Are you tired of always going to family events alone? Are you tossing and turning alone in your overly large bed? And do you wonder why women who are less intelligent, less beautiful and less funny than you still get a man while you never meet the real Jacob? High time to get acquainted with ‘The Rules’, a self-help book about relationships and the bestseller in the US.
Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider
Like our mothers and grandmothers, in addition to our careers, we also dedicate ourselves to a man who could be our best friend. Deep down we really wanted to get married, with all the trimmings, the romance, the veil, the flowers, the gifts, the honeymoon. We didn’t want to give up our freedom, but we were also tired of always coming home to empty apartments. Who said we couldn’t have it all?
Writer Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider have also long wondered why they didn’t meet men who fell on their knees for them, loved them deeply and wanted children with them. They were able to work their way up quite well in their field, but they were unable to obtain the True Jacob for a very long time. Until they started following The Rules themselves. The Rules are the rules of the game and the tricks that our grandmothers used to hook a man, get married and provide offspring. But according to Fein and Schneider, The Rules guarantee even more: this man will always be crazy about you and the marriage will be heaven on earth for you.
A lot of self-confidence and respect
The premise of The Rules is that you should respect and love yourself. The reasoning goes: only when you love yourself, feel good about yourself and think you deserve to be there, can you convince someone else to love you too. Respecting yourself also means that you don’t expose yourself too quickly: literally and figuratively. You don’t jump into bed with the man you want to marry. And then you also use condoms, just out of self-respect. Self-respect also means that he doesn’t have to know everything about you right away.
You also don’t immediately tell your secrets to friends. Only when he is so crazy about you that it no longer matters to him can you say that you were once an alcoholic, drug addict, anorexic, or attempted suicide. At that moment, he will especially appreciate that all this has been behind you for a long time. It’s the first impressions of first dates that men remember forever.
So you should never speak to him in a serious tone for the first few months and now we have to talk, because then he will roll right off his bar stool. And his crush is gone. While you are left with the feeling that he ran away from you the moment you exposed something. Right, right, that’s the thing: men don’t like to be overwhelmed by you. Only when he has said how in love he is with you, only when he buys romantic gifts for your Valentine or your birthday, can you tell something about your weaker sides. Without becoming neurotic.
Love, an instruction manual
The Rules contains a simple set of behaviors so that every woman can win the heart of the man of her dreams. Mr. Right must be so obsessed with you that he wants you. So play hard to get.
The Rules’ 35 rules boil down to this: be a femme fatale and let him do everything. But how do you withhold initiative if you are used to always taking all the initiatives in your work? Yet you have known this ideal way to seduce a man for a long time: it is the way you deal with a lesser god, the boy you never fall in love with. You never long for his call, you never call him, when he calls you say after ten minutes that you are actually very busy and you only go out with him if you have nothing better to do. So that’s the way to snare Adonis-the-supergod. Only there is a small problem: when you are crazy about someone, you wait day after day for his call, and of course you don’t prefer to cancel all other appointments if he asks you out at the last minute.
This submissive, almost obsequious attitude is, according to Ellen Fein and Sherry Schneider, very wrong. And The Rules gives plenty of tips to no longer indulge in this attitude:
- Set an alarm clock next to your phone so that you can tell him after exactly ten minutes that you need to leave urgently.
- Never call yourself and if you have given yourself an excuse, end the call first.
- You don’t invite him to your home too quickly and you don’t tell too much about your family, your circle of friends or your past love life.
- The most important tip is that you never – never – mention marriage or children during the first few months (this means that you also do not talk about your brother’s wedding or your girlfriend’s sweetest daughter).
But where do you meet ‘The True One’?
Unfortunately, Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider do not have a witty answer to that. The bottom line is that you should NEVER sit at home reading on a Saturday night.
Go everywhere: dancing, tennis games, even if you don’t play tennis. Go on holiday to Club Med. Go out, go out and show yourself. Place an ad in a magazine, answer ads, ask people to put you in touch with others. And go to singles events too. Don’t think that the bunch of men who come to you are not for you: you are not looking for a bunch of men, but you are looking for the one, The True One.
Code of Conduct for Dating
Make sure you have a well-filled program until he comes to pick you up. Don’t let him come into your apartment, but meet at the restaurant. Don’t act like you’ve known him for years or tell him what you’ve been up to that day. Of course you’re not too serious either… and above all you don’t say a syllable about marriage and children.
Relax, feel like an actress, laugh at his jokes but not too loud. Smile a lot and don’t feel obligated to fill in the gaps in the conversation. You have to let him do everything: pick you up, pick the restaurant, open the door, pull out your chair. You should just respond nonchalantly, as if you do nothing else in your life but meet men.
The more you like the man in question, the sooner you should end the date. If you went out for a drink together, look at your watch after two hours and say: Great. Now I really have to get going, tomorrow is a busy day. In a restaurant you say this after three or four hours. Don’t tell them what to do.
At the end of this first date, you can allow a kiss on the cheek or even on the lips… but nothing more – even if you’re melting with desire. Don’t go to his house and ask him to come upstairs for a drink… no way, he’s still a stranger to you. On the second date you have to make good judgments. If you feel comfortable with this man, he can pick you up at your apartment and you can ask him upstairs for a drink to end the evening. But if you have the slightest doubt, say hello to him in the hallway.
It’s not simple. But anyone can have a one-night stand and a Rules girl wants to get married! You have to be willing to do something for that! In the next period it is important to show your good side. Be attentive, in his eyes a good listener is a caring person. Never say anything about marriage, marriage, children or the future. He should start talking about such topics. He has to take the lead. Yet, according to The Rules’, you must act independently and in many ways