In the game of love, can an expert really help you find "the one"?
When I meet him for a one-on-one, Hussey susses me out annoyingly quickly: He says that my appearance and small talk are fine, but he wants to see me work a room. He also suggests that I wait longer than 15 hours before sleeping with someone. (My “Technically, it wasn’t the same night, so it’s not that bad” defence doesn’t quite cut it.) Then he stumbles onto the big thing: I have control issues. I’m hesitant about letting myself go, and men sense this and are wary. He’s right, but that’s a bigger issue for another time. For now, I’ll start with the small stuff. I sign up to a dating site and, thinking of Adams’ “just a coffee” rule, talk one guy down from dinner to a lunch date. The whole situation is surprisingly enjoyable. On a night out, I adopt Hussey’s “approach and engage” technique, which involves asking someone for a favour. I sidle up to a group of men, pretend that I’m looking for something in my bag and casually ask the most handsome one to hold my drink while I find it. He looks confused but obliges. Then I cop out and tell them that I am writing a piece for a women’s magazine and want to ask them how they approach women. I’ve always worked on the assumption that if a man likes you he’ll approach you, but almost all of them admitted that they wouldn’t.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve put the rest of what I learned into action. I laugh at men’s jokes. I engage in the small touches and eye contact. I don’t talk about my exes. Out of the five dates I go on, five of them want to see me again — I’m the one who isn’t so keen. And what I’ve learned is that finding the guy is not the same as falling in love. There are plenty of strategies to meet men, but that’s not learning about love; that’s just learning about yourself, your needs and your shortcomings. But even when you’ve done that, the very nature of love may make the right thing repulsive and the wrong thing the perfect fit — all you can do is try to stack the odds in your favour and create opportunities. I thought this experiment would end up telling me that being single is my fault, but instead it taught me that I’m okay — there are no glaring flaws that make me a love disaster.
So, why hasn’t it happened? Even the experts couldn’t answer that, so everything I’ve learned hasn’t been enough to shake my original belief: that love is untameable and unpredictable. And all I can do is remain open and patient...and wait. It will happen — I’m more confident in that than ever.
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