November 3, 2022November 8, 2022 by Stephanie Mumford Brown

Be your own Indian matchmaker

The Netflix series “Indian Matchmaking” offers some advice worth considering, if you’re looking for love the second time around. Just be sure to ignore the guidelines that don’t import well.

Indian Matchmaking provides the usual ingredients of reality TV: intrigue, surprise, disgust, amusement, boredom. Yet if you’re an American woman in midlife who’s seeking a mate, the Netflix series, now in Season 2, also serves up some education.

Mumbai-based Sima Taparia (a.k.a. Aunty Sima) relies on intuition and astral charts, instead of algorithms, to propose pairings of young professionals. She uses a spreadsheet of candidates, collects on-paper “biodata,” and meets in person with clients in the U.S. as well as India, for a multi-thousand-dollar fee usually paid by their frustrated parents.

If you think arranged marriage means forced marriage, think again. These would-be spouses are clearly the deciders, and most of them are as fussy as a cat considering a new flavor of Fancy Feast.

Sima’s fundamental principle is simple: opposites do not attract. This truth is by no means unique to Indian culture, but some of her other factors are—at least, insofar as they’re explicitly addressed in her client projects.

Here are several Sima standards to consider applying as you view your dating landscape. Also, a few you definitely shouldn’t import.

Consider these principles

Marrying a family, not just a spouse

Among the Indian elite, marriage can have financial and reputational impacts akin to royal alliances. Sima interviews not only target singletons, but also parents. For more traditional families, her meeting room is stuffed with siblings, grandparents, cousins, uncles, and “aunties”—a tie that can be defined by caring (and nosiness) as much as blood.

Your own nuclear family may not be in growth mode this time around—you’re already supplied with most of the offspring and assets you’re likely to acquire. But you and your man are still joining each other’s tribes.

The Romeo and Juliet scenario is strictly kid stuff. Do you really want to give up all your friends and relatives to live in isolated infatuation with the new guy? Not if you’re planning on having a full life, including one that may last longer than your beau’s.

Seeking harmony in spiritual and political beliefs

We live in an era of profound antagonism between political camps, and the realm of religion is raked by deep divisions on certain topics—including whether faith is even a valid concept. Your days will be more serene with a partner who does not try to convert your views, nor say demeaning things about those who share them.

During the 2016 campaign season, I was involved with a man did not share my preference among Presidential candidates. It was exhausting. While I enjoy having occasional conversations with sane friends whose political views differ from mine, I don’t want partisan disputes as a daily diet.

In a relationship with a man holding views similar to mine, we rarely talk about politics at all, except for the occasional WTF?!? conversation. There are plenty of other meaningful topics to discuss.

Distinguishing selectivity from greediness

Rigid candidate requirements are the matchmaker’s bane. Sima tries to help hard-to-match clients separate the criteria that truly count and from the merely nice-to-have.

It can take a while to figure this out. On the one hand, limiting your search to men with college degrees can be an effective first sort of an overwhelming online database. On the other hand, declaring you won’t date bald men may eliminate someone who’s otherwise ideal.

For many years I screened out men who said they rode motorcycles. “I don’t want to be a widow again anytime soon,” I declared. Then I stopped doing that, and guess who turned out to be Mr. Otherwise Perfect?

Sima also advises withholding judgment about photos. I find them useful mostly for indicating a man’s activities—you may be happy to see a hiker and you’ll never go for the guy on the snowmobile. Men’s portraits tend to say little about their real-life looks, beyond cap-wearing that clues you in on a well-receded hairline.

Dismal selfies abound. Why are most men’s photos so bad? And so much worse than most women’s? Evidently, we believe it when we’re told men are visual. Yet men don’t believe, or never hear, that women are equally so.

Ignore these principles

Selecting by skin color

Colorism in South Asia is complex in origin, surprisingly recent, and pervasive now in marriage criteria. The Netflix show avoids dealing with it, but “light-skinned” is well-known as a common match requirement in that culture.

Is this racism? Unique to India? Yes and no. Many U.S.-based dating apps let you include race as a criterion in database screening. Further, you can sort by color of hair or eyes, but not by complexion.

This is too fraught a topic to sort out here. I’ll simply repeat my precept: be selective about your selectivity. Limit your criteria, especially the physical ones, to factors that truly shape your enjoyment of life with another person.

Height requirements

Many of Sima’s female clients want a tall partner; some of her male ones do too, but not taller than they are. Demanding a minimum or maximum height is an acceptable prejudice in our society, but it may not be a very practical one.

Want to slash your field of candidates? Insist on a man at least six feet tall. You’ll eliminate 82 percent of the adult male American population.

Granted, you may have a meaningful body-image or erotic need that makes petite or towering a must-have. Still, there are so many famous Mutt and Jeff types who couple happily, I won’t even bother to list them.

Looking to the stars

Would you accept or reject a life partner on the basis of an astrological chart? Apparently this happens in Indian matchmaking, at least as a follow-on to positive interpersonal impressions. (Hefty astrologer fees get put off until things get serious.)

I’ll confess to checking my horoscope in the Sunday paper for laughs and saving my annual birthday blurb for predictions about the year ahead. Notice how these summaries never say “the next 12 months of your life will totally suck”?

But I put no store in astrological analysis of romantic compatibility. Horoscopes always predicted doom for the bond between my sign and that of my college boyfriend. And lo and behold, that relationship lasted a mere four decades.

Does Indian matchmaking actually work?

Here’s the bottom line on the first season of Indian Matchmaking: Nobody got hitched. My source here is the British tabloids that cover reality shows as avidly as football teams, not Netflix.

Some failures were no surprise, like the Houston lawyer whose list of two dozen dealbreakers in men ranged from lack of exotic travel experience to being too funny. She’s back in Season 2.

Others who failed to launch were unexpected, including one woman who seemed to find the ideal answer to her niche requirements of ethnicity and faith. She’s since been touted by an online service as finally acquiring a husband there instead via matchmaker.

I don’t pooh-pooh Sima’s overall track record, however, even if she bats closer to .300 than 1.000. What I do question are the fees of any analog matchmaking service, including U.S. ones that cater to wealthy clients (and have also supplied reality-TV fodder).

Those who can afford hands-on service may find the price alone useful as a screening device. But the rest of us can do the human part as well as most pros, if we learn the ropes and put in the time.

You are your own Indian matchmaker with a little help from Big Data. So you might as well drape yourself in a mental sari from time to time and listen to your Inner Aunty. Focus on practical factors like compatibility of values and families. Once they have an opportunity to align, romance may not only follow, but also last.

October 4, 2022October 7, 2022 by Stephanie Mumford Brown

Golf dates and match play

Here’s three formats for getting-to-know-you golf dates. They’re adaptable to other athletic activities ranging from tennis to trail-running to ax-throwing. Or anything involving a swimsuit, if you dare.

How playing a round can lead to romance

Golf is a classic business tool not only for customer schmoozing but also because player behavior provides deeper clues about the character of a potential vendor, collaborator, or employee. So why not use it to check out a potential romantic partner?

As an avid player, I can attest that golf is one of the best ways to get to know someone. It’s also one of the worst: too much time, too much money, terrifying for anyone who lacks confidence in his or her game.

Lack of confidence doesn’t necessarily refer to anxious female tyros trying to keep up with long and strong men. Most of the men I have golf-dated haven’t been able to get off the first tee with their first shot.

Swing, miss.

Swing, hit ball into pond.

Swing, drive ball 40 yards.

But it’s dry and playable; my turn to tee off.

The way the man on the tee deals with first-drive failure gives me a sense of who he is. My reaction (patience with humor) reveals portions of my personality, too.

I hereby offer three different formats for getting-to-know-you golf dates. They’re adaptable to other athletic activities ranging from tennis to trail-running to ax-throwing. Or anything involving a swimsuit, if you dare.

1. The Setup

This is basically a sneak attack: arranging a round with a new person who is potentially eligible, but “it’s just golf.” I’ve done this for others and for myself—indeed, involving the same man, in one case, though not at the same time. But you could do that, too, and let the best woman win.

The presence of four humans diffuses the tension of romantic evaluation, though when two are single and the rest are married, the agenda’s not exactly hidden, either. I first did this when married, hosting an early morning foursome that included a married male client, a single male lawyer who shared the client, and a single female engineer I knew through my golf league.

This setup didn’t stick. My female friend ran off the ninth green, claiming an urgent need to get to work and leaving married me having post-round coffee with the legal target. We had a fine time, and I later complained to a fellow yenta, Jeez, what’s wrong with Julie? If I weren’t married, I’d be interested in him.

Be careful what you wish for. Three years later I was widowed and setting up my own self with the still-single lawyer. We played golf several times, and followed the third round with a sunset-view patio dinner that was the most goddam romantic non-date I’d ever been on. The next time I suggested golf, he instead suggested cocktails at the swankiest bar in town. The rest is history.

Except it’s not. Despite our ironic meet-cute worthy of a Nora Ephron screenplay or a New York Times “Modern Romance” column, this particular prince did not rescue the maiden. It turned out he was only technically single and was emotionally cheating on his ex-girlfriend with me; within months the tower came crashing down on my fairy tale.

On this, I do not blame golf.

2. The Checkout

This is another form of sneak attack. If a romantic prospect invites you to play “couples golf,” you’re getting checked out by his or her friends.

My experience with this sort of inspection goes both ways. I have dear friends who routinely invite my swain of the moment to play so he can consider joining their country club. What they’re really doing, of course, is considering whether he should join me.

On the other side of the equation, the above lawyer asked married friends to play with us at his club. After they gave me enthusiastic post-round reviews, he signed up the four of us for a charity tournament six months later. By the day of the event, he and I had moved on to other partners—which was news to the married couple, since there I was, playing on the tournament team. Well, I’ve got my athletic priorities!

Couples golf has a follow-on purpose that’s more relaxed. As your relationship matures, playing golf with lover and friends, his and yours, is one way of integrating your current life together with your previous ones apart. Maintaining old relationships can be hard while you’re building a new one, and sports socializing is one practical way of doing so.

3. The Early-Stage Evaluation

No third parties needed here. Say you’ve had three or four coffees, lunches, and dinners that establish sufficient mutual interest; playing together can help you decide whether to take things to the next level.

The way someone behaves during a challenging physical activity is a true tell of temperament. The trick, with golf in particular, is to do it without falling prey to a fun-robbing case of nerves. Consider taking these precautions:

Don’t play 18 holes. Four or more hours together is too damn long unless your primary purpose is actually golf. Nine-and-dine is an excellent format for dating.
Don’t play an unfamiliar course. There’s enough unknown territory in your partner’s personality.
Don’t keep score. At least, don’t keep his score. Don’t announce yours, either; keep it between you and GHIN.
Don’t play for stakes, whether financial, prideful, or sexual.
Don’t talk too much while you play. Put a post-round meal on the agenda from the get-go.
Don’t misbehave. Don’t throw clubs, hit into the group ahead, drive your riding cart near the green, abuse the cart girl or caddie, use foul language (until your date does, too), or scold your companion because he forgot his wedge on the last green.

I found golf especially useful for getting together during the height of Covid. These initial encounters weren’t quite first dates, because pandemic phone conversations provided a hefty runup to in-person meetings. All of my golf dates were enjoyable and not nerve-wracking—at least for me, since I got off the first tee just fine.

Moreover, one very special man proved his thoughtfulness by inviting me to play golf even though he hadn’t touched his clubs in years, because he had learned that I love the game. In his case, the rest IS history.

Yet here’s what can happen when you do it all wrong. One of my best friends agreed to play 18 holes, not nine, on a blind date. She flubbed her first drive, she kept score (and it was a high one), dumped her pushcart twice, then realized she had lost her car and house keys when doing so. So instead of having a relaxed post-round drink with the guy, she was scouring the course for her belongings.

Eventually the keys were found and the beers consumed. Within a year my friend was living with the guy, and now they’re married. So much for golf rules.

October 3, 2022November 8, 2022 by Stephanie Mumford Brown

Introducing “No Bad Dates”

Finding and forming a relationship is different the second time around. Or third. Or fourth.

Online dating and beyond for women old enough to know better.

Finding and forming a romantic relationship is different the second time around. Or third. Or fourth. After about fifty first dates and five meaningful relationships since I was widowed in 2012, I have hard-earned wisdom to share that’ll help you enjoy meeting new people whether or not you find the next love of your life. (Which, by the way, I finally did.) I’m aiming to finish my book No Bad Dates in 2023; meanwhile, I’m sharing excerpts and advice

May 21, 2022October 3, 2022 by Stephanie Mumford Brown

The joy of ex

Your ex is the evil you know. When a world of unknown hurt surrounds you in the dating space, it’s tempting to take refuge in identifiable pain and convince yourself you can fix it this time.

Why we find former lovers irresistible–and what to do instead of taking them back

I’m about to get dumped. It’s not official yet, but there’s a reason I’m so sure: The man I’ve been seeing just confessed he went kayaking with his former girlfriend last weekend and discovered he still has feelings for her.

You probably already know these rueful rules of relationships: If you’re not sure whether you’re his girlfriend, you’re not. If you think she might be fooling around with someone else, she is. If you’ve been seeing each other six months and you’re not sure he’s the one, he’s not.

Add this one to the rule book: If you have a chance to get back together with your ex, you’ll probably take it.

Why? Because there’s always business left to finish. If the ex broke up with you, reunion feels like victory. If you broke up with the ex, familiarity feels like comfort — until it breeds contempt again.

In either case, your former lover is the evil you know. When a world of unknown hurt surrounds you in the dating space, it’s tempting to take refuge in identifiable pain and convince yourself you can fix it this time.

Outside of romcom plots, however, these second acts in American romantic life rarely last. Because here’s another rule: People don’t change; the reasons you broke up haven’t gone away.

I grant you, there’s one major exception. Splits can mend if they happened for external reasons — a move across the country, a hostile parent or child, a job or school demand that took priority. When outer conditions change, a valid second chance may open up.

But most of us in later adulthood have these external upsets under control. Breakups happen because of fundamental issues within the relationship. Something’s missing or unwanted. Someone behaves badly or doesn’t step up.

I’ve been the relationship breaker a couple of times and the breakee several times more. Too many of these breakups happened with the same person — I’m Exhibit A for ex-appeal.

I did a dumping do-si-do with Daniel that went on for four years. It began a year after we got serious, when his joint-custody teenager moved in for the summer and his charming farmhouse turned into Boystown. After a last-minute eviction on July 4 to make way for a guys-only beerfest, I applied the cold shoulder for three months. I even went online to see if there was anyone better out there, decided there wasn’t, and the shoulder warmed up again along with the rest of me.

Two years later Daniel went to Thailand to find himself, found a fiancée instead, and dumped me by email. When he returned three months later — unmarried— he proposed friendship with benefits. Actually, just benefits. I refused, having met someone better-behaved online.

A month later, I got dumped by the better option. More months of meeting men online kept yielding dead ends, so it was my turn to propose friendship with benefits to the evil that I knew. Daniel agreed with enthusiasm.

Nine months later he dumped me again to marry someone else again, and actually did it this time. But he and his wife planned to spend the next two years living apart for professional reasons, so once again he proposed friendship with benefits.

I said no thanks. Actually, I said no effing way, I respect your marriage even if you don’t.

This is merely the Cliff’s Notes version of the relationship, enough to show you the moth-to-candle interaction among exes and its inevitable result. Over and over and over.

I have finally learned my lesson. For a year now, Daniel and I have been friends without any benefits beyond camaraderie, and that is all I need or expect from him.

But if we’re all consenting adults, why should exes remain sexually taboo? Why shouldn’t we experiment with former lovers and spouses, on the 5% chance that pushing the reset button may work?

One word: pain. That’s what breakups cause, in varying degrees, to all involved. Every time Daniel and I split, I felt stabbed, even if the wound bled less each time.

When my current budding relationship gets snipped off in favor of an ex-revival, it’ll sting. When I unload my sorrow on my best friend for the umpteenth time, she’ll suffer too.

Even when doing the dumping, the men I’ve known don’t enjoy it. I’ve actually had tears shed on my dumped shoulder by a breaker-upper. Pain all around.

So I suggest you resist temptation. Ex it out, so to speak. If you still have feelings for a former lover, try friendship instead.

Just plain friendship, without adjectives or prepositional phrases, offers enough benefits. And when your ex-lover/current friend behaves badly, you can just shrug it off and go home.

April 28, 2021October 3, 2022 by Stephanie Mumford Brown

Five feminist reasons to have a man in your life

For many women these days, men are optional extras. But the good guys are still worth seeking out.

Men are optional extras for women anymore. We don’t need them for their traditional purposes—procreation, security, paychecks—and many of us don’t want them for their traditional pursuits—sex, war-making, lawnmowing.

Even for straight women, the thrill is gone from the one pastime that requires male cooperation: romance. It’s such a tangle of misinterpreted hints, missed cues, mysterious silences, inexplicable rejections… easier to opt out.

I’m a likely candidate for quitter after eight years of dating, yielding three intimate relationships that hit the wall hard enough to fracture my bliss. This follows four better-than-most decades with an eccentric wiseacre who greeted me each morning with Hey, Beautiful! and made me crack up at least twice daily until his final weeks. Wasn’t that a lifetime supply?

Apparently not. I still like men who like women, for friendship and more, and I’ve come up with at least five reasons to seek out the good ones.

1. Men are different from you.

Diversity has become a mainstream desirable, at least among those not culture-canceling in one ideological direction or another, and gender is one aspect of human diversity. Gender may be no longer binary, and of arguable significance and debatable importance, but it’s still here. Interacting socially with a variety of cultures, including male ones, flexes the brain.

2. Men are people too.

Not everyone worth knowing is female (nor is everyone female worth knowing). Many of the worthwhile people in this world are male. Most of them do not need simultaneous translation or manual exploration to value your company.

3. Men know stuff.

I’m not talking about stuff like how to jumpstart a car or chainsaw a tree. Some men partake of the stereotypical canon, some don’t. As for you, take a class.

I refer to your interests, and extending your circle to those who share them and happen to be men. With male companions, I’ve gone to symphony concerts, Broadway musicals, opera, amateur burlesque, charity balls, jazz clubs, and fancy dress boutiques. For that matter, I usually play golf, snowshoe, and go to basketball games with women. A lot of stuff in life is more attached to personal taste than gender.

4. Men talk differently.

Tricky this, but in I plunge. Conversations with men tend to focus on the external: sports, business, politics, the state of the world, the state of a sport. Yes, men get chided for avoiding the intimate, but the female hothouse of personal topics can tire, too. Sometimes it’s a relief to talk about uncomplicated things like carbon trading, virtual private networks, and exchange-traded funds.

Male conversation also is not as consensus-driven as female. Men argue and stay friends. Female sparring takes place on reality TV, not in real life. Groups of women often work much too hard to achieve consensus, when honing opposing positions would be a better use of intellect, and agreeing to disagree a better outcome.

There’s another angle here, of course: Some men think women who disagree with them are disagreeable. We all have a ways to go at learning how to do civil disobedience with each other, but it’ll never happen unless women talk to men instead of behind their backs.

5. Men can make you feel good about yourself.

Men are much less likely to have problems with their own bodies or yours, as plenty of research studies confirm. You probably look better to them than to your own self, since there’s no woman in America without body-image issues. Even models fear that people like them only for their looks.

Male compliments don’t necessarily tie in to sexual preference or flirtatious intention—verbal chivalry can simply be a form of human civility. My late husband, who didn’t stray, nevertheless greeted female friends with “Howdy, gorgeous!” because he liked to set off a glow.

Bonus point: Sex.

This reason is meaningful only for straight and bi woman, and, as noted earlier, there are plenty of workarounds. But there’s nothing like communing with a nice warm male body that has an interesting brain attached—if it values the same in a female one.

So I suggest you consider the male of the species as neither a must-avoid nor a luxury item. Close friendship with a worthwhile man can enhance your social and intellectual life. If you find one who extends friendship to physical intimacy and romantic commitment, all the better and happy you.

In sum: Having a dick doesn’t necessarily make you one. Give a guy a chance.

January 7, 2021October 3, 2022 by Stephanie Mumford Brown

Ready for online dating? Not if you see any of these traits in yourself

You’re not really ready to date if you’re grieving, cheating, or angry.

All’s fair in love and online dating? Not quite. While there are those who see the semi-anonymity of dating sites as a chance to get away with something, this arena won’t work in the long run if it’s rife with cheating, lying, and generally immature behavior.

Accordingly, be honest with yourself first. You may not be eligible yet for online dating if you see any of these traits in the mirror.

1. You’re not over your previous relationship

Are you truly ready to treat the people you’re about to meet as humans unto themselves? Or are you going to view them through spectacles tinted by remnants of your previous lover?

Those lenses may be rose-colored, if you’re widowed, or aviator blue, if you’re recovering from a breakup. Either way, you’re lugging a steamer trunk of distortion to every encounter.

Most people you meet don’t really want to hear about your ex on the first three or more dates. But even if you keep your mouth shut, the ghost of a still-vivid relationship will cast a pall on any new one.

All that said, relationship hangover can serve as a useful variation on “It’s not you, it’s me” when you want to end things with someone who doesn’t do it for you. I first encountered this on the receiving end, after a pleasantly bouncy dinner with a widower. We parted with mutual vows to dine again, but the next day he called to say that meeting me had made him realize he still wasn’t over his wife’s death. (Mind you, it had been five years, and though he was new to JDate, he’d told me the ladies from his synagogue had been fixing him up for most of the interim.)

I believe this was actually a rejection, but it’s one of the most considerate I’ve ever received. I began using variations of it, too.

But don’t use it if you really mean it, because that means you’re not ready to dive into the dating pool. Give yourself a few more months, years, therapy sessions, whatever you need.

2. You’re in a seemingly committed long-term liaison

Granted, certain dating sites accommodate those seeking plural relationships (a.k.a. cheating). They let you announce your status as “married” or “in a relationship.” Some of them even let you announce more frankly that you are looking for a sex-only sideline to your main squeeze.

This is all fine if a) your main squeeze knows this and maybe even squeezes someone else on the side, and b) you are honest from the get-go with your online self-declaration.

Otherwise, you’re a stinker. I won’t get into the impact on your primary relationship; that’s none of my business (which doesn’t mean I don’t have an opinion). My scold here is, it’s unfair to others in the online pool.

If you present yourself as free of entanglements and available for a new relationship, people who read your profile will set their expectations accordingly. Like, hey, she looks interesting, I might like to meet her, date her, maybe even marry her someday. Please don’t waste their time.

I think men do more outright online cheating than women. A male friend of mine, on his first date with a woman he met on Match.com, learned enough about one of her recent online encounters to realize she was talking about his currently married former boss. Yuck.

I myself was contacted by a married man on OKCupid who was overtly seeking a mistress, and because his profile foolishly revealed bits of career, bits of facial hair in a fuzzy photo, and enough bits about his situation—he loved his wife but her health had ended their sex life—I suspected he was the husband of a close acquaintance of mine. He himself seemed to realize this, too, when he bumped into me at a public event and his usual bonhomie turned stilted—since my photo on OKC was not fuzzy. Oops.

Now, what if you are entangled but the end is in sight? And you want to make yourself feel better with the reminder there are other fish in the sea? Indeed, your decision to try to keep your relationship going or call it quits depends in part on how your partner stacks up against the online inventory?

I’ve done it, more than once. There’s a fine line between intention to cheat actively, and self-assurance of personal or partner worth (or lack thereof). Tread carefully.

3. You hate men (or women)

I’m talking here about a temporary attitude, probably held for good reason. My friend Roberta is Exhibit A. She assumed she had an OK, if no longer great, bond with her husband of 20 years, a man of inflating body and declining physical and fiscal health. This assumption turned out to be wrong on several counts.

Her husband suddenly moved in with a young woman he’d met through his contracting business, which was actually doing well on an unreported cash basis. Her pre-teen daughter already had a nicely furnished room at the new woman’s house, where the supposed father-daughter weekend camping trips were actually taking place. All sorts of ugliness ensued.

Roberta decided that dating well was the best revenge. Her pretty profile picture drew men like flies, but messaging with them rarely progressed to dates. Her occasional first dates didn’t lead to seconds.

I read her message exchanges and listened to her reports of date conversations, and immediately saw her problem. She was seething. Her anger infused her interactions, even if she didn’t go on at length about her specific troubles, and male antennae quivered in fear.

It’s not easy being a man. Many American men of ripened generations feel like they’ve had the rug pulled out from under them. As a feminist, I think it’s about bloody time that possession of a penis no longer makes you automatically eligible for more power, responsibility, and pay. But these guys had a set of expectations drilled into them while young, then had them yanked away in the decades that followed.

So they’re stuck with the worst of both worlds: old-fashioned muscle-bound isolation combined with undermined societal status. Father no longer knows best; he doesn’t know shit. Nor does he have supportive girlfriends he can complain to and rely on to talk him through blue spells.

Men like this do not need you to make them feel any worse than they already do from over-and-done-with relationships. Women who are escaping lonely or crappy marriages do not need you to go on and on about what’s wrong with American women.

Be kind, rewind, if you’re still in hate-mode from a lousy partner. The good men and women deserve better.

No Bad Dates