Dating With Dignity

By Carole Lieberman, M.D.

Yes, it’s very tempting to settle for anyone in your bed during the holidays, just so you don’t end the year alone. But, just like a lump of coal can disguise itself as an intriguing gift when it’s hiding inside your stocking, a bad boy or bad girl can disguise themselves as an intriguing new love when they are hiding behind a façade. Indeed, these manipulative lovers know that holiday time is a great time to go on the prowl because we are especially vulnerable. We all want a hot kiss from someone who’s madly in love with us as the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve. So, unconsciously we hear our inner clock ticking as soon as the Halloween candy is gone, telling us it’s time to find that special someone.

As you know, it’s hardest to find love when you are desperately looking for it, so you might become easy prey for bad boys who are prowling for sex and other favors, and bad girls who are looking to trap ‘sitting ducks’. Here are some tips on how to recognize these heartbreakers.

In my book, Bad Boys: Why We Love Them, How to Live with Them and When to Leave Them, I define 12 types of bad boys, such as the Fixer-Upper Lover, Compulsive Flirt, Commitment-Phobe, Self-Absorbed Seducer, Wounded Poet and Prince of Darkness. A bad boy is “both a lost little boy and a man with a dark side…. Because he’s aloof and elusive, you get caught up in the challenge and excitement of the chase – though he’s not always someone you’d really want even if you did capture him…. He’s a frog you hope to turn into a fairy-tale prince with the magic of your kiss.”

Similarly, in Bad Girls: Why Men Love Them & How Good Girls Can Learn Their Secrets, I define 12 types of bad girls – the ‘dozen dangerous damsels’. These include the Gold-Digger, Sex Siren, Husband Hunter and Trapper, Husband Stealer, Ball-Buster and Ultimate Damsel in Distress. “Just as little girls are forewarned that they’ll need to kiss a lot of frogs before they find their prince, society forewarns little boys that they’ll need to slay a lot of dragons before they’ll win the heart of their true princess.”

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‘Tis the holiday season! Time to take out that little black dress – or red – or silver, put on that new shade of lipstick and go out on the town, hoping to meet a hot man at a holiday party who hopefully isn’t…gasp… TAKEN!

But as you grab for that gorgeous dress, you see something hanging next to it – something hard and ugly – the skeletons… you know the ones… the ones that have followed your around all these years making sure that whatever splashing impression you make gets sabotaged by the dark past.

You are likely afraid that those skeletons in your closet will turn him off – Well, not necessarily.

We all have a few skeletons lying somewhere in our closets in the form of emotional baggage – an iconic image that represents the weight of all the painful memories we carry on our shoulders everywhere we go. These skeletons come in all shapes and all sizes, from unrealistic expectations to problematic trust issues.

Oftentimes, we use the skeletons in our closet to build a cage around our hearts that will protect us from ever getting hurt again, but we also end up rejecting others from ever truly getting close to us. Is your emotional baggage doing you more harm than good? I guess that depends on what kind of man you are trying to attract into your life.

In my book, Understand Men Now, a woman’s guide to understanding men in relationships, I talk about six different types of men you will come across in the dating world. When it comes to emotions, most men try to avoid them like the plague, but some men may actually try to help you clean out your closet.

Here are six ways that a relationship-ready man might react to the skeletons in your closet:

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By Orna & Matthew Walters

The holidays can be a difficult time to be single and dating. There is a lot of pressure to find someone who can share all of those holiday events with, culminating with the ultimate pressure filled event, New Year’s Eve. It’s enough to drive you into the arms of the nearest available man. This is a strategy that results in high expectations and crushing disappointment.

We want to offer a different path this holiday season, one that could very well make sure you never spend another holiday lonely and alone. And to accomplish this, you need to change the direction of your focus – away from finding the right man, right now, and towards becoming the right woman, always.

The path to accomplish this feat requires that you stop looking for someone to complete you and start becoming the best woman you can be. This requires you to take some loving actions with yourself.

The first step is to release yourself from finding him now. Relax, enjoy the holidays with friends and family, and ignore all those questions about why you are still single. The winter is the perfect time to reflect and introspect. Take this time to look inward and develop a positive self-love practice.

Here are a few suggestions:

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By Ali Binazir, MD

Hooray for the holidays – a time for presents, parties, and love for all! Everyone’s in a good mood and having a ball! Right?

Well, sort of. In the midst of the celebrations, there is a dark side as well: the folks who felt lonely and isolated before the holidays may feel even more excluded and be pushed to despair. Rates of suicide and depression are sky-high during the holiday season.

So if you’re a single person – and perhaps perennially so – seeing all these lovey-dovey couples in their warm, impeccably-decorated households with their lovey-dovey couple friends may not do much to boost your mood.

But there is yet hope – opportunity in the midst of crisis! In my job as Captain Obvious, I’m happy to report that you are not alone in your singlehood. Before the holidays, there are about 50 million single women in the US and about the same number of single men. With the right mindset and a little bit of initiative, the holidays may be the best time for you to create some meaningful connections, anywhere from a pleasantly torrid make-out session to a life partner. Here are some ideas:

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By Debi Berndt

When you are single around the holidays, you can be tempted to focus on what you don’t have in the absence of your true love. Whether you have been alone for a while or are recently going through a breakup, it may be hard for you to have any sense of gratitude. You know you should try to be happy in the moment, but it is just so darn difficult to have any holiday cheer.

This spiritual idea of being at peace without wanting anything more was always a struggle for me. I used to wonder if that meant I have to settle for being unattached and stop complaining. I thought I had to give up my desires and attachment to external things to be truly enlightened. No matter how much I meditated and tried to let go, I still wanted my dating life to change. I found it hard to imagine being satisfied until “the one” arrived.

Whether you are out in the dating world or in a relationship desiring it to go to the next level, you should not feel guilty for wanting more as long as you remember to be peaceful in the now. The natural law of life is to grow and expand so the good news is there is more to come. You are constantly in motion, growing toward something. You are not a static force. You have always been perfect, but never finished with the masterpiece of your life.

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We’ve invited a panel of stellar dating and relationship experts to share their insights on how to maximize your date-ability and relationship-readiness during the challenging holiday season.  Please visit our blog from December 15- January 1, as each day we’ll have a new expert weigh in.

Honing in on Your Holiday Date-ability Inventory

By David Wygant

It’s the season that the invitations for get-togethers are flowing and the holiday office parties are right around the corner. When it comes to times of year when singles obsess about their “date-ability” factor, the end-of-the-year holidays rank right up there with Valentine’s Day.

With this weighing on you, now is a great time to do your year-end inventory. Take this opportunity to take into consideration how your year, your friends and your life really turned out in the past 12 months. Let all that holiday cheer slap a smile on your face. By the time New Year’s Day rolls around, you’ll be ready to start anew.

That’s really the mentality of many people: January 1 comes, clean slate, we get to start all over again, we have all these ridiculous New Year’s resolutions, and then we get to break them throughout the course of the year to get to the end of December again.

But here’s a truth that most people are not saying: You’re also bringing all of your old habits, you’re bringing all of your past experiences with you into the next year.  You can’t escape you, no matter what you do.  There’s no escape.  And there shouldn’t be.

So what should you be doing this December while you’re really cleaning house for the holidays and doing your year-end inventory?  You need to ask yourself: Do you really possess all the skills that you desire to go out there and meet all the men you want to meet next year?  Do you even know how to put yourself out there and attract and flirt with men?

Are you a woman who’s waiting for men to approach you over and over again, and hope that you find the right location to meet men next year so they can approach you?  If so, I call you the passive waiter.  No matter where you are, you’re always hoping and waiting for something to happen.  You’re always hoping that if you go out, some man will come over and want to meet you.

January 1 is not going to change that.  The end of the year is coming, and it’s time that you are more honest with yourself.  What do you need to learn in order to attract men?  What type of mind set changes do you need to have?  And are you still the kind of woman who is waiting, hoping, and praying you meet the right guy?

Take a look at the number of dates you’ve gone on this year and ask yourself, are you happy with that number?  Now I want you to go even deeper with yourself and ask yourself this question: how do you increase that number?  I can tell you one thing from my years of experience coaching women all over the country:  it’s going to take work, it’s going to take an effort, and it’s going to take more than getting dressed and standing around.  It’s going to take more than just depositing yourself at the right social scenes.  It’s about learning how to flirt the right way with men to let them know you’re interested, learning how to be happy and comfortable with flirting and forgetting about that thing called “rejection.”

The holidays are happening whether you’re ready for them or not. By the time the new year rolls around, you’re going to want to be ready to hit the ground running. But don’t expect a seasonal miracle; you’re going to have to put in some real work between now and then to learn new things about yourself and the dating game.

David Wygant is an internationally-renowned dating and relationship coach, author and speaker.  His advice has transformed the dating lives and relationships of hundreds of thousands of people from every corner of the globe.  He offers his advice as a writer for Ask Men, Huffington Post and across television segments, newspapers and magazines, including MTV, The New York Times, MSNBC, Fox News, Cosmopolitan, Men’s Health and E! Entertainment Television — as well as on over 2,000 radio shows. To find out more about David and all of his dating and relationship-building products, visit him on his website at http://www.davidwygant.com.

There is nothing more frustrating to the single woman than the moment she suspects the man she has tagged as “Mr. Possible Long-term Relationship,” begins to show signs of pulling away. Before we launch into signs he actually is “pulling away,” (there are signs you want to recognize) it’s critical to understand that, in truth, women may often only imagine the vanishing act is about to ensue when, in fact, it’s merely fear from past relationships that ended abruptly sparking your vivid imagination.

That said then, if the man you are dating has been consistently, over a four – eight week period for example, behaving as if he is interested in getting to know you better and the relationship is progressing, it could be a sign that it is YOU who is interpreting a variety of harmless behaviors as signs he is ready to bolt.

Why does this happen?

Often, the woman who says she is “ready to be in a relationship,” begins to imagine “pull away” syndrome (PAS) simply because she is truly terrified to begin to trust, become intimate (emotional as well as physically intimate) and may sabotage the process by leaking her fears. Here are two excellent examples of how this fear may surface:

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