Joseph Nowinski - Stop Dating Jerks!: The Smart Womans Guide to Breaking the Pattern and Finding & Finding the Love of Your Life

Sunrise River Press
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North Branch, MN 55056
Phone: 651-277-1400 or 800-895-4585
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www.sunriseriverpress.com

2010 by Joseph Nowinski

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission from the Author. All text, photographs, and artwork are the property of the Author unless otherwise noted or credited.

All reasonable effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information in this book. However, due to ongoing research and discoveries, the information in this book may not reflect the latest standards, developments, or treatments. This book is intended for educational purposes, and is not intended to be all inclusive or to be a substitute for direct diagnosis and treatment by a qualified physician. Readers who have questions about a particular condition or possible treatments for that condition are advised to consult with a physician. The Author and the Publisher shall not be liable for any damages allegedly arising from the information in this book. The opinions expressed in this book are the Authors alone and not those of the Publisher. Whenever a person can be identified in this book, either that person or a surviving family member gave permission to the author for that persons story to be told in an effort to help you.

All trademarks, trade names, model names and numbers, and other product designations referred to herein are the property of their respective owners and are used solely for identification purposes. This work is a publication of Sunrise River Press, and has not been licensed, approved, sponsored, or endorsed by any other person or entity.

Edit by Karin Craig
Layout by Monica Bahr

ISBN 978-1-934716-04-5
Item No. SRP604

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nowinski, Joseph.
Stop dating jerks! : the smart womans guide to breaking the pattern and finding the love of your life / by Joseph Nowinski.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-934716-04-5
1. Dating (Social customs) 2. MenPsychology. 3. Man-woman relationships. I. Title.
HQ801.N65 2010
646.77082dc22

2009024342

Printed in USA
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Dedication

For Terri, with love

Is he eligible, and is he worth pursuing?

If you are ready to ask yourself the above questionnot just the first half, but the second half as wellthen this book will be helpful to you.

This is a book for single women who are looking for a long-term relationship. If you are such a woman, there is a good chance youve already done some reading and found that some of the most common advice for achieving your goal is disappointingperhaps even depressing. You may have tried following such typical advice as, Look good, be perky, and be where the men are.

Or, as one book urges, you may have come up with a list of your best qualities, and then tried presenting yourself as an attractive package, as if you were a car or a flat-screen televisionand as though you were trying to inspire a man to acquire you! Many books on dating repeat this same basic advice in slightly different ways. I call this the marketing approach to finding a man.

Theres a problem with the marketing approach. It doesnt help a woman decide whether a man who seems interested in her (and vice versa) is actually worth pursuing. In other words, the goal of marketing yourself is to make you an attractive package, period.

If thats your sole objective, fine. But what most women want is not just to attract men, but to be able to identify one who may be a potential partner. The marketing approach reduces you to a commodity and allows men to more or less sit back and be choosy, when its just as important for you to be choosy. The marketing approach can easily lead you to feel that you are somehow defective or inferior if your marketing plan is not successful. Jackie Lee Thomas, writing about her venture into the Internet dating scene in the December 3, 2007, issue of Newsweek, described her experience with the marketing approach:

As quickly as the attractive snapshot faces had appeared, they likewise vanished into the silent cosmos of the Internet. I was left with pensive hands on the keyboard wondering what had happened. Had I seemed desperate or, worse, pathetic at 48? Maybe my teeth werent straight enough. Maybe I couldnt pass off those wrinkles as smile lines after all. The doubts came flooding in like a summer downpour.

What women dont need is another book that repeats the obvious: Its important for a woman (as well as for a man) who is interested in dating to put some effort into looking her best and putting her best foot forward. In other words, what you dont need is another book about how to market yourself. You most likely already know plenty about that.

Fortunately, there is an alternative to the marketing approach. I call it the selective approach. Its based on the simple idea that what single women can use is a book that offers the following:

• It is grounded in solid information about male psychology and personality development.

• It helps them size up men and identify the ones to avoid.

• It includes critical tests they can use to help separate potential partners from likely heartaches.

• It gives advice on how to develop a relationship with a man who may be imperfect but nevertheless has potential.

This book offers you all these things. It is for women who, despite their best intentions, have wasted time, money, and emotional energy trying to find their match using the marketing approach. They may have spent money on a dating service or wasted precious time responding to Internet singles listings, only to find that the men they ended up dating turned out not to be as advertised.

Its not for lack of intelligence that women pursue what amounts to dead ends, so much as the fact that you simply cant judge a book by its cover. And thats exactly what the marketing approach, dating services, and Internet dating sites focus onattractive covers that aim to catch your interest.

The women who will find this book most helpfulas well as those who are likely to succeed in finding and keeping a good manare women who have come to the conclusion that it is important to take time to get to know a man before getting too serious. That is, to look inside the cover.

It is important to decide if there is enough potential in a man to make it worth putting in the effort needed to build a relationshipas opposed to trying to transform every man who shows an interest into Mr. Right.

If you can identify with either or both of these two frequent mistakeseither rushing in or trying too hard to make a lemon into lemonadethen you will find this book illuminating. Congratulate yourself on being mature and thoughtful enough to take responsibility for your choices in men, as well as acknowledging any mistakes youve made in the past. Now its time to be more educated and thoughtful as you move forward.