I’m in New York City, taking a break from the calm and warmth of Los Angeles to show my girlfriend my beloved and frigid hometown. We’re going to be seeing some close friends and family members, as well as doing all of the touristy things that make the city so special at this time of year. Will be back with a new blog on Thursday.

In the meantime, I just wanted to take this opportunity to let you know what my process is over here.

As you probably know, I’m a dating coach. I make my living working one on one with private clients who are serious about finding love. I look forward to continuing my practice in 2008. I write this blog for fun, to address reader questions, and to hone my own critical thinking on these subjects.

If you’ve ever written to me and not received a reply, please know that I have hundreds of email questions in a folder at home, the majority of which I either have tackled in a previous posting, or which aren’t unique and brief enough for the blog. If you want guidelines for how to get a question answered, I would recommend seeing if I’ve already tackled it before:

Start by reading these. These are my most important posts. They outline some core dating issues and cover some of the most common concepts I use in my dating coaching.

Continue by reading these. These are all of the posts I’ve ever done.

So even if the details are a little different, chances are, I’ve touched on your issue. And I’d hate for you to write me a long question and feel like I’m ignoring you. I’m not. I’m trying to keep things interesting for the thousands of other readers.

Finally, as we close out 2007, I want to thank you sincerely for reading this blog.

I love hearing your questions, I love being challenged for answers, and I love getting your honest commentary on each posting.

I eagerly await my return to Los Angeles, so I can resume our regular schedule.

And if you want to makes sure you don’t miss a single answer – especially if you asked me a question and don’t know when I’m answering – I’d highly recommend signing up for my free blog email service here:

And, of course, my free monthly newsletter here:

‘Til then…have a very happy and healthy New Year.

Much love,

Evan

Hi Evan -

Really enjoy your blog. I found out a few months ago that I have herpes. After going through the normal flip out and that my dating life would now consist of Ben and Jerry’s and DVD’s every Saturday night, I’m ready to get out there again.

I have gone through "the conversation" a million times in my mind. I have seen men post on various dating sites where they come right out on their profile stating they have herpes. And before I found out about my little gem, I would immediately think, "not in my backyard". I think that is a TMI on a profile. I thought that if I meet someone, and there seems to be some sort of vibe, I would have the talk pretty quickly, possibly even the first date. And I wouldn’t be dramatic, just simply say, you need to know something, I have herpes. I control it with medication, but no matter how you slice it, it is what it is.

There are "herpes sites" but they kind of creep me out at this point.

I have enough common sense that I wouldn’t casually mention this as we are flinging clothing all over the room.

What are your thoughts? Is there a "right time or wrong time" to have this discussion?

If ok, want to jump on my soapbox for a second, if anyone reading this has herpes, do the right thing, let people know. One of the most difficult things I had to do was call former boyfriends I may have exposed (think it was dormant in my system for quite sometime, I honestly did not know). None of these guys started screaming at me, they THANKED me and said they would get tested – none of them had it -YAY!!!!

This is forever, don’t make it forever for someone else – have "the talk".

Thanks Evan, happy new year!

Jen

Important question, Jen. And while I’m not an expert in herpes, per se, I do know a number of people who have it, and continue to lead rich, happy, limitless dating lives. So don’t worry. It’s all gonna be okay.

I do know a number of people who have it, and continue to lead rich, happy, limitless dating lives. 

I think all the readers should take a second to put themselves in your shoes for a moment. Because one second you’re saying “No way” to a guy with herpes, and the next, you’re praying that a guy doesn’t judge you for this one minor thing.

And let me be clear, it IS a minor thing.

According to Herpes.com, 50-80 percent of the American adult population has oral herpes. Ever had a cold sore? Congratulations. You probably have oral herpes. As far as genital herpes goes, we’re talking 205 of the population. That’s 50 MILLION people, a majority of whom don’t even know they’re infected. The scariest part of this whole thing is the staggering ignorance about herpes – a disease that undoubtedly affects someone that you know.

Don’t think so? Well, let’s just say that I have close friends, clients, and ex-girlfriends who have genital herpes, and none of them are traumatized, hospitalized or ostracized because of it. So let’s get past that.

Just know that if you have the disease, you may be entirely asymptomatic, which would mean that you could potentially transmit it without knowing. And if you do have symptoms, they are easily controlled with the use of drugs. The question is how do you explain this to someone else who is freaked out by this kind of stuff?…

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Evan,

Over the past couple of weeks I’d been e-mailing a woman who initiated contact with me. It was pretty apparent from the timing of the mails that she didn’t always have access to the web which I, being in IT, do.

We had our first conversation on this past Tuesday night and it went well. We have a date scheduled for Saturday evening to get drinks. During the call she gave me her regular e-mail so we wouldn’t have to work through match. The next day I sent her a very short e-mail mostly to answer a question she had that I didn’t have the answer to Tuesday night. I also said I enjoyed talking with her. She responded that she enjoyed the conversation and was looking forward to Saturday.

Now, I thought it would be appropriate to speak one more time before Saturday. So yesterday (Thursday) I sent an e-mail asking if it would be better to call that night or Friday. That’s all the mail said. I didn’t get a response yesterday so I didn’t know if she got the mail or not. I posted this information on a forum I use – and while a couple of women said I should go ahead and call, several others said that I was appearing needy, that I shouldn’t have asked when a good time to call would be. Some even said that I shouldn’t have had any more contact until Saturday at all.

Now, I’ve heard plenty of horror stories about the guys that call several times a day but I don’t think I was approaching that territory. As far as I was concerned, I was being considerate in asking when a better time to call would be. Did I show weakness? Neediness? Expose my throat?

Has it really come to this, that it’s not just "don’t be a stalker" but that any sign of showing you want to talk to the person is a sign of weakness and grounds for elimination? If so, why do we have the audacity to wonder why so many of us are still single?

Thanks,

Markus

Dear Markus,

Thanks for the note. Since you’re a regular reader and commenter, I wanted to get back to you as quickly as I could.

Anyone who’s been here before knows that I never ever EVER validate the person asking me a question.

• If a woman says that her boyfriend is a jerk, I’ll ask why she’s dating a jerk.
• If a man says that women are fickle and judgmental, I’ll ask if he’s fickle and judgmental.

I think there’s nothing to learn from pointing fingers at the world’s injustices. The real power comes from seeing the world clearly, assessing your role in why things happen, and deciding if there’s anything within your power to alter the future outcome….

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Hi Evan,

I am brand new to the online dating scene and wanted to get your opinion on something…

I have noticed on many men’s profiles that they are seeking women who have never been married (older men included). While I can understand that (to a degree) I find that when I "match" all of their other criteria and would like to communicate with them, since I am divorced I have not been communicating based on their preferences.

It seems that these men are limiting themselves especially when they have no idea why a person may be divorced in the first place.  It seems like preemptive discrimination, if you will.

Thoughts? Advice on whether I should communicate with these guys or is it a waste of time?

Thanks so much!

Heather

Dear Heather,

This feels like a perfect time to dust off one of my favorite online dating concepts: that you’re as valuable as your options.

In short, you can be as choosy as you’d like to be, as long as you have an endless supply of people from which to choose. Once you start eliminating everyone from contention, and there’s no one left to date, you’ve effectively priced yourself out of the market.

As always, I’ve got some anecdotes to back this up.

Client #1 is a 69-year-old woman who is struggling to get attention online. We rebrand her on Yahoo with new photos, essays, and an empowering technique with which to write to men. Even so, it’s a tough go, mainly because there are 3 times more single women than men over the age of 65, and half of those guys wouldn’t consider a woman their own age.

Anyway, a 67-year-old man writes her a note. He’s in good shape, successful, and, most importantly, interested. She scrolls down his profile to check for common interests.

“Oh, no. He’s into aviation. I’m more of a stay-home-and-knit kind of woman. I’m not going to write back to him.”

Client #2 is a 56-year-old man who was widowed last year. He’s extremely wealthy and wants a beautiful woman to share in his life of luxury. He writes only to women who are drop-dead gorgeous and at least fifteen years younger. Many of his emails are to women across the country, who have thousands of wealthy men in their own cities from which to choose….

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I’ve been reading for a while, and I find myself hopping on your blog whenever I meet a new guy or am faced with a new situation. But have yet to find something to address my question, given all the differences in the way men and women view sex and relationships and communication: What are the rules about disclosing your number of sexual partners and should it matter?

Now of course I think about this more so in a safety sense, not that I need to know how many girls a guy has slept with but more so I want to know that he is safe for me to sleep with. Inevitably though, this question of numbers comes up and I always hate when my number is higher than his or significantly lower. I know it sounds silly but it’s hard to know what a man is thinking when you share this type of thing. Is it better to just keep it to yourself? Do numbers really matter?

Megan

Dear Megan,

LOVE YOU for asking this question. As always, my opinion is just my opinion. Feel free to disagree. (And I know you will!)

So, like the whole “Who Pays” thing, there are different rules for men and women. Mainly because the sexual double standard is alive and well. I don’t endorse this. I report this.

The average number of partners a man purports to have in a lifetime is around 11. The average number of partners a woman purports to have is closer to 6. Of course, this is not true.

Says Dr. Norman Brown of the University of Alberta:

"Every time a man has sex with a woman, a woman has to have sex with a man. So either there are some very lucky joes out there or someone is not getting their numbers right," Brown said.

I know I haven’t answered your question, Megan, but I thought I would puncture a hole in the “men are promiscuous/women are chaste” thing. If a man’s sleeping with a woman, a woman’s sleeping with a man and everybody’s numbers are going up. So there.

And as far as I’m concerned it is NOBODY’S BUSINESS HOW MANY PEOPLE YOU’VE SLEPT WITH.

And as far as I’m concerned it is NOBODY’S BUSINESS HOW MANY PEOPLE YOU’VE SLEPT WITH.

Similarly, it’s none of your business how many people he’s slept with. This is a classic “don’t ask, don’t tell” situation, on par with “Are you dating anyone else right now?” and “Have you ever had a drug fueled orgy with six Polynesian dwarves?" If you say yes, you’ve got a lot of explaining to do, and frankly, you shouldn’t have to explain….

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I have been dating a guy for over eight months now. At the start he told me he was looking for a long term relationship.  He has yet to tell me he loves me. For his birthday last month, I signed the card “love”. He gave me a thank you card after and signed the card “love”. He does talk about me being in his life in the future. So why hasn’t he told me that he loves me? I thought it was the man who was supposed to tell the woman first.

Sabella

Dear Sabella,

This reminds me of my list of 10 Secrets About Men:

Saying "I love you" is a major step in a man’s life. That’s why we wait for you to take that step first.

Yes, it’s a joke, but like most jokes, it’s wrapped in a great deal of truth. So why would a guy not say that he loves you?

Let me count the ways:

1) He’s not expressive. Men aren’t taught to share their feelings, blahblahblah. Do you buy this for even a second? I don’t. Everybody knows that women want to hear “I love you”. So what the hell is they guy waiting for? Armageddon?

2) The Chump Problem – My “Why You’re Still Single” co-author, Linda Holmes nailed this one in our 2006 book. Essentially, by saying “I love you” first, you’re risking that your partner will not reciprocate, thus making you feel like somewhat of a chump. You, Sabella, took the risk, and here you are asking this question. He, on the other hand, already KNOWS you love him, which is why he’s not risking anything by reciprocating. This leads us to the unfortunate conclusion that:

3) He doesn’t love you. Or perhaps he’s not sure if he loves you. Either way, at this point, your feelings are stronger than his. This has to sting a little bit, but that’s the risk you take when you declare your love first.

Then again, that’s the risk anyone takes when taking any bold action. A guy can go to a bar and gawk at cute girls, but until he risks being rejected and feeling foolish, nothing’s gonna happen. High risk, high reward. That’s the stakes of the love game.

So what does this mean for you? Well, first of all, you learned a valuable lesson: it’s not the man’s job to say, “I love you” first. Especially if he doesn’t mean it. After all, it’s a bit of a dated cliché that a guy says “I love you” in order to get laid. These days we sleep together way before “I love you”. Thus “I love you” instead marks a turning point in the relationship. “Are we serious? Or are we just passing time?” A man who says “I love you” – willingly! – is indicating that he’s serious about a future. …

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I’m dating this man, who on many, many counts is really wonderful. He’s a very intelligent man, classy, generous, loving and not a womanizer. He tells me all the time how beautiful I am, and sexy, etc, and how lucky he is to have found me. He says almost every day that he wants to marry me, and how he misses me terribly when we are apart. That’s all wonderful to hear! I feel the same way about him.

The problem is, that whenever we go out, he looks at other women. Not just the average-guy looking. He’s staring at them. He gets so caught up in it, even while holding my hand and walking past shops, he’ll head into one, if he sees someone attractive inside. He’ll sit with me at restaurants and look. He’s even go so far as to look behind me to see someone again, and has looked long enough many times to make eye-contact. Seems to try to make eye contact, too.

He’s a very sociable guy. Says hello to most people (men and women). But he does have a shy side and is uncomfortable in large groups where he knows no one. He is also extremely clever with humor, and easily silly and good with the come-backs that are hysterically funny.

But it’s these long-looks, or just about forgetting that I’m there right next to him, that are really bothering me. I’m not enjoying this. It’s starting to ruin the relationship for me. It makes me question his feelings for me, and his comments that I’m so beautiful, and here he’s looking at all these other women.

I know he’s proud of how I look. He’s told me many times that he feels that men are envious around him of me. I do get looked at often by men, but I don’t make eye contact like he does. I think that it’s rude to my partner, although I am tempted to show him how it feels! But I don’t want to play games. That is not my style.

I’ve only once made a comment about what he was looking at recently. I couched it in a joking form, to make the comment, but let him know that I’ve noticed his staring. He got immediately defensive. I didn’t ask him why, just said something to the effect of: "oh, it’s the beer in her hand you were looking at?!" He bristled. I could feel his shock at my comment. He was completely silent and had no response. He must have stared at this woman for 10 minutes before he said he wanted a beer. Other than that, he seems oblivious to his behavior.

How do I let him know I’m insulted that he does this so consistently?

How do I avoid an argument that will be simply denial on his part, and be productive to let him know this really bothers me, that he goes out of his way to look/stare? How do I let him know that I don’t trust his words, then, that he thinks I’m beautiful, etc., if he’s got to look at every woman we pass by?

It’s made me not want to go places with him anymore.

I look forward to your response!

Thank you,

Karen

I appreciate all the details you provided, Karen, because they paint a fully-fleshed out picture of your relationship. It would easy to demonize your boyfriend as evil, but you bother to mention that he is sociable, that he praises your beauty, and that he wants to marry you.

Which is why his over-the-top leering is so highly inappropriate….

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Dear Evan,

I keep losing relationships when I say that sex isn’t right outside of a marriage. I used to think that women have more self-control than men, but have since realized that we are all humans.

Is it ever possible to have a year-long relationship without sex? Even the most conservative girl I’ve met gets heavy on that after a while. I feel pressured. They ask questions like "will we be doing that (whatever is the action in the movies) in future?"

I think maybe I’m the problem. I’ve been called frigid, gay (am not), etc.

There’s so much more to life than sex, right? Maybe I should look for intelligent scientists.

Jon

Dear Jon,

You sound a bit like the guy who insists on buying flowers for women on first dates. He seems like a really nice guy, but what he doesn’t get is that his views are out of step with the majority of society.

So it’s not a matter of whether he’s right or wrong; it’s a matter of whether his behavior is effective or ineffective.

When you lead your question with “I keep losing relationships when I say that sex isn’t right outside of a marriage”, you make it abundantly clear that your moral stance is quite ineffective. That doesn’t make you wrong. That makes your choice a highly questionable one as far as most women are concerned.

And, as I am wont to do, I’m going to use this platform to ask readers to consider if they have any hard-wired minority beliefs that prevent them from making a connection. Again, I’m not a moralist; I’m a pragmatist. Just because a guy tells me that his mullet hairstyle is the purest expression of how he likes to look, doesn’t mean that wearing his mullet in his online dating photo will help him woo the ladies.

Just because a guy tells me that his mullet hairstyle is the purest expression of how he likes to look, doesn’t mean that wearing his mullet in his online dating photo will help him woo the ladies.

Lest you think I’m joking – that’s a true story. I had a client four years ago who was a grown-up 70’s rocker who teaches guitar lessons. Nice man. Very passionate. But in his insistence on “being himself”, he pretty much eliminated every woman who tossed her AquaNet out the window in 1989. Same goes for my Jewish client who loved his dreadlocks, and was surprised he didn’t get much attention on JDate. Somehow he was shocked that all the Ivy League women who want to marry doctors and lawyers weren’t flocking to his unwashed nest of hair. Doesn’t mean he’s a bad guy – it just means he had to make some tough choices: Keep the hair and lose the women. Or lose the hair and get the women.

Since I’m not a psychologist, I’m not gonna worry in this space about WHY you’d opt for abstinence. That’s between you and your clergyman. All I can say is that the number of people aboard the no-sex train is increasingly small. So as I see it, you have two choices:

Keep beating the drum that says sex is wrong outside of marriage and continue to wonder why most women keep running away, OR:

Get off your moral high horse and start sexually servicing these women the way they want to be serviced.

If not, someone else will. I guarantee that.

My question is this: is it wrong to date someone who is extremely similar, on paper, to the last person you dated?

Would most people be uncomfortable to hear that their boyfriend/girlfriend’s last significant other was a clone of themself?

I’m about to date a girl who, on paper, is A LOT like the last girl I dated. I have a great deal in common with this girl, just like I had a lot in common with the last girl, but I’m worried that I’m not liking this new girl for herself. I think this new girl is the recipient of feelings I developed for the last one.

Mike

Dear Mike,

I’ve often said that we are the sum total of our experiences.

And when we look back on our lives, we can see patterns in our choices in partners. Often, we get it wrong. Sometimes, with practice, we can even get it right.

So the more salient question that I’m going to answer for you isn’t whether there’s anything wrong with dating a girl who is a lot like your last girlfriend. (There’s not. Case closed.)

What IS interesting, however, is whether these repeated patterns of girls are GOOD for you. That’s an entirely different story, and one worth exploring.

See, it’s not that your question isn’t relevant. It’s that, truly, if your last girlfriend was a wonderful person with whom you had an amicable breakup, there are no real warning signs that this “type” is wrong for you. Thus, finding a woman with similar characteristics on paper is not only fine, but probably a decent idea.

If your last girlfriend was a wonderful person with whom you had an amicable breakup, there are no real warning signs that this “type” is wrong for you.

As always, I speak from experience, both as a dater and as a dating coach. For years and years, I chased the holy grail of East Coast Jewish intellectuals. I found that as much as I craved their company, they were usually too similar to me. They may have been interesting and successful, but they were also often hard-driving, opinionated, and selfish. Last year, I dated a woman who was the opposite. She was considerably younger. She didn’t have a big career. She was interested in doing everything I wanted to do, just so we could be around each other. With her big smile, generous heart, and accepting ways, she made me want to be a better boyfriend. We only broke up because she wasn’t seasoned enough – I didn’t feel like I was learning from her, although I’m sure she’s going to be an amazing woman in about five years.

Cut to six months after my breakup. I meet another woman with the same exact qualities – except this woman’s turning 38 tomorrow. Ten months later we’re still together. Have I fallen into a trap? No. I just discovered that it’s more important for me to be with a woman who makes me feel good than to be with a woman who fits that mental checklist we all have….

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