dating dos & don’ts How to find love in 2016.

Wendy Newman, author of (so named because she went on that many before meeting her partner), lays out four ways we’re derailing our dating life...and four things we can do about it.

do

1. Literally, just do it. “Start dating. Be intentional. Get online—it’s the place people go to meet someone for a relationship, period.” 2. Make the first move. “Reach out to people. There are all kinds of experts who say that women shouldn’t make the first move or that ‘the one who speaks first loses all the power.’ That’s crap. I’d say that of all my great first dates with quality men, I reached out to 80 percent of them. I didn’t ask them out—I wanted them to pursue me—but I had to let them know that in the sea of millions of people out there online, I existed.” 3. Drop the handkerchief. “The way I got so many dates without pursuing men was by dropping ‘the virtual handkerchief.’ I would write one or two short paragraphs about something we had in common or something I was impressed by, or I’d address something unusual in his profile, and I’d always include a question. No answer meant not interested. A short reply to my email without the answer to my question made me assume he was being polite but was also uninterested. I was on the lookout for those who enthusiastically wrote back.” 4. Make it real. “Meet right away. Trying to vet someone in advance doesn’t provide any more safety than meeting them in a bright public place. Writing epic emails and daydreaming about your future with them is a colossal waste of time. Most first dates are over in the first few minutes because there isn’t a connection.”

don’t

1. Be all #squadgoals all the time. “The top thing women do wrong is go out in a girl pack. How much fun do you think it is for someone to walk up to a group of six women at a table to see if one of them is interested? Stand on your own for a while and see if that attractive person makes his or her way to you—or make your way to him or her, away from your friends.” 2. Miss what’s in front of you. “We’re all guilty of not looking up to see who’s checking us out. We’re lost in our phones, a book, the ongoing word game we’ve been playing with a friend since 2012. We don’t give people in the real world a chance to connect with us.” 3. Expect it to just, like, happen. “We say we want to meet our special someone, but then we don’t do anything about it. We aren’t actively working on it because we’re employing wishful thinking—like declaring we’re ready for our person and then assuming they will magically show up. I’ve rarely heard that story turn out.” 4. Date until you’re ready. “The most costly mistake that you can make when you’re trying to meet someone is not doing the prep work. It’s important to know who you are, what you’re after and what’s never going to be okay with you. By the end of my dating process, I knew myself, what I was looking for and what I wasn’t looking for, and my list was long! People said, ‘You’re too picky.’ Turns out I wasn’t—it just took a while. My partner has everything on my list of things and a little bit more.” h