As Spontaneous as a German Accountant

"Dating helps teenagers to mature emotionally. By dating they learn to get along with members of the opposite sex. Boys begin to understand that girls have feelings, attitudes, and reactions different from their own. girls learn the same about boys. Members of both sexes start to develop realistic views in place of fantasies. Girls daydream less and less about a tall, dark and handsome prince. Boys daydream less and less about adventures with beautiful women. A boy decides what qualities he wants in a girl. A girl decides what type of boy she likes. As a result, dating becomes more selective. Eventually, marriage is the result."
-- The Life Cycle Library for Young People (Parent and Child Institute, 1969)

"For the average man, however, there is no opportunity during courtship to determine the kind of woman his future wife will be. Courtship is stylized to the point of masking basic character. Modern courtship tends to be something of a super-romantic, unrealistic, sex-teasing affair which does as much to obscure as to highlight each person's basic capabilities for compatibility in marriage."
-- Sex And The Unmarried Woman (Sexology Corporation, 1964)

"Married love is not a constant round of candy, flowers and birthday presents. It is more likely to be a long series of sacrifices in which the fishing trip gives way to a down payment on a washer and the new party dress gives way to an appendectomy, and where even the weekly night out at the movies may have to give way to new shoes for the kids. It is not a guarantee of living happily ever after, for every marriage involves struggle, boredom, illness, financial problems and worry over the children.
        The bridal wreath withers, the wedding dress is folded away. The bride's biscuits -- as in the comic strips and the B movies, which are often a better mirror of life than the fairy tales, and the Lana Turner epics -- turn out to be inedible. The groom, seen in a bathrobe, turns out to have legs like pipestems. The love nest in the suburbs has a leaky roof, crab grass, a mortgage that burns up every second paycheck and mice which the bride has to catch and dispose of singlehanded because the husband has an annoying way of being on a business trip during every crisis.
        The groom, alas, is not quite so brilliant as promised. His job prospects fade. He never earns that million dollars. He loses his hair and his teeth. His wife loses her figure. The babies are not the dimpled darlings of the ads, but imperious tyrants who have to be bottled, burped, bathed and changed -- and later agonized over when they start getting into fights in elementary school and staying out too late in high school. There are moments when the husband is fed up to the teeth and would like to run off to Australia. There are moments when the wife wishes she had entered a nunnery."
-- Life Magazine (Ernest Havemann, Sept 29, 1961)

No Pressure Marty, But the Pope and Nelson Mandela Are Here And They're Ready to Party

The new husband should not think of this wedding night as a night of sensual pleasure -- but a night of LOVE! This is the most critical night of his life! The fact of a life-long marriage could be at stake. The experience of this night may determine the bride's attitude toward the sexual relationship for life! And her attitude is the ALL-IMPORTANT thing! She has, in all probability from girlhood, had an idealistic picture in her mind of marriage and husband. Don't destroy it!
-- The Missing Dimension in Sex (Herbert Armstrong et al, 1971)

Bullwinkle Noose

"Hardly any bachelor wants to get married. Even the most adorable, non-phobic one has to be gently but firmly prodded into matrimony. If the truth be known, many of your married girlfriends whom you thought were the pursued darlings used everything from vapors to bloodletting to get their man. It's nothing to be ashamed of. There's no question that it's often a matter of timing. Some men can be bloodlet by an expert (it being understood this is usually in the form of delicious little homecooked meals including his favorite dishes, as well as being walked hand-in-hand past furniture stores) and resist to the death. At some other period in his life this same man may succumb to a far less persuasive bloodletter.
        A man ought to be able to make up his mind about you as wife material within six months of your meeting. Give him the benefit of the doubt and say a year. After that it must be conceded you are facing a hardened veteran."
-- Sex and the Single Girl (Helen Gurly Brown, 1962)

Babies

"They may be small and helpless, but by golly they're enemies just the same. What exactly are these babies up to? What subversive ideas do they exchange with the women who pause furtively by their prams? What fiendish codes are they tapping out with their so-called teething rings? What signals are they passing on to single women with their pudgy little hands?
        Stabbing at the passing bachelor with rattles and other offensive weapons, are they saying: 'Here, sisters, is another man untrained in the matter of bottle-feeding, his elbow untempered to the correct warmth of a baby's bath, his mind blank to the symptoms of nappy rash?' Is there an international gang of babies determined to make fathers of us all?
        Who knows? But it is certainly true that all women, even those brazened by years of sharp lights and hard music, go all oggy-woggly-goggly at the sign of these juvenile agitators."
-- How to avoid matrimony (Herald Froy, 1958)

The Seven Stages of Matrimony

"1) Chicken dinners, slippers helped on with, pipe encouraged, waking-up kiss, tea-in-bed kiss, breakfast kiss, helping-on-with-jacket kiss, putting-on-of-hat kiss, goodbye kiss, pre-prandial kiss, prandial kiss, post-prandial kiss, watching-television kiss, nightcap kiss, putting-out-cat kiss, going-upstairs kiss, brushing-of-teeth kiss, shutting-of-bedroom-door kiss, etc., etc.
        2) Chicken dinners without the chequered napkins on the side. Slippers laid out by fire. Pipe-smoke gently waved away with newspaper. Kisses as before, but some of them lasting less than a minute.
        3) Ordinary dinner, no frills. Slippers under bed. Pipe tolerated. Kiss ration cut, but still generous.
        4) Egg and chips tonight, dear. I will look for your slippers when I have a free moment. Must you always smoke your old pipe? Short, cool, kissing truce between dinner and bed.
        5) Potted meat. Slippers where you left them, in the bath. For goodness' sake put that filthy pipe away. Barely contacting pecks.
        6) Why don't you ever take me out to dinner? Slippers? When am I going to get some new slippers? I've thrown your pipe in the dustbin. And stop being so soppy!
        7) You never kiss me like you used to. Do you remember those cosy evenings? Why isn't it like that anymore? Have you got Another Woman?"
-- How to avoid matrimony (Herald Froy, 1958)

Funny Yet Sad

"In most cases it is preferable that the male partner be superior mentally, or else that there be a close similarity in the mental abilities of husband and wife. Where the wife is decidedly superior there is an almost irresistible tendency for her to be 'the head of the house' which is unscriptural and dangerous for the harmony of the home. In a similar vein, for the wife to have superior educational advantages may well result in the same confusion of status. There is probably nothing more disastrous in home life than for the wife to feel superior to her husband and fail to hold him in respect, especially when there are children to consider."
-- Let's Look At Love (Joan Goetze, 1960)

"If you want a manly man, praise him for his physical strength and the ease with which he does manly or difficult things such as opening tight jars, moving furniture, mowing the law, and handling heavy equipment, rather than praising him for doing easier tasks usually thought of as women's work, such as dishes and dusting. Express appreciation whenever he does any of the usual chores around the house instead of saying, 'well, it's about time.'"
-- You Can Be The Wife of a Happy Husband (Darien B. Cooper, 1974)

"A home with two heads or with the wife as the head could be called a monstrosity because the order of the man's and woman's roles has been distorted, thereby creating an abnormal condition. As homes have become more wife-dominated, there has been a rise in juvenile delinquency, rebellion, homosexuality, the divorce rate, and the number of frustrated women, because the home was designed by God to run efficiently with the man as the leader. Ignoring this principle of his leadership or devising substitutes creates untold problems."
-- You Can Be The Wife of a Happy Husband (Darien B. Cooper, 1974)

"The wise woman plans ahead in order to meet her husband's sexual needs. Get the rest necessary in order to be alert, responsive and available to you man. When you are tired or are not particularly interested in sexual union, trust Jesus Christ to give you a new excitement and enthusiasm since it is His will for you both to receive pleasure and fulfillment through this union. Let your schedule be flexible so that you will be available to meet your husband's needs at night, in the morning, or in the middle of the day."
-- You Can Be The Wife of a Happy Husband (Darien B. Cooper, 1974)

Did I Mention I'm 6' 5"?

Height Makes Mr. Right (Reuters, 1:15 p.m. 12.Jan.2000 PST)

Charles Darwin suggested it, Hollywood producers have long insisted on it, and British and Polish scientists have now confirmed it -- tall men get the girls. Their research shows that tall men are more sexually attractive and have more children than shorter men.
        "They tend to have more children presumably because they are more attractive. They are more likely to get married and whether they get married or not they are more likely to produce more offspring," Robin Dunbar told Reuters.
        The evolutionary psychologist at the University of Liverpool in England and his colleagues at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Wroclaw studied the medical records of more than 4,400 Polish men between the ages of 25 and 60.
        They found that childless men in all age groups were about three centimetres (1.2 inches) shorter than men with at least one child. Bachelors were also shorter than married men. The only exception they found was for men born during the 1930s who reached adulthood shortly after World War Two when there was a shortage of eligible men.
        "These results indicate that the effect of height on reproductive output might be due to shorter men being disadvantaged in the search for a mate," the scientists said in a report in the science journal Nature.
        Their findings support Darwin's theory of sexual selection, an evolutionary process based on preferences for specific traits in one sex by members of the other sex. "We know that tall men and women are more successful than shorter individuals on average in many different walks of life. What we have shown here is that this carries through to complete the evolutionary equation with those individuals producing more offspring," Dunbar said.

Dear, Dear

Dear Ann: This is in response to "Maine," who had two failed marriages and a relationship with a man who turned out to be a womanizer. She said she didn't think she would ever find a decent man.
        I'm 22 and am considered a nice guy. I attend church regularly and don't smoke, drink, swear or gamble. I'm a movie buff and enjoy music. I'm average-looking -- no Tom Cruise -- but I wouldn't scare small children either. I am cleancut and neatly dressed. The problem? Women avoid me like the plague.
        It seems that no female want anything to do with a decent man, yet I hear them complain bitterly about how there are no decent men left. I would love to find an interesting woman, but I'm beginning to wonder if one exists.
-- Mr. X in Tennesse

Dear Mr. X: I can assure you there are plenty of decent women who would flip for a guy like you. Keep your eyes open at church. Take a night course at a college. Don't be afraid to take a chance on a blind date. Be more outgoing. A positive attitude will be helpful.
-- Ann Landers (Thursday, November 6th, 1997 column)

Hugh Ahoy

I am a very technically inclined person and rather than waste time and money at night clubs and dances, I would like to use science to find the sort of mate I am looking for. I have heard of computers being used to make matches on the basis of similar interests. My question is this: Where are these machines located and how does one get in touch with the people operating them? -- R. M., Bridgeprot, Connecticut.

The organization you seek is Scientific Marriage Institute, located at 186 East 73rd Street, New York, New York 10021. But be careful -- the machine might want to keep you for itself.
-- From The Playboy Advisor (1966)

Mars And Venus

"Centuries before the Martians and Venusians got together they had been quite happy living in their separate worlds. Then one day everything changed. The Martians and Venusians on their respective planets suddenly became depressed. It was this depression, however, that motivated them eventually to come together."
-- Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus (John Gray, 1992)

"When the Martians became depressed, everyone on the planet left the cities and went to their caves for a long time. They were stuck and couldn't come out, until one day when a Martian happened to glimpse the beautiful Venusians through his telescope. As he quickly shared his telescope, the sight of these beautiful beings inspired the Martians, and their depression miraculously lifted. Suddenly they felt needed. They came out of their caves and began building a fleet of spaceships to fly to Venus."
-- Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus (John Gray, 1992)

"The strange and beautiful Venusians were a mysterious attraction to the Martians. Their differences especially attracted the Martians.
        "Where the Martians were hard, the Venusians were soft. Where the Martians were angular, the Venusians were round. Where the Martians were cool, the Venusians were warm. In a magical and perfect way their differences seemed to complement each other.
-- Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus (John Gray, 1992)

The Rules

"Men love a challenge -- that's why they play sports, fight wars, and raid corporations. The worst thing you can do is make it easy for them. When a man is trying to set up a date to meet you, don't say, 'Actually, I'm going to be in your area anyway'; don't offer the names of restaurants between your place and his, unless he asks. Don't say much at all. Let him do all the thinking, the talking, let him flip through the Yellow Pages or magazine listings and call a couple of friends for suggestions to come up with a place convenient for you. Men really feel good when they work hard to see you. Don't take that away from them."
-- The Rules (Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider, 1995)

"Ending the date first is not so easy when you really like him and want to marry him, and you're both having a great time. But it must be done because you must leave him wanting more of you, not less."
-- The Rules (Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider, 1995)

"Most women go on dates with a lot of expectations. They want the man to find them beautiful, to ask them out again, and to father their children."
-- The Rules (Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider, 1995)