Twelve Springtime Tips for Meeting Men

Spring can be a brilliant time to meet new men. People are clicking off the remote and getting out of the house again. Here are 12 tips for meeting a guy who'll make you happy you clicked off yours:

1. Write a list of the qualities you don't want in a man (for good material, think about your old boyfriends).

2. Turn it around and write the qualities you do want.

3. Read this list three times a day. Visualize yourself with such a person. Bring up the emotions you'd feel being with him.

4. Go where men go. Become a regular face there. Sign up for sailing lessons or fishing trips. Show up at readings at your local bookstore. Spend Sunday afternoons enjoying a cocktail at an outdoor restaurant. Find something you like to do and do it. Become a regular. Much more important, become a friend.

(NOTE: This does not mean you should pretend to love fishing if you hate it; it means you should do things that you like to do -- or would like to try --that men tend to like to do.)

5. Dress appropriately. For instance, wear sportswear instead of low-cut dresses to sports bars. You'd be shocked how many smart women try to get attention by looking overly sexy, but they strike others as being 'on the make.' As a result, they attract guys on the make. Look pretty, but blend in with the crowd.

6. Avoid singles-only events. They draw creeps like ants to a picnic.

7. Accept invitations to family barbecues, christenings, and weddings. You never know when someone will bring along a new face. (I did tell you the one about the woman who met her future husband at her own sister's dinner table, didn't I? Her brother had brought along a new friend and romance ensued.) Do not allow yourself to be held hostage by smug married people who imply you're defective because you're single, or who yammer on endlessly about their children's achievements.

8. Spend time with old female friends and make new ones (women friends are a good source for making new men friends).

9. Get out of your car. Take mass transit. Walk. Wait on line for a bank teller instead of whizzing into the drive-thru.

10. Smile at people. Most humans (the ones worth getting to know, anyway) will smile back.

(NOTE: This tip doesn't always work in large urban areas like London or New York City, where you could be mistaken for a crazy person. It does work almost everywhere else.)

11. Learn to flirt. This does not mean batting your eyelashes like a big dummy. Women who are successful with men are not necessarily beautiful, but they do know how to talk to them.

12. Take a second job. If you like people and could use extra cash wait tables, preferably in a restaurant that caters to successful people. A friend of mine met her affluent husband this way. Fifteen years later, they have two children and two beautiful homes. (They're also wild about each other.) The musician Phil Lesh didn't end up with one of the thousands of fans he met during his career with the Grateful Dead. He married the waitress who served him breakfast in a coffee shop near his home (lest you fret that his wife still serves him, his autobiography mentions that Phil washes dishes and used to drive his children to school). He has been married for more than 20 years.

The world is full of wonderful men, so please do back away from Rock of Love Bus with Bret Michaels. Determine the qualities you want in your wonderful man. Bring him to life in your imagination. Then put yourself in places where you're likely to meet him.

Getting Lucky Again (More Law of Attraction at Play)

In my previous post, I discussed my reasons for joining Toastmasters. I mentioned that you won't necessarily meet the man of your dreams there, but you could make a friend or business contact who'll introduce you to him.

Interestingly, last week Ronnie Ann Ryan and I had a discussion about guys who make great boyfriends. We agreed that bookworms are tops; they're passionate, interesting, interested, and, based on our experience, pretty good guys (unless, of course, the books they read include titles like How to Build Bombs With Crap From Your Parents' Basement).

I've always been attracted to bookworms like Stephen Colbert, my husband, and Phil Lesh (anybody who quotes William Blake in his autobiography is definitely a bookworm).

Today I served as Toastmaster for the first time, which means I ran most of the meeting. Unfortunately, the member who'd been assigned to serve as Table Topics Master (the sadist responsible for singling out a poor sucker to talk off the top of his head about a specific subject) didn't show.

So I came up with today's topic off the top of my head. Inspired by the grand opening of a new independent bookstore (a delightful alternative to B&N, Waldenbooks, and Borders) in my neighborhood last week, I suggested we take turns telling the group about a book that changed us.

Midway through the first respondent's presentation about her life-altering experience with The Celestine Prophecy, two guys in their 20s we'd never seen before walked into the conference room.

Asked to introduce themselves, they seemed to be the kind of fellows Ronnie Ann and I talked about. One guy in particular screamed "bookworm" with his black-rimmed glasses (behind which hid a beautiful face). Once we got him talking about his favorite book, The Pilgrim's Progress, he confirmed bookworm status.

Neither one of them were wearing wedding rings, so maybe I can endorse Toastmasters as a place where you might meet the man of your dreams. As for me, if I were single and a couple of years younger, I'd have gone for the dude with the glasses.