Romance Around the Corner

From dateless and clueless to dating the man of my dreams

Excerpt from the book

Romance Around the Corner:

8 Steps Toward Attracting the Man of Your Dreams and Having Fun in the Process!

Introduction

How I Went from Being the Dateless Wonder to Being the Girl Whose Phone Never Stops Ringing

Let me share this fact with you from the beginning: I was not a natural at dating. My boyfriend/man of my dreams refuses to believe this, and for that I love him. But truly, I never used to believe that romance was around the corner, down the block, across town, or even necessarily on the other side of the world! I remember hearing years ago that everyone has 50,000 soulmates, and thinking that mine were probably dead, not born, or possibly living in Malaysia. I was not a natural at dating, but it’s not where you start, it’s where you finish.

Growing up, I was a dating failure, not because I failed on dates (that came later), but because I had none! In grammar school, I wasn’t the popular girl surrounded by friends on the playground. I was shy and studious and had been reading books since age two. In junior high school, I wasn’t the fun-loving natural flirt with the cool clothes whom everybody followed, admired, and envied. I had skipped two grades and was so tiny that my mother dressed me until 8^th grade in Sesame Street clothes and Garanimals, which, you may recall, were adorable little mix-and-match outfits that our parents coordinated based on the animals on the tops and pants. The popular girls strutted off in packs to birthday parties and the mall in their Gloria Vanderbilt jeans; I walked alone to the library in my tops and pants with matching turtles on the pockets.

In high school, things went from bad to worse. I was a straight-A student at a school where boys could be simultaneously straight-A students and datable, while girls could be only one or the other. Cheerleaders were datable; geeks were not. I was a half-black, half-Jewish girl at a school in a wealthy white Chicago suburb where blacks and Jews couldn’t join the local country club, even though the richest black man in Chicago owned an estate that backed up to the country club. I should mention too that while the suburb I went to school in was wealthy, my family was not. My father made a lot of money, and he kept it all when my parents got divorced. It seemed that for years, my mother and my younger sister and brother and I ate nothing but soup and tuna salad that we made from tuna fish, mayonnaise, and pickle relish. My high school wasn’t an all-kinds-of-everybody place like the ones in the movie Fame or the TV show 21 Jump Street; it was more like the highly stratified high schools in Molly Ringwald movies like Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club. (If you remember Garanimals, I bet you’re familiar with these references too!)

In a nutshell, I was different in a time and place where different equaled undesirable. I remember a handsome boy in physics class who liked me and flirted with me until another boy told him I was “mixed.” Can you believe that the fact of my fabulous heritage dumped cold water on the flames of his desire! Previously, I’d been thrilled when suddenly boys wanted to sit next to me in geometry class, but I soon realized it wasn’t because they liked me, it was simply because they wanted to copy my notes once they found out that I got the highest score on every test. I felt as though cold water had been dumped on me.

So there I was, a tiny, unpopular, mixed-race geek-ette with no natural boy-skills and as of yet no mindset to learn them. I’m here to give you hope! It’s been said that we fail forward to success. Here’s a quick timeline of my against-the-odds dating success:

I had absolutely no dates in high school. No prom, no homecoming, no Saturday night, no come over and study, nothing! I was cute, but undatable!
During my 4 years of college, I had a grand total of five dates. Admittedly, Harvard wasn’t exactly a party school, but still! And, two of those five dates took place on my study-abroad program in Paris and possibly shouldn’t even count, because the French boys wanted to date any American girl who spoke French.
Things picked up in law school (even though Harvard Law School couldn’t be described as a party school either), and I had five whole dates in one year. Now, that may or may not sound exciting to you, but it sure represented progress to me! Why was I more datable? Because my mindset had begun to change.
After my first year of law school, at age 22, I married my starter husband. (I’m currently between husbands!) He was a young German lawyer I met during my summer clerkship in London, and we lived in Hamburg during most of our marriage. We had a pretty wonderful relationship until he slipped into schizophrenia and refused help. I tried to save him, but have you ever tried to save someone who didn’t want saving?
At age 29 I got divorced and came back to my hometown of Chicago. I was heartbroken, in the midst of a nervous breakdown, and clinically depressed. I thought melodramatically that I’d never love again. (Been there? Are there?) At that point, I wouldn’t have gone on a date even if anyone had asked me, which most assuredly nobody did.
After hibernating for a year I woke up – and started to grow up. I realized that the next decade could be better than the one that had just passed, and that indeed it had better be better! I needed to get a whole new life.
I began trying practically every dating aid in existence: Internet dating, speed dating, expensive matchmaking services, matchmaking services that are expensive for the man and free for the woman, blind dates, books about dating, voodoo (teasing, but I really would have tried just about anything). One of the biggest problems I found was that through these services and aids, I was spending time and money, but I still wasn’t meeting people with whom I was compatible or had chemistry, and I still didn’t know what to do when I did meet someone. In other words, I went from dateless to clueless!
So, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I began reading books not about dating and relationships but about growth and personal development. I read Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking. I read Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. I read Mary Kay Ash’s autobiography Miracles Happen. I read books by Wayne Dyer, Anthony Robbins, Zig Ziglar, Ayanla Vanzant, and John Maxwell.
At the same time, I began making other positive changes in my life. I quit a draining and demoralizing 80-hour-a-week job as a corporate lawyer. You know it’s time for a new job when, in addition to getting that sinking feeling Sundays at 4 pm, you’re actually at the office Sundays at 4 pm. I started taking interior design classes. I started a business I was excited about with Mary Kay and grew it over time to the point where I now hold a leadership role. I started playing tennis again, then moved to taking ballet lessons again, and am now a Pilates junkie. I ran from negative people like I was running from a burning building, and I made new, positive friends.
As I changed myself, inside and out, I began attracting men. Nice men! Handsome men! Stable men! Fun men! Romantic men! Gentlemen! I could barely believe it myself, but I was being asked out on dates! I tinkered with and fine-tuned my attraction process, entirely through trial and error and error and error, and I didn’t give up. I decided that I was going to have a rich and wonderful dating life, and I decided I was going to meet the man of my dreams. Why not! Other people seemed to; why not me?
Today, after refining my attraction and dating activity into 8 steps and having woven the 8 steps into my life, men stop me on the street to ask for my number. Men follow me into cafes to meet me. Men send drinks over when I’m at a restaurant. Men write me notes. The other day a man followed me out of the bank to tell me he liked my freckles. Ex-boyfriends call me, hoping for another chance. (One just called as I was writing this!)
What changed? Men? Of course not! You know and I know that men do not change. Men become more deeply who they already are, and when we find a man we love, we must love him for who he is. I repeat: men didn’t change; I did!
I found that when you change your attitude, you change your life.
I am now dating the man of my dreams. He came walking toward me one day. My heart stopped, my breathing stopped, and every cell in my body felt magnetized toward him. When my brain started working again, I thought, “It’s Cary Grant!” And he says that when he saw me, he thought, “Who the hell is that? She’s gorgeous!” Who is this amazing man of my dreams? Imagine Cary Grant crossed with Mick Jagger. He’s a dashing gentleman with a rock-star edge. He’s a bad boy with a heart of gold. He’s romantic and he’s masculine. He’s wildly successful and he’s successfully wild. He’s brilliant and he’s playful. He’s rough and he’s tender. He’s sexy and he’s wise. He’s hot and he’s cool! No one has ever treated me so well.

Are you thinking, “Wow, that’s great for her, but that could never happen for me?” This book isn’t about patting myself on the back. This book is about the fact that if the 8 steps work for a geeky, burnt-out, ex-clinically depressed, recovering attorney, they can work for you too. And wouldn’t you agree that you have nothing to lose and everything to gain? The man of your dreams is alive and walking the Earth. Meeting him is partially about being in the right place at the right time, but it is also about being in the right frame of mind. If you’re in the right place at the right time but with the wrong attitude, good luck. If you’ve got the right frame of mind, you can draw him to where you are. Stop thinking a good man is hard to find, and let him find you!

This book will help you be your best you, so that you can attract the best man for you. This book will give you specific tips on attracting the kind of man you want to attract, and on what to do once you attract him. You might need to start scouting around for a great cell phone plan, because you’ll need the minutes when your phone starts ringing with calls from one eligible bachelor after another! Whether you’re a dateless wonder like I used to be, or whether you’re a dating diva, there is more out there for you. Romance is around the corner, and it’s your turn!

Romance Around the Corner
8 Steps Toward Attracting the Man of Your Dreams and Having Fun in the Process!

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