Revisiting The Rules : How Does the Iconic 1995 Courtship Guide Hold Up in the Dating-App Era? Vogue
* This article was originally published here
Tuesday, March 31, 2026
Monday, March 30, 2026
Sunday, March 29, 2026
Saturday, March 28, 2026
Friday, March 27, 2026
Why High-Achieving Women Stay Too Long
Jen knew that getting into an Ivy League school was competitive so she took all AP classes in high school and added four years of extracurriculars to get her into Dartmouth.
She knew she wanted a career with considerable financial upside, so she majored in economics. It was a male-dominated program and Jen knew she’d have to be tough to get ahead. She graduated magna cum laude and got a job straight out of school as an analyst for Smith Barney.
Back in the 90’s, it was full-on Wolf of Wall Street, so Jen learned how to put her head down, manage her emotions, and burn the midnight oil. In the first few years of her career, she was routinely clocking 16 hour days with no time to herself and barely any time for sleep.
She made great money and had little time to spend it. Then she met her husband – another mergers and acquisitions guy – in her late 20’s. He made enough for Jen to quit her day job and become a devoted stay-at-home-Mom in her 30’s.
While he paid for everything, she took care of everything else: The groceries. The social plans. The doctors’ appointments. The carpool. The club sports. The vacations.
Their roles became more well-defined and separate. The next thing you know, they had drifted apart. From the outside, they looked like the perfect family. From the inside, there wasn’t much left to them as a couple. Most of their conversations were about money and the kids, and the very things that brought them together no longer seemed to matter.
The 5 Love Languages? Jen’s husband barely spoke one.
Jen summoned the same skill set that took her from high school to Dartmouth and from Dartmouth to Wall Street. She doubled down on hard work. She went to therapy. She tried to drag her husband to therapy. She tried to plan date nights. In fact, at one point, Jen realized she was doing everything to bring them closer together and he was doing nothing.
But that didn’t stop her. As a hard-working, analytical, tenacious woman, she was not going down without a fight. Not with two kids. Not with their nice house. Not with the fear of starting over. Even though Jen would later estimate that they got along less than half the time, she stayed. She ignored her feelings of being unseen and resigned herself to being the best Mom she could be. By the time the kids were in high school, their marriage was a shell of the original thing that brought them together.
In school and your career, you put in the work, you get the reward.
Love doesn’t operate that way.
If it did, Jen would be a success, since no one will outwork her. But love isn’t about work; it’s about listening to your feelings. After two decades of ignoring her feelings, Jen divorced her husband and figured that, because she was a catch, she’d find a new man quickly.
But love is not a meritocracy – and you don’t succeed because you went to a good school, have a healthy bank account, and a well-worn passport. You don’t succeed by latching onto the first cute, rich guy who comes along and holding onto him for dear life, because you don’t like being alone and you don’t like dating.
That is intern behavior. You’re a CEO. A CEO knows that the secret to low employee turnover is to create a culture of accountability. To hire slowly and fire quickly.
This is the OPPOSITE of how most high-achieving, high net-worth women date.
You hire quickly – in the first few dates – but you may take decades to fire. All because of how tenacious you are. That’s the paradigm we have to break.
Jen’s story isn’t unique.
It’s what happens when you apply a success strategy that works everywhere else in your life to the one place where it backfires.
Your ability to push through, to stay committed, to outwork everyone in the room is exactly what made you successful.
It’s also what keeps you in relationships long after they stop feeling good.
If you’re ready to stop overinvesting in the wrong relationships and start choosing men who actually show up for you, I invite you to take the next step.
You deserve to have the easy, lasting relationship you’ve always worked so hard for.
* This article was originally published here
Thursday, March 26, 2026
Wednesday, March 25, 2026
Tuesday, March 24, 2026
Monday, March 23, 2026
Sunday, March 22, 2026
Saturday, March 21, 2026
The danger of overcorrecting in love
If I were a smarter guy, here’s the book that I would write.
It’s called The Overcorrection.
It’s about what happens when we react to painful experiences in our lives and swing too far in the opposite direction.
A bad relationship leads someone to swear off relationships forever.
A partner who struggled financially leads someone to insist the next man must have money.
A marriage without affection leads someone to chase chemistry above everything else.
One painful experience turns into a rule about how the world works.
And those rules often take us somewhere we never intended to go.
I see it all the time in dating.
Women who had financially unstable partners decide the next man must have money, only to discover that having money doesn’t automatically make someone a good husband.
Women who had no sex or affection in their marriages chase chemistry after divorce and discover that intense chemistry can blind you to someone’s worst qualities.
People who were in a bad marriage convince themselves the answer is to never get married again.
And then those same people discover that while you can fend for yourself alone, and yes, that’s better than being with someone who drags you down, life is still harder when you’re doing everything by yourself.
Your friends love you. Your family loves you. But they’re not going to love you the way a partner will.
They’re not waking up next to you every morning.
They’re not rubbing your feet at the end of a long day.
They’re not killing the bugs, taking out the heavy garbage bags, planning the road trip, driving the car, paying for the hotel.
They’re not the person who listens to you at the end of every day, drives you to chemo, and holds you while you fall asleep.
So yes, you can survive without a partner. You can wrap yourself in the banner of freedom and independence, but something is getting lost.
And who is encouraging that overcorrection?
The algorithms.
Algorithms reward outrage. They amplify division. They push content that makes you angry because angry people engage more. Reasonable content rarely goes viral.
Believe me, I never spent half a second thinking about being Jewish growing up, and now my social feeds constantly show me antisemitic content.
Do you really think your feeds aren’t shaping you too?
If your social media tells you dating apps are terrible, men are trash, and marriage is dead, it won’t take long before your single friends start repeating the same thing.
Suddenly that becomes the new normal.
If you try to defend men, dating apps, or marriage, you’re accused of supporting the patriarchy, which is pretty wild when you think about it.
I’m a happily married man who has spent two decades helping women raise their standards for relationships, date with confidence, and choose equal partners.
Somehow that gets twisted into the idea that I’m trying to trap women in an oppressive structure where men control them. Somehow I get lumped in with those who are trying to take away women’s rights. That’s how toxic the conversation has become.
This means you have to be extremely careful about who you listen to. So, ask yourself a simple question:
Would you rather take advice from angry women on social media and your circle of frustrated single friends?
Or would you rather listen to those who are actually in happy, healthy relationships?
Just because dating has been rough, you’ve invested in the wrong men, and some people around you are giving up on men doesn’t mean YOU have to.
There is still a path to the relationship you deserve.
But only if you stop listening to the loudest negative voices and resist the urge to overcorrect your way into a life without romantic love.
* This article was originally published here
Friday, March 20, 2026
Thursday, March 19, 2026
Wednesday, March 18, 2026
Tuesday, March 17, 2026
Monday, March 16, 2026
Sunday, March 15, 2026
Saturday, March 14, 2026
Friday, March 13, 2026
“Women Aren’t Ready to Hear This”
The editors of my second book (Why You’re Still Single) cut a chapter of my book against my will. It was called “Your Friends May Be Hazardous to Your Health.”
The feedback? “Women aren’t ready to hear this.”
That was TWENTY years ago. I think you’re ready.
To set the scene: if you were struggling with money, would you ask your friend with the least successful career for help?
No, you would not. But when it comes to dating advice, who are you asking?
Friends who are single. Friends who are frustrated and confused. Friends who are disillusioned with dating apps and men. Friends who may not understand or empathize with men. Friends who, to put it bluntly, have not had success in love.
I have empathy for them. I believe they care deeply about you. I believe they’re sharing their lived experience and wisdom with you. I also believe that they haven’t figured anything out and are just grasping at straws to explain why they’re still single. And since we are all the heroes in our own story, the easiest thing to conclude is that it’s everybody else’s fault.
Men in my city! Men my age! Divorced guys! Never married guys! Widowers! Rich men! Poor men! Single dads!
Yes, if you date men, men will be the people who frustrate you.
So who do you turn to next? The Internet! Surely, the dating influencers have a nuanced answer in the form of a 30 second reel?
Yeah, that’s also not how it works. The algorithms work on outrage. What content goes viral? Men trashing women with no empathy or understanding for the plight of women. After all, misery loves company and who is more miserable than the guys in the red-pill manosphere? And who reacts to those guys as if they’re representative of all men? You guessed it: Are We Dating the Same Guy Facebook groups and The Burned Haystack Facebook group. In such groups, everything a man does is a red flag.
How do I know this? Because those groups have trashed ME and my entire career is built on telling women to raise their standards, cut off 90% of men, and listen to your feelings.
The fact is: every group of like-minded people is in an information bubble and has its own inadvertent blind spots. This was the problem with old-boys networks and why the world is so much better now that women get more college degrees, law degrees and medical degrees than men. But what happens when you have hundreds of thousands of women opining on heterosexual relationships without the input of any men?
You get a pretty one-sided argument in which men’s needs aren’t even considered. And even if trashing men feels good (because there are SO MANY bad men), that’s no recipe for a happy relationship. If you doubt that, let’s flip things around one more time:
If you met a man who generally hated and mistrusted women and was dismissive of their opinions, would you want to date him? No f-ing way!
So why would a man want to date a woman who generally hates and mistrusts men and is dismissive of their opinions? That’s right. He wouldn’t.
The good news – and there is good news – is that this is the algorithms talking; I don’t think most people truly feel that the opposite sex is irredeemable. But those who do are getting the most attention on the internet – and that is the narrative I want to change.
At the end of the day, you have a choice: listen to the angry single women who tell you to delete the apps, give up on men, and opt out of marriage OR listen to people in relationships where men and women respect each other, get along famously, and live happily ever after.
* This article was originally published here
Thursday, March 12, 2026
Wednesday, March 11, 2026
Tuesday, March 10, 2026
Monday, March 9, 2026
Sunday, March 8, 2026
Saturday, March 7, 2026
Friday, March 6, 2026
A Heartbreaking Conversation
You’ve loved. You’ve lost.
You’ve been married. You’ve been divorced.
You’ve been on dating apps. You’ve deleted dating apps.
No matter what you’ve done or no matter how you look at it, NOTHING has worked.
Simply being single at a certain age – for some women – is a radical demonstration that dating sucks, men are selfish, and marriage is a waste of time.
This was Gina’s story.
Married 3 times – for 5 years, 10 years, and 20 years – Gina is 71 years old.
She has been on my mailing list for two years and while she felt inspired by my optimism, she still didn’t think she could find love. A few weeks ago, something changed.
Gina booked a call with me, told me her story, shared her feelings, and, by the end of the conversation, enrolled in my six month group coaching program.
She knew that she had to let go of her past baggage, and was excited to trust me to lead her into the first healthy relationship of her life. I was thrilled since it’s extra special working with women in their 70s.
That night, I took my son to the Laker game. At halftime, I got an email.
“I had a panic attack when we got off the phone. I can’t do this. Please send me a refund.”
Gina and I spent 45 minutes on Zoom the following morning.
At the beginning of our conversation, I told Gina I would give her a refund, but I did want to understand her sudden buyers’ remorse. Here’s what she told me.
After her third failed marriage, she has worked extremely hard in achieving peace. She went to therapy. She leaned into her female friendships. She spent more time with her children. She took advantage of her opportunity to travel. And because she’s so content, she doesn’t want to take the risk of losing her freedom.
I would imagine many women reading this right now feel the exact same way.
This is the definition of Safe Solitude. While you protect yourself from ever being hurt, you also protect yourself from ever being loved. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Gina’s logic goes like this: dating is confusing and anxiety producing. Every man I ever married was a disappointment. Being single isn’t that bad. So I’m going to stay single.
It’s impeccable logic, but it starts from a place of fear and failure. It assumes that you won’t make different choices that produce different outcomes.
My logic is equally impeccable – and it’s the inverse of Gina’s:
If dating has been confusing and anxiety-producing, I’m going to remove the confusion and the anxiety. I’m going to guarantee that you don’t get into a relationship with a selfish, low-character man, and if, by chance, you discover the guy you’re seeing isn’t as great as you thought, you will dump him. When you date differently and choose different men, you’ll discover amazing partners who put you first. Now, your relationship won’t feel draining, it’ll feel expansive.
Gina was so afraid of “losing her freedom” that she can’t even imagine a relationship like mine, where my wife and I are best friends – and are free to lead our best lives. And we do it with each other’s support – physical, emotional, financial – especially when times are tough.
You have a choice.
You can stay exactly where you are right now.
Or you can have a partner who takes care of you the way I take care of my wife.
Just don’t tell me that it’s impossible. It’s not. Millions of women are living proof.
* This article was originally published here
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)