The Rules’ premise is that if you act stuck up and too busy to hang out you’ll seem mysterious which will mean that the excitement of getting to know you will drive men crazy. Though there is precisely no concrete evidence, not even good old malleable statistics, or even a half-cooked pseudo-scientific study, to back up that this passive aggressive behaviour works, the authors get creative: “No-one knows seems to remember exactly how The Rules got started, but we think they began circa 1917 with Melanie’s grandmother who made men wait nervously in her parent’s parlour in a small suburb of Michigan.” It’s hard to believe that they have the gall to fob us off with the old ‘my friend told me that her grandmother told her’ line as I believe that’s how holocaust deniers got started.

Annoyingly after reading this stupid book I’ve become plagued by the feeling that I’ve been doing everything wrong. When I told Alexander J. Fury this he decided we needed to come up with our own set of rules, which I am now attempting to follow.

Teh Rulez

1. Do not get wasted on a first date/meeting.
Since I cut back on my drinking I have been wasted twice. Admittedly each of these times resulted in pulling but neither was dignified or merited a second ‘date’ (FYI I’m interpreting the word ‘date’ loosely). However getting tipsy is requisite unless it’s Monday afternoon or something.

2. No sleeping together on a first date.
Kissing is fine though, obviously. Alex says: “You should sit down, and kiss, and talk about life and stuff. If you sit down blood will rush to your brains and he’ll remember you more.”  While this is obviously the ranting of a madman, and I do not believe that sex on a first date is wrong, I was given the caveat that “Sex on a second date is ok.” so I caved.

3. Get his number, suggest hanging out, then go home.
These rules get squished together because they should happen in quick succession. I have a terrible habit of meeting people and not getting their numbers, or doing so then texting things like “I just saw [insert celeb we talked about] on the bus!” which can garner no response other than “Cool!”. As for going home first this is a slightly Rules-esque thing, which will apparently stop me hanging around like a bad smell.

4. You must exchange a minimum of 5 texts before the second date.
How you arrange a date in less than 5 texts is beyond me, however if you manage it this apparently means he is not bothered about you. Alex also thinks that waiting more than four hours to reply to a message implies I am not interested. As it took me two days to reply to the last text message I got from an eligible boy I will keep this in mind (he didn’t text back, surprisingly).

5. Don’t try and be ‘normal’.
Every boy I crush out on gets treated to ‘normal Vanessa’. The Vanessa who doesn’t blather about boys and supermarkets and cars and that guy in Deptford town centre who wears a wedding dress and has a shopping trolley full of paper apples and pears. Instead they get a strange semi-mute person who pretends to like D.A.F and shopping for shoes until I crack and scream “As your maker I command you!” and they think I’m crazy and don’t call again. It seems that the boys I mess around with, not caring whether I look funny or cool, are the ones who either crush out on me or become my best friends.

So there we have them: the most moronic dating rules I have ever clapped eyes on. Does anyone else want to join me in this restrictive and possibly futile rules based adventure? Didn’t think so. Sigh. Maybe I’ll just follow Alexyss K Tylor’s advice instead. She seems to know what she’s talking about, right?

Collage by Dash Snow.

This month I read How To Make Anyone Fall In Love With You by Leil Lowndes. Lowndes’ concept is basically that everyone is an insecure puppy craving attention from someone who appears to like most of the same stuff as them, and therefore by faking these interests while laying on compliments thick and heavy you will fool them and they will fall head over heels in lurve with you. Let me break her ideas down so you never have to bother cracking the cover…

1. Men and women are utterly different. Women want to talk about stuff, but men want to do things.

Lowndes says that a woman will only go somewhere active with a man to make him happy, and that you should fake that love of windsurfing, spelling bees, or blood sports, till you make it. Apparently a man just needs to ask me how I feel, or whether I’m truly truly happy, to win his way into my cold cold heart.

As a woman who hates talking about her feelings with a passion I have to disagree. Also where are these feeling hating fuck-it-lets-do-it men that Lowndes seems to bump into all the time? London is full of touchy-feely saps who want to know all about my period pains and discuss the relative merits of Belle and Sebastian versus Hefner, and therefore if I were to attempt to go on an ‘active’ date with them, I reckon nothing more strenuous than watching a Pastels special on VHS would occur.

2. All anyone wants in a partner is a cheerleader.

I mean, not literally a cheerleader, but someone to tell them what a unique never to be bettered snowflake of a person they are all day, every day, for the rest of their godawful life. Apparently the reason that relationships fail is because someone forgets to say “I love the way you chopped those mushrooms darling.” or “It’s so amazing when you stroke my cheek.” I am not even joking, these are actual examples from the book.

Of course people want to know they’re great, but a never ending stream of sugary compliments would any sane person up the wall. Also, what is never explored is what if you do all these things and the other person professes to be in love with you, and they do none of these things back? In fact why are you with someone who needs constant reassurance? Isn’t that what babies and dogs are for?

3. When people fancy each other they leave do all sorts of strange things with their body language. If you fake all that then someone will fall in love with you.

Apparently lowering your eyes and then looking up very slowly through your eyelashes, touching their arm for emphasis, and mirroring the way they are standing are all things to give your crush the not so subtle hint that you like them. Oh and wearing a strapless dress because they’ll think of you naked OH NO WAIT that’s from Clueless. Easy mistake to make…

In conclusion… What Lowndes barely addresses is once you’ve faked an interest in Cro-Mags, Bambi-eyed them, and complimented their prowess at Call of Duty, where you go from there? How do you live as a mirror to their greatness? Where do you come in? Relationships are a two way street and Lowndes seems to forget this repeatedly. What happens when you find yourself standing at a sweaty anarchist march with a bunch of Spanish punk-a-bestias and realise that you just want to be at home slagging off the Sex and The City The Movie while eating microwaved pizza? What then? Lowndes just doesn’t know.

Alternate recommendation: How To Lie With Statistics

Photo by Bob Fornal