Attract a Man You Can Love and Respect

I spent Father's Day at a barbecue with my in-laws. My sister-in-law's sister showed up with her fiance. She met him at work.

Turns out her fiance's sister is about to get married, too, to a guy she met on Match.com. I chimed in that a good friend of mine met his girlfriend of almost a year on Eharmony.

At that point, a fellow who overheard our conversation jumped in. "I don't believe in dating websites," he said. "It's like you're trying to buy a girlfriend or boyfriend."

The woman who met her fiance at work and I disagreed. Granted, she did meet her fiance, a guy she loves and respects, at the office. I didn't. I met my husband the old fashioned way (in a bar). I do remember being frustrated at the time because the only people I met in my day-to-day life were the same old robots at my office.

So I kept doing what I'd been doing, which was to go to bars.

But I'd set a different intention. I knew what I wanted and what I didn't want. I began to attract it (I still attracted losers, too, but I started spotting them before I got involved). I went out with a variety of guys, instead of just the type I'd previously been attracted to (and who were the source of my problems). I widened the net.

Eventually, the right guy showed up. Not only was he attracted to me, but, for for a nice change of pace, I was attracted to him, too.

When you want to meet a special person, I don't think it matters so much where you meet him as it does that you're open (I said open, not desperate) to meeting him. You might meet him in a bar, a hospital, a coffee shop, online, whatever. It helps to step out into the world every morning feeling good about yourself and knowing what you have to offer.

Also know what kind of man you want. Bring that person to life consistently in your imagination. It may sound like hocus-pocus, but it isn't. If you bring that guy to life in your mind every morning and night, you'll eventually attract a man you can respect and fall in love with.

As far as being attractive goes, even if you're not a good-looking person, you can blow a classic beauty away if you present yourself with confidence and optimism. Be an easy person to be around.

How often do you laugh, for example?

Find something to laugh about. Laughing genuinely is so attractive to other people who like to laugh. Look, life isn't easy. It's not fair, either. You want to spend it with a person who can help you see the humor in it, don't you?

Well, there's a decent guy you can love and respect who wants to spend his life with that kind of person, too.

Be that person, set your intention to meet a great guy, and get out of the house.

How She Met Her Husband

Had dinner with the wife of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's great-grandson last night. She told me she met her very kind and well-off husband in a supermarket, of all places.

What's even cooler is that she was the mother of five when they met. He is six years younger than she is.

The fact that this woman found her husband in a supermarket comes as no surprise to Ronnie Ann Ryan, the author of Manifesting Mr. Right, who has been telling women that supermarkets are great places to meet men for eons.

Men I Love (and Men I Don't)

The following men make me glad I'm female:

Stephen Colbert
Lewis Black
Jon Stewart
Phil Lesh
Paul Newman
Bob Deans

The following men make me scared I'm female:

Larry the Cable Guy
Mick Jagger
Joe Francis, the loser who founded the Girls Gone Wild video series
Phil Spector
James Woods
Jack Nicholson
Jay Leno (If I hear one more Paris-Hilton-Is-a-Whore joke I'm going to scream)

Dating Tip For Father's Day

If you've been emotionally or physically abused, or if you grew up in a house where nobody paid much attention to you or your feelings, you will probably attract friends and lovers who treat you the same way.

Just so you know, I'm not a shrink. I'm licensed to drive, and that's about it.

But I've noticed that people who've suffered rotten relationships in childhood tend to end up in rotten relationships as adults. If this sounds like you, you need to create in your own mind what a good relationship looks and feels like. You have to, as Wayne Dyer says, "picture the end result," and put yourself in that picture. You have to feel yourself in that picture, and you have to do it over and over again until you realize it. "Fake it 'til you make it," Steven Tyler from Aerosmith once said.

It helps to get away from people who are down on the opposite sex, who believe true love is a myth for suckers, and so on. Hang around with people who enjoy good love relationships. Absorb their good luck. It's contagious.

Recognize the fact that your past relationships weren't ideal, but don't feel sorry for yourself. Move on. Believe that the love you want and desire wants and desires you, too.

Keep at it until one morning you find yourself waking up next to a man who cherishes you the way you were meant to be cherished.

Should a Guy Pay For the First Date?

A couple of readers asked me this one.

I answered via my e-newsletter that, yeah, the guy should pay the first time out, only because most men will assume you're politely giving them the heave-ho if you reach into your wallet.

Unfortunately, this means that men can shoulder an unfair financial burden. So, if you're out for the first time with a guy, and you like him, let him pay. Then look him in the eye, smile sincerely, and thank him. You can say, "What do you say we let me get it next time?"

This way, he knows you like him. He knows you are not taking advantage of him (a lot of men have been burned by women who feigned interest in an effort to score free drinks, for example, although I know for a fact you are not one of them).

If he likes you, he'll call you again (don't call him; you've made your intentions known). Suggest something affordable and pick up the check.

My advice solicited a question from another reader who said she went out with a guy she met on a dating site. As she approached the register to pay for her meal at an Italian buffet, the guy, who'd already paid for his, gave her an annoyed look. He asked her if she expected him to pay.

She said this pretty much 'screamed' to her that he didn't like her even before they'd eaten lunch. She asked if I agreed. I agree. It's possible that he was protecting himself from being taken, but come on. What a turn-off!

Next.

And if he ever called again, I'd tell him thanks but no thanks.

If a guy's hitting dating sites and meeting several new women a week, it's going to get expensive if he pays for meals. If you agree to meet a fellow you met online, save yourself the trouble of a potentially awkward situation. Suggest you get together for coffee.

Then, if he turns out to be a graceless jerk who balks at paying for yours, tell the clerk you'll take it 'to go.'

When Are You Getting Married?

Is that the most annoying question, or what?

Wait a second. I'm wrong. It's, "Aren't you ever going to get married?"

This query tends to be posed by people who want you to believe they mean well, but if they meant well, they'd entertain the possibility that you're happy as you are and mind their own damn business.

The subtext to "Aren't you ever going to get married?" is, of course, that you must be a loser, hopelessly immature, or just so repulsive that you can't manage to attract another person to spend life with.

When I was single, I, too, had to fend off an unrelenting parade of clowns who wanted to know if I'd ever get married. I must say it required a good deal of fortitude to deal with them. After a while, I got the hang of looking an inquisitor straight in the eye and answering her question with a question.

"Why do you ask?" I'd inquire.

"Well, you're not getting any younger," came the reply.

"And neither are you," I'd say. "But I don't look quite so beaten down by life as you do now, do I?"

And that'd shut her up.

If you're getting heat to hook a live one, I beseech you to stay strong. A very good friend of mine caved into family pressure to give them the big day out, and she regretted it. Painfully regretted it. She's since divorced the guy and moved on, but she went through hell first.

Date leisurely.

If your goal is to meet and marry a wonderful person with whom you can spend a happy life, that's grand. Know what you want and hold out for it. In the meantime, don't let anybody--I don't care if it's your mother, your aunt, or the guy at the coffee truck--pressure you into picking out a china pattern before you're good and ready.

Because once you get married, whether it's to the right person or the wrong one, the same pests will come out of the woodwork to ask you, "Aren't you ever going to have a baby?"

Single Women Just Want to Date and Have Fun

I recommend two great resources for single women. The first is Ronnie Ann Ryan's free newsletter and her ebook, Manifesting Mr. Right, which describes how Ronnie found love after the age of 35, and how you can, too.

Sign up for Ronnie's newsletter, and you'll receive her report, "10 Reasons Why a Woman Should Never Pay on the First Date." While you're at it, you can fish around for information on the new podcast about dating I recently did with Ronnie.

The other is Eve's Society, an organization devoted to helping women shake the socially-fostered mentality that urges them to make finding a man their goal in life. Founder Keysha Whitaker's goal is for women to have fun and prosper whether a knight in shining (or newly refurbished) armor ever shows up.

Paris Hilton Back In Jail

If you're here for dating advice, scroll down a bit. In the meantime, I have to get something off my chest.

The news media are incensed about Paris Hilton's latest statement:

"I must also say that I was shocked to see all of the attention devoted to the amount of time I would spend in jail for what I had done by the media, public and city officials. I would hope going forward that the public and the media will focus on more important things like the men and women serving our country in Iraq and other places around the world."

The plastic coifs on TV laughed their heads off. "Since when is Paris Hilton interested in international affairs?" they scoffed.

Whether Miss Hilton's concern is genuine or not is beside the point. Like her or hate her, our men and women remain in Iraq. There are more important things going on in the world besides Paris Hilton.

Try telling that to NBC. The Today Show knuckleheads followed up an in-depth segment on the girl's incarceration (featuring former Westchester County DA Jeanine Pirro and TV psychologist Dr. Keith Ablow) with breaking news about British women discovering a cure for wrinkles.

Dating Tips For the Shy Woman

People who meet me today can't believe I used to be freakishly shy. In fact, I spent the first part of my freshman year of high school learning how to make eye contact with other humans. Now, there are days when I'm still shy, but I've gotten better at hiding it.

Shyness is paralysis. It holds you back from getting what you deserve in life. A lot of the time, people don't even realize you're terrified of talking to them and saying the wrong thing. They just assume you're a filthy snob, and that makes things worse.

Especially if you want to meet a person to spend the rest of your life with.

If you're shy and ready to get over it, I've written an article that may help. Click here to check it out.

Make Them Show You the Love

Sure, you have to love yourself if you want to attract excellent men. But this helps, too: Only do business with people who love you, or at least treat you with the consideration you deserve.

This became clear to me yesterday. We've been busy with my father-in-law's wake and funeral over the past few days, which required us to eat in various restaurants. We met Peter's family for a quick bite before the wake on Thursday at the Bayside Diner, where our waiter smiled, made eye contact, and gave the impression that he wanted us to enjoy ourselves.

In Bayside yesterday, we hit another diner for lunch. Despite our attempts to engage our waiter as a human being, he didn't look up from his pad, plunked our plates on the table, and gave the impression that he couldn't care less if we got stabbed in the parking lot.

Food always tastes better when it's served with a smile, and ours hadn't been. I left the diner feeling strangely unsatisfied and unloved.

As I got to the car, I remembered an incident from a year ago at the Pig and Whistle, an Irish pub near my father's in Manhattan. A pack of regulars had lodged themselves at the bar to get roaring drunk. And they were roaring, let me tell you. You couldn't hear much besides them.

I felt uncomfortable. I'd suggested that our group go there in the first place and built the place up as a good spot for fish and chips and a pint of Guinness, but the crowd at the bar threatened to ruin the evening.

And then the manager made his way to our table. He introduced himself and asked if we were tourists enjoying our stay in New York. I told him my father and his friend lived nearby, and we'd just stopped in for dinner. He didn't apologize for the behavior of the people at the bar, but you could tell that he was concerned that they'd killed our chances for a good time. He impressed us to no end.

Face it, if we'd walked out in a huff, why should he care? The place is crowded at lunch and jammed to the rafters at dinner. He didn't need us. But he went out of his way to consider our feelings. Of course we went back. Which diner do you think I'll visit the next time I go to Bayside?

I've made it my policy to support businesses that support me, and I suggest you do the same. If your dry cleaner sneers when you ask to pick up your shirts a day early, find someone who'll do it cheerfully. Avoid supermarket checkers who delight in blasting your eggs with jumbo bottles of Tide. If you have to, wait on longer lines for better service.

Surround yourself with people who treat you as you would treat them -- in every aspect of your life.

What does this have to do with dating? It has everything to do with dating. When you expect people--even strangers-- to treat you well, you become accustomed to being treated well.

Then you attract men who treat you well.

Make sense?

Jealousy Hurts

It gives you a big pain in your stomach, for one thing. It also repels decent men and attracts controlling jerks like a magnet.

Stop worrying about a guy's old girlfriends, the beautiful oncologist who takes care of his father, and anyone happens to be thinner than you. Never compare yourself to anybody but yourself.

When you're with a man, your attitude has to be, "I'm a great girl, and you'd be lucky to have me."

Are You Ready For Love?

Take this fun quiz to find out. It's an eye-opener!

I met its author, Ronnie Ann Ryan, at a meeting last January, and we've become friends. I'd read several of her articles over the years and admired her approach to men and dating. At the age of 40, she decided she was ready for lasting love, set out to get it, and succeeded. Now she's showing other women how to do it in her ebook, Manifesting Mr. Right.

Which definitely beats manifesting Mr. Wrong.

In other news, my father-in-law's wake begins tonight. The past week has been a blur of visits to and from relatives, and our house is loaded with pleasant overnight guests.

Off to iron my daughter's dress. Does she have tights without a hole in them? May have to run out and get a fresh pair.

Martha Stewart clearly doesn't live in this house!

I just heard that Paris Hilton was sprung from the pokey after doing three measly days of her sentence. Wow. Why couldn't authorities just give her community service and leave the rest of us out of it?

My Problem With Isaac Mizrahi For Target

Warning: The following is another of the author's opinions on things that have absolutely nothing to do with dating. If you're here for dating advice, slide down the page a bit.

Went to Target the other day. Target is the kind of place best approached with your eyes closed. You can't help wanting everything you see. A gorgeous aqua twill party dress by Isaac Mizrahi caught my eye immediately.

I love Isaac Mizrahi. The man knows how to design for a woman's body, particularly this particular woman's imperfect body. The dress in question hung from the rack fetchingly. It spoke to me.

It said, "Terry, if you buy me, I will make you beautiful."

Standing there in my jeans that emphasize the wretched lump beneath my navel (actually, all jeans emphasize the lump beneath my navel), I knew the dress told the truth. Just like the A-line skirt I bought from the Isaac collection a couple of years ago (for, like, $24), the dress would erase all lumpenness from my physique. I would look absolutely smashing in it.

The price tag read $29. A rumble went off in my head, echoing the thundering in my heart: I - have to - have this - dress! I - have to - have this - dress!

And then a small voice said, "But Terry, you don't have any place to wear it."

And the dress countered, "But, I know you, Terry. You'll find a place to wear it."

And I thought to myself, that dress knows me better than my own mother.

So I took the dress off the rack and held it against me, like a boyfriend you love just a little bit more every time you look at him.

I picked at the label inside the dress and read the washing instructions.

I decided I could live with them.

But then I saw the dreaded words, the phrase that makes me shake down to my heels:

MADE IN CHINA.

And I knew I had to say goodbye to my beautiful dress. Because it's made in China, it's possible that somebody else's kid, maybe the same age as my kid, sat for hours upon hours without a bathroom break and perhaps a beating or two, sewing a dress that would make me feel good about myself for a couple of hours. She was paid about twenty-five cents a hour for her trouble.

I wonder why Target won't pay Americans (or fairly treated allies) to manufacture their beautiful things. I'd have paid twice or three times the price for that garment, and you would have too, if you'd seen it.

It killed me to return my beloved dress to the rack. It hated turning my back on it and walking away.

But I did it. I had to.

Cheating A-Rod Only Fools Himself

In the interests of full disclosure, I'm not a Yankees fan. I grew up in Flushing, New York, the home of The Mets.

But the reports about A-Rod, this professional athlete who has gained a reputation for cheating on his wife, intrigue me. This morning, Good Morning America asked why the very attractive Cynthia Rodriguez remains loyal to a man who allegedly text messages strippers from across the country when he isn't dating them.

I'll tell you what I'd do if I were married to A-Rod. I'd tell him not to let the door hit him on his way out. Yeah, I know he makes a lot of money, but who cares? Money can't buy respect, and I couldn't respect a dude who carries on like that. It's just sad.

I'd take comfort in the fact that, since strippers don't come cheap, it won't be long before A-Rod is a fat, washed-up MLB player who blew a fortune paying women who couldn't care less about him for their company. I'd very quietly shut the door, raise my child with dignity, and move on to better things.

What disturbs me most about the A-Rod drama? It perpetuates the myth that all men are compelled to cheat. In other words, Cynthia may be lovely, but she's just one woman. One woman's never enough for a major league no-neck like A-Rod.

Nonsense.

Check out this Boston Red Sox fan's fascinating take on the matter.