep in mind I didn’t ask for second dates from 300 women, so I’ve seen it all.
Mental health and therapy were good ones. Despite the popular idea that everyone “ought” to be in therapy, therapy is CALLED therapy because it is there to help solve psychological problems. (Even though most therapists are worse than incompetent.) If a woman is in therapy or taking psychoactive meds, she DOES have problems. Maybe they are serious, maybe not — but a guy is wise to be wary. I had women tell me on first dates about their time in mental hospitals, their drug addictions, their abortions, their ex husbands, etc etc etc ad nauseam. I even had one woman tell me she had to “concentrate hard to keep her hand from falling through the solid table.” Oh boy!
The “never ever” mistake was extremely common and the author is right: when a woman says “never ever” a man takes her at her word. Why would she lie? Though I disagree with the author’s advice to hide these (unless they are not *really* “never evers,”) I can’t tell you how many women I never called back because they had made some sort of blanket “never ever” proclamation. Did they really mean it? I have no idea.
“I could NEVER live with a man who belonged to the NRA!” That is what one very beautiful woman in Tampa, FL told me. Once she got to know me as a whole person and realized I was not what she thought of the stereotypes, would she have moderated that position? I don’t know, but I wasn’t about to conceal the fact I had a deal-breaking attribute for weeks and months of emotional investment either — so I never called back.
Here are the positives in this book:
1. Albeit grudgingly and with all the correct politically correct obeisance, the book acknowledges there are differences in what men want (e.g. beauty, femininity, respect) and what women want (e.g. status, income, masculinity, attentiveness). Obviously there are exceptions, but I consider the fact that the book acknowledges these facts to be important. Way too much garbage in print today states that women want men to essentially act like stereotypical women, but with a penis. It’s not true, and this book acknowledges that women want men who look and act like men, and that men want women who look and act like women. So she counsels women to appear feminine and wear dresses, etc.
Acknowledgment of facts is important because without that, anything that attempts to help people date is doing so on the basis of false premises and likely to fail. She also acknowledges that she didn’t write a book for men simply because men don’t use self-help books. That’s refreshing!
2. The book is comprehensive. I like the way she has taken many related mistakes, gives examples, gives the man’s impressions, gives the woman’s impressions, and unites each related set of behaviors into one of ten categories. She covers every mistake I can recall a girl making that made me not call her back. Although the author and I differ over whether or not these were really a mistake — because I’m sure those behaviors saved me a lot of time and aggravation. Still, she is comprehensive and that’s important.
3. The book contains self testing for every category of mistake. Most women have very flawed impressions of why men don’t call them back. Because people have a hard time seeing themselves as others see them, the self-tests are valuable because they create a mirror so the woman can see herself the way men see her on a first date. Most women are ignorant of the mistakes they are making, and this book helps cure that.
4. I like that the author wasn’t afraid to reveal that men see feminist and man-hating attitudes as nearly synonymous, and if they pick up on them, there is no second date. Obviously she disapproves of this, but at least she acknowledges the reality. A woman carrying the term “feminist” with her is about as popular with men as a man carrying the term “sex offender” with him is with women. I don’t like that she counsels hiding these attitudes because they wreck marriages, but they show up soon enough.
5. I like the fact that she drew a distinction between a woman at work and a woman on a date, and how the things a man is looking for in a mate are very very different from what he wants in a co-worker or colleague. I can absolutely relate to rejecting women who seemed too business-like. In the workplace, in a colleague, I can appreciate a woman who kills our enemies, burns down their homes and ravages their women to get the job done. But I find women who act like this on a date so profoundly unattractive that they register as male rather than female.
6. I like that she acknowledges, albeit indirectly, the adverse effect that our divorce culture has had on men, and that men are asking themselves, when they meet a woman, NOT just if they can afford to marry her, but if they can afford the divorce. Though she laughs at the men who think this way, she shouldn’t — it’s a serious problem.
Overall, I think this is a good book for helping single women over 30 adjust to the realities of dating men who are far more savvy than the men they dated in college. This book has a very narrow focus: make sure he calls you for a second date. Because the focus is so narrow and based on extensive research, if a woman reads and follows this book, it will dramatically improve the likelihood of her getting called for a second date. (This doesn’t apply, of course, to first dates that resulted from an online meeting where the woman’s misrepresentation of herself is obvious. Nothing can get a second date for a woman who does that.)
A woman in her 30’s is on the tail end of her fertility. If she wants to have kids and have a father for those kids, she can’t afford years of guys who never call back. Furthermore, because you never know which guy would truly be the one where magic happens, as a woman, you really want to be the one in the driver’s seat: you want every guy calling you back and asking, and it is up to you to say yes or no.
As a man who has had his time wasted by women who were unqualified and hid that fact, I am not 100% happy with the moral implications of this book. However, it is also true that men will sometimes reject prematurely, so in some cases a woman employing these techniques may be doing the man a favor.
BUT, if YOU are a woman reading this website, and especially if you are a member of EAU, you are likely of a substantially higher moral caliber than the women with whom the author typically deals, and a higher moral caliber than most women who read the book. That being the case, I can set aside my moral reservations and recommend this book for you. If you’ve been on first dates and had guys you liked never call back — read this book and learn.
I would really hate to put monetary support behind the author’s intensely materialistic values, so borrow it from a library.