T minus 14 days ‘til our favorite (we can’t express our sarcasm in writing, but trust us it’s here) day of the year. All the stores will stock their shelves with hearts, x’s and o’s and pink, red, and white for that infamous day, Valentine’s Day. For those of you who have boyfriends in college this is the time when your hearts are probably beating twice as fast in excitement (we wouldn’t know the feeling…). But for those of you who are single, now is a time we question what we’ve been doing with our lives the past 351 days—how is it already only 2 weeks until Valentine’s Day? We thought we made a resolution last year to put an end to spending Valentine’s Day alone? It’s time to stop complaining, and get to work… it’s crunch time, ladies.
While we would love to offer you a two-week “how to get a date plan” from our personal experiences, we unfortunately do not have the qualifications to do so. For us, February 14th is usually spent with a group our favorite single girlfriends, a bottle of Merlot, and Sex and the City reruns. (Don’t pity us; we’re hysterically laughing out loud as we write this.) But for those of you who seem to be in the same situation as we are but don’t find it all that humorous, we’ve turned to some dating experts (those people we all wish we could be) for some great advice to make this your best Valentine’s Day yet.
Last week, Halle forfeited her morning Latte to instead purchase her new bible, “Make Every Man Want You,” by Marie Forleo (if only you could imagine Marissa’s reaction when she got the text message about the ‘great new purchase to help our story and our lives’). Forleo (our new heroine) promises that the book will teach you “how to be so irresistible you’ll barely keep from dating yourself.” But we don’t want to date ourselves; we want real men—ya know, the kind that will bring us red roses and caramel-filled chocolates. Through our extensive research, these are the top 5 tips we’ve come up with to help not only the fabulous HC readers, but our sad selves as well.
1. When your girlfriends want to go out but you’re feeling tired, go to the local gas station, buy a Red Bull, and whip out your red high heels.
You’re in college; you’ll sleep when you’re dead. We told you ladies, it’s crunch time—you don’t have time to stay in harvesting your crops on Farmville and watching Gossip Girl.
2. When you do go out, make sure to attract guys with your smile. Chapter 3 of our new bible cites seven habits of highly unattractive women. Looking out for our fabulous HC readers we want to make sure you’re never considered a highly unattractive woman. So we’ve decided to share unattractive habit #5 with you:
A hardened and bitter attitude.
According to Forleo, women with hardened and bitter attitudes look “as though their girlish spirit and soft, womanly charm have been sucked out with a straw.” Yikes, that sounds worse than premature wrinkles. To avoid appearing standoffish and sour, always smile. Psychology research has shown that a smile can actually boost your mood. The facial feedback theory suggests that “mimicking facial expressions (whether positive or negative) might influence [one’s] mood.” Not only will your smile make you feel good, but it will also make those around you feel good (a smile is contagious… and you definitely want the guys around you to feel as though you’re the reason for their good mood). So if you’ve been following our advice, at this point you’re out and smiling.
3. Don’t limit yourself to “one type.” By being interested in only a certain type of man you’re doing more damage than good. With every criterion you add to your “perfect man checklist” you’re diminishing your pool of men to choose from. “The perfect man checklist acts as a restrictive filter- sifting, sorting, and screening who you’ll even consider dating,” Forleo warns of this “self-imposed barrier to love.” If we restrict ourselves to our checklist, what we’re really doing is holding ourselves back from maturing. If we always go for the handsome hockey-jock that stole our heart in 11th grade, we’ll never know what we could be missing with our brainy bio lab partner.
4. Don’t be afraid to initiate conversations. If you’re interested in the cute guy in the navy polo don’t be afraid to approach him. A lot of guys are shy or can be intimidated by you if you’re surrounded by a large group of girls. They love it when girls exude confidence. Think of it this way: if you wait all night for him to approach you… and he doesn’t, your red high heels would have been a waste (and you would have been better off ogling Chase Crawford and catching up with Serena and Blair). Stuck on how to approach him? Check out our article on pick-up lines that actually work!
5. Don’t let him get away. Inevitably we set standards, so when you find someone who finally meets these standards don’t let him go. Relationships progress over time. Although you may instantly spot him as your Valentine, he may need more time to seal the deal. Instead of jumping right to Valentine’s Day why not meet up at Friday’s happy hour first? Pay attention to details. Look for clues; if he’s wearing a Knicks hat, mention you’ve been a fan since you were a kid. This could score you tickets to the next game! Develop a commonality, and go with it. If he mentions how he’s been dying to see Avatar tell him how your best friend’s been raving about it, but you’ve yet to see it. If you both want to see it, why not just go together?
Our final advice, close up your laptop and get out there—hit the gym, grab coffee, run some errands around town, you never know where Mr. Right or at least Mr. Right Now may be. Shoot for the moon, you have nothing to lose. And if the 14th rolls around and you do find yourself dateless, don’t worry. Beyonce makes being single look pretty fun!
Sources:
1) Make Every Man Want You, by Marie Forleo
2) http://web.psych.ualberta.ca/~varn/bc/Kleinke.htm