Evan Marc Katz - Why Youre Still Single: Things Your Friends Would Tell You if You Promised Not to Get Mad

PLUME
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First published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

First electronic edition, June 2006
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Copyright Evan Marc Katz and Linda Holmes, 2006
All rights reserved

ISBN 978-1-1012-1330-8

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Why Youre Still Single

Could it be that:

• Y OU RE K NOCKING Y OURSELF O UT OF THE G AME
• Y OU RE J UST N OT T HAT INTO Y OURSELF
• Y OU RE B EING A B ITCH
• Y OU K NOW H OW TO B E THE G IRL F RIEND , BUT N OT THE G IRLFRIEND
• Y OU RE THE P ATRON S AINT OF L OST C AUSES
• Y OU F IGHT L IKE A G IRL
• Y OU RE B ORING H IM IN THE B EDROOM
• Y OU RE M ISSING THE S IGNALS FOR W HEN TO G ET O UT ... AND W HEN TO S TICK A ROUND

Evan and Linda have a different approach for you.

Also by Evan Marc Katz

I Cant Believe Im Buying This Book:
A Commonsense Guide to Successful Internet Dating

From Linda
To my sister Susie. I dont remember ever not liking you better than anyone.
From Evan
To my sister, Daryl. Ive always said, you got the good genes, kid.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Benjamin Franklin

My name is Evan and Im still single. I started writing this book because the titular question, which gets asked of anyone on the far side of thirty, cant summarily be dismissed in one line. Believe me, Ive tried. Here was the best I could come up with to explain my perpetual bachelorhood: (1) I just havent met the right women, and (2) I got dumped by the only two I would have married.

Yeah, well, both these statements are true and undoubtedly play a large part in why Im still single. But so what? Acknowledging this doesnt put me any closer to my long-term goal of marriage. I cant force myself to meet the right woman, and I cant go back and fix my past relationships. All I can do is look ahead.

Why Youre Still Single is about looking ahead. But first we need to look back. We need to take stock of our past behavior and vow to act differently the next time around. Awareness doesnt mean youve found a quick fix, but it can certainly put you on the right path toward future success.

Being the authors of this book doesnt put us on a pedestal from which we will demonize you for being single. That would be horribly hypocritical, wouldnt it? No, Linda and I are two people who are going through it ourselves, who see a common thread connecting all of us, and who may just have something unique to say about the human condition. While most advice books pose facile answers to women about capturing a man to marry, we chose to ruminate on why 99 percent of relationships fail before they hit the altar. Not to mention the reasons why many of them dont get off the ground in the first place.

Just because were spending all this time talking about how women trip themselves up doesnt mean were not acutely aware of the issues surrounding the typical man. Alas, theres no point in writing a book that would weigh fourteen pounds, especially since there are only 8,317 men in America who would buy such a thing. If any of the other 150 million men are interested in changing, theyre going to do it by their own volition. The moral of this story isnt that men are fine and women are broken, but rather that you cant change men and you cant make them read self-help books. All you can do is be aware of your own actions and try not to repeat the same mistakes over and over. After all, that would be insane, or so said a man who once flew a kite in a thunderstorm (apparently, any nut job can run around dispensing advice).

If knowledge is indeed power, we hope you feel empowered by what youre about to read. You deserve the best in life, and the only way to get it is to seek answers. We may not know for certain why youre still single, but we hope to stimulate some valuable conversation or, at the very least, get more laughs per page than Poor Richards Almanack.

If you wander over to the cooking section in a bookstore, you wont find a cookbook called Why You Burn Everything. Thats because you probably approach cooking pretty simply. When you look at yet another blackened grilled cheese sandwich you probably cant pass off as Cajun-style, you say, It may be time to do something different. So you buy a book. It doesnt mean youre a bad person; it doesnt mean you have to like the book; it doesnt mean the people who wrote the book are smarter than you are; and it doesnt mean you have to do it that way if you dont want to. It means, Weve set off the smoke detector a few times ourselves over the years, and if youre looking for a different approach, weve got one.

Evan was already working on this book when we met, and when he described it to me, I believe my exact words were, I hate those books. And I wasnt just being nice. For the most part, books for single women about being singlethe members of the genre of Building a Better Butterfly Net: Man-Catching Pointers for the Desperate, Miserable, Slowly Decaying Hagare insulting, condescending nonsense, shot through with sexist claptrap and a hundred other kinds of poison. They either suggest or flat-out declare that theres something fundamentally wrong with you if youre single (there isnt), that you cant be happy as a single person (you can), that single women have more things wrong with them than single men (they dont), or that any relationship is better than accursed spinsterhood (its notits really not).

But theres a difference between beating yourself up and learning from mistakes you and everyone else have already made. Theres nothing wrong with you because you cant cook, either. That doesnt mean that if you keep putting the same sandwich in the same pan on the same burner at the same setting and you leave it there for the same amount of time, it will eventually stop burning because youre a good, well-intentioned, deserving person. You may be great, but your dinner is still going to burn. You know this because youve done it. A lot. Your choices, as we see them, are to learn to like the taste of char, resolve to order takeout forever, or consider the possibility of doing something different.