Not Your Mother's Rules: The New Secrets for Dating (24 page)

We asked a few personal trainers for their comments and suggestions on finding the best fitness plan for yourself. Here’s what they had to say:

• Determine what time of day is best for you to work out.
  “I have one client who is a morning person. She works at home. If she doesn’t exercise at 7 a.m., she never does. I told her to put on her sneakers as soon as she gets out of bed and turn on the treadmill. If she turns on her computer first and gets busy with e-mails, she just never gets around to it.”
  
• Make yourself responsible for exercise.
  “Some of my clients hate to exercise more than life itself, so I don’t give them an option not to. They are accountable to show up to our appointment.” If you don’t want to pay for a trainer, make plans to meet a friend or two in a class—if they don’t show up, just exercise anyway!
  
• One type of exercise is usually not enough.
  You need both cardio and weight training. So try to mix it up. Go for a run and then do weights or take an aerobics class that combines cardio and weights. But don’t feel you have to lift heavy weights—you can do more repetitions of lighter weights instead. Whatever you do, you have to sweat to get endorphins. No pain, no gain!
  
• Do what you like—otherwise you won’t do it!
  There are so many different activities to try, from running to yoga to Pilates to biking, swimming, jumping rope, tennis, boxing, figure skating, Zumba dance classes. Mix it up and find what’s best for you, otherwise you will get bored or frustrated and stop.
  

While dating is easier when you look good and feel good, we don’t believe in waiting until you have the perfect body to go to singles events or get on an online dating site. Your life should not stop because you are not at goal weight or in your goal jean size. You should be working on yourself
while
dating, not waiting for perfection. In the meantime, know how to look like your best self; as you progress with weight loss and exercise, your confidence will increase and that will work wonders for your dating life.

I
F YOUR ROLE
models for Twitter are singers, actresses, and reality stars, think again! Celebrities can tweet all they want—they are promoting and selling their TV shows, movies, songs, images, and products. For them, it’s business; they tweet all day and try to gain as many followers as possible. Even if they’re tweeting about their mundane daily business, people are fascinated! But if you are not famous, you need
Rules
for Twitter so you don’t ruin your relationship by coming off as an oversharer or a stalker. Twitter is designed to give people access and information, so
Rules
Girls have to be especially careful with this medium of communication.

If you’re going to use it, here are our tips for how to do so
and
still follow
The Rules
:

• Keep your Twitter account protected, meaning you have to approve your followers.
  That way you can keep track of everyone you’re broadcasting to—including your crush! Not to mention, this privacy is smart in the workplace and for general safety.
  
• Don’t follow a guy on Twitter unless he follows you first.
  And even then, wait about a week to accept his request
  so you don’t seem obsessed with him
  or
  with Twitter. Remember, you are happy and busy, not a junkie!
  
• Don’t respond to any of his open timeline tweets.
  
• If he sends you an @ reply, you can respond—but do so rarely!
  If and when you do, be sure to write less than he did and avoid creating a continuing conversation.
  
• Avoid tweeting every five minutes.
  Once every few days is enough. You have a life—and the whole world doesn’t need constant updates on it on Twitter!
  

• Don’t tweet anything mundane or anything negative (just like with Facebook status updates).
  No one wants
  to hear that you are “walking the dog” or “had a bad week at work.” Your tweets should be important, newsworthy, witty, or uplifting. “Training for the Susan B. Komen Race for the Cure 5K!” is a great example.
  
• Don’t tweet about love songs or chick flicks, because it shows too much interest in relationships.
  You want to seem like you are interested in politics, sports, and the world in general, not just guys!
  
• Don’t tweet anything about your relationship. Period!
  
• Use hashtags carefully.
  Be aware of the conversation you are joining, and make sure you are not propelling anything cliché or non-
  Rules
  -y in any way.
  
• If you find yourself tweeting too much or tweeting the wrong things, you should cancel your account.
  It’s more important to do it right than it is just to be on it!
  

I
F YOU’RE IN
college or graduate school or have been dating someone casually or for just a few months, this chapter may not apply to you. But at a certain point in your life, you’re no longer interested in relationships just for fun and entertainment. You want love and commitment—and why shouldn’t you? Why spend Saturday nights and holidays alone when you can spend them with a significant other who gets you and wants to be with you?

Even if you are not looking to get married right now, you still want to be in a relationship that isn’t a waste of your time. You should be subtly looking for clues about whether the guy sees a future so you are not blindsided if he decides he doesn’t want to be exclusive or doesn’t propose. Has he said, “I don’t want to see anyone else?” Did he change his profile to say “in a relationship” on Facebook and/or post photos of both of you together or as his default photo? Has he used the word “love”? Has he invited you to be his date to a wedding or mentioned his nieces or nephews? All these are signs that he is serious about you and you might be headed for the altar one day.

Conversely, when your friend gets engaged, does he get awkward or quiet? Does he comment negatively on his friends’ relationships that seem serious? Does he pose broad
and confusing questions, such as “What
is
love?” or “What’s so great about marriage?” Does he never talk about the future? When a client’s relationship is not working out, one of the first questions we ask in a consultation is “Does he mention the ‘M’ word?” Most times the answer is no—he will happily talk about cars, sports, current events—anything but marriage. If that is the case with your guy, don’t be surprised if he doesn’t want to be exclusive or ultimately doesn’t want to marry you. This cavalier attitude about commitment is especially prevalent in college, where most guys are not interested in a long-term relationship. They just want to study, have fun, and try new things—like being with a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead in the same semester! Even guys who are shy and not players are not looking to settle down at twenty or twenty-two.

Assuming the guy you are dating is saying all the right things, how do you get him to commit? If it’s a
Rules
relationship, it should not be painful for him to commit. He should be happy about it! He loves you and wants to spend the rest of his life with you, right? You just have to help him start “the rest of his life.” If it was a
Rules
beginning (he spoke to you first or contacted you through your online dating profile) but then you broke
Rules
(hung out with him constantly and texted him at all hours), he may not be so eager to make it official because he is getting all the benefits of marriage
without
a ring and a wedding. If that is the case, you need to pull back so that he feels like he is losing you before you lower the boom and bring up the future. Get busy at work, go away for a weekend with girlfriends, or text him back progressively less quickly. If it was never a
Rules
relationship, then it just may never work out in the end. In any case, the only way to find out is to ask him!

Some women are aghast when we suggest their asking a guy’s intentions. They argue, “Isn’t that aggressive?” or “Shouldn’t love be love?” or “I thought saying that wasn’t
The Rules
.” Others are simply afraid to find out the answer. But it’s fine, really! If you ask and your boyfriend changes the subject, gets irritated, or says that it’s a bad time and he can’t commit because of work issues or finances, then you might have to tell him that you’re old-fashioned and don’t believe in dating forever. If he still rattles off excuses, suggest taking a break. Tell him to think about it on his own time and call you when he is ready to commit.
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Girls do not suggest couples counseling; we simply disappear and give him all the space he wants until he misses us enough to propose—or not. The truth is that a guy usually knows in the first few dates if he can see himself marrying you or not; the rest of the relationship is just a lot of details.

On the other hand, if he happily alludes to future plans but doesn’t say anything specific, when can you expect him to propose and what should you do until then? Women can go crazy during this waiting period between getting a verbal commitment and getting the ring. They really want to push things along, and have little patience and high tension. Their boyfriends have the power to make them a Mrs. or send them back to
Match.com
—we get that it’s stressful! Our suggestion is to diplomatically ask him what his time frame is. We typically tell clients to say, “I’ve been enjoying our time together, but was just wondering what your intentions are and what your timetable is like.”

If he says, “Don’t worry, we’ll get engaged soon,” then how much time do you give him to wrap it up? We can’t tell you how many women have contacted us to say their boyfriend proposed, but without a ring or now won’t set a wedding
date. It’s still all very vague! We tell them to give the guy six months to a year to produce a ring and figure out the logistics. Of course, this time frame may feel like an eternity to a woman who has nothing on her finger, but it’s just one more time a
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Girl has to practice restraint! Remember, guys often want to propose in their own way—women must let them. Don’t bring up stone cuts, settings, or any ring talk until he asks. If you push too hard, he will feel that you just want the ring or the wedding—not him. But if our suggested yearlong waiting period comes and goes and you still have no ring, you might have to break up with him.
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Girls are not gold diggers, but we are not doormats either.

Alyssa, thirty, contacted us to help get her boyfriend of three years to commit. It was a
Rules
beginning, but she regularly saw him five times a week, accompanied him on six different weeklong vacations, and texted him often; he was in no rush to get married. He kept moving back the date he would propose, from Memorial Day to Labor Day weekend to his birthday and then her birthday. We were obviously skeptical. She stopped seeing him so much for a few weeks so he had a chance to miss her and then nicely told him, “I’m old-fashioned. I don’t know if I can see you anymore without a ring and a wedding date.” He told her he had commitment issues stemming from his parents’ messy divorce and didn’t know when he would be ready. He suggested they do couples counseling, but he still wasn’t ready, even after eight sessions. We told her, “Next!” After she broke up with him, he quickly e-mailed her to ask where he should send her things and then never contacted her again. She was crushed! It was a painful lesson, and a long one to learn, but Alyssa agreed never to spend so much time with a guy again.

On a happier note, April, thirty-five, who was dating her
boyfriend for two and a half years, now has a ring and a wedding date. Her divorced boyfriend was talking about the future only in general terms. She had asked him many times when they would get married and he said that he couldn’t think about it right then because of the economy and “things going on with his ex and two young children.” She contacted us because she wanted to know if he was serious or stringing her along. We put her on a three-month plan of seeing him less and not mentioning marriage
at all.
At the end, she gave him the ultimatum: “I’ve been enjoying our time together, but I’m old-fashioned and can’t keep seeing you without being engaged.” April could not wait to tell us his response: “If marrying you is the only way I can see you more, let’s do it.”