The Tao of Dating: The Smart Woman's Guide to Being Absolutely Irresistible
Read The Tao of Dating: The Smart Woman's Guide to Being Absolutely Irresistible Online
Authors: Dr. Ali Binazir
The Tao of Dating
The Smart Woman’s Guide to Being Absolutely Irresistible
Ali Binazir, M.D., M.Phil.
To Mom and Dad, to whom I owe everything
To all my teachers, to whom I owe everything else
The Introduction You Can't Skip
PART I: THE WAY: FOUNDATIONS OF THE TAO
Chapter 1: Dating for Fulfillment
Chapter 4: What You Really Want
Chapter 5: Understanding Men, Understanding Yourself
Chapter 11: Romance, or What to Do on a Date
Chapter 12: Have: Making Relationships Last
Connecting
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There was something formless and complete
That existed before heaven and earth.
Without sound, without substance,
Dependent on nothing, unchanging,
All-pervading, eternally present.
It is the mother of the universe.
No-one knows its name.
So we call it Tao, The Way.
For lack of a better word, we call it great.
Being great, it flows.
It flows far away.
And going far away means it returns.
It flows through all things,
Inside and outside, and returns
To the origin of all things…
Man follows the earth.
Earth follows the universe.
The universe follows the Tao.
The Tao follows what is natural.
– Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Ch. 25
The Introduction You Can't Skip
Monica’s story, or how this book got started
It was one of those early fall Boston days a few years ago when you thought anything was possible. The sky was unusually clear, the air was crisp, and Newbury Street was humming with life and brimming with attractive people. I was excited about meeting up with my college classmate Monica, whom I had not seen since we had both graduated from Harvard.
You probably know Monica, or someone like her. She is smart, good-looking, funny, in great shape, well-read, stylish, successful – the total package. She had her act together – so much so that guys in college had been almost too intimidated to ask her out.
We met at the sidewalk café Sonsie to catch up. And as we discussed work, family, friends, and love life, the question came up: “So – you seeing anyone?”
There was a shifting in the chair, a looking away, and Monica mumbled, "Well, no, not really." Now, normally that’s not a remarkable fact. But Monica is kind of a remarkable woman. Some might even say a serious babe. If
she
was perpetually single, something must have been seriously wrong with the world.
Then I started having conversations like that one with other female friends, and a pattern started to emerge. Talented, educated, attractive women were having unfulfilling dating lives on an epidemic scale. They either couldn't find the right guy, were with the wrong guy, had relationships that didn't last, or had given up entirely on the whole dating business.
This came to me as a surprise. I mean, these were all exceptional women. There should have been a line of fantastic guys around the block for any one of them. And yet, they were alone. And lonely. Surely something was terribly wrong with the world.
So I had to ask – what's going on here? That’s when I thought there may be a need for a dating guide specifically geared for smart professional women.
A guy, writing a dating book for women?
As it turns out, my guy classmates were having similar issues, so I started out by writing the book for men, which I finished in three intense months of writing and research in 2005. The book was well-received, and in late 2006, I set out to write the
Tao of Dating
for women, thinking that it would take about the same amount of time. Piece of cake, right?
Wrong.
Turns out it’s not as easy as I thought to write a dating book for women when you’re not a woman.
I was seriously stuck for a long time. More than once I considered abandoning the project. I mean, what does a guy know about the inner lives of women anyway? Surely there were 3.5 billion people out there better-qualified to write this book
[1]
.
In the meantime, because of the success of the men’s book, I was getting daily letters from men about
their
dating woes. And they were having said woes with women, shockingly enough. Little by little, from these thousands of men, a database started to emerge: what they really liked, what they didn’t like so much, and what absolutely sent them running for the hills. As their confidante, I also became privy to their innermost thoughts desires, and schemes. Could
this
be of interest to my female readers? Perhaps.
Holly’s story, or how this book got finished
Then, something else happened. Fast-forward to 2008. The book is still slogging along, and I was visiting Boston, having relocated to Los Angeles in the interim. I was having dinner with two of my college classmates, Ariela and Holly. Both are professional women in their thirties, both charming, sweet, fabulous-looking and divorced. Ariela is single without kids; Holly has a daughter and is seeing someone. Let’s call him Tim. Ariela clearly does not approve of Tim, so I decide to get the full story.
“Tell me about this guy,” I ask Holly.
She responds, “Well, he’s really tall and handsome; the sex is great; he’s really sweet most of the time; he’s a bit of the starving-artist type, and he’s not as successful as I am, so I’ve been supporting him for the past couple of years.”
So far, so bad. I sensed she was holding back, and called her on it. And – really sweet
most
of the time? What’s up with
that
?
“Well, when we first met he was just such a sweetheart. But lately he’s been sniping at me, putting me down for no reason. And when I spend time with my friends he gets really jealous and makes me feel guilty.”
“Tell him what happened when your daughter fell down the stairs,” said Ariela with a fire of barely concealed rage in her eyes.
Holly hesitated. “Well, last month my daughter fell down the stairs at home and cut her head open. There was blood everywhere, and we rushed her to the hospital. I was so shaken, and I just needed Tim to be by my side, so I called him up. He didn’t come.”
Didn’t come? Just like that? And you’re still dating this deadbeat?
“He said he was afraid of blood, and he just couldn’t deal with the situation.”
My heart sank. How was this possible? Why was this amazing woman wasting another minute of her life on this unworthy man? What else is happening that she’s not sharing with us? How many other women like her were stuck in the same place?
At this point, Ariela and I made a very clear case for why Holly needed to break it off with this guy immediately. Then Ariela looked me in the eye and held my right forearm for emphasis: “Ali, you have a duty to finish this book as quickly as possible.”
I realized that if my book could help even one woman like Holly (and Monica) reclaim their power, then I had to complete it and bring it to light. Two months after that talk, I finished
The Tao of Dating
. And Holly asked Tim (who turns out was also physically abusing her) to move out and never contact her again, not a minute too soon.
A dating guide for the modern smart, professional, educated woman
Although Monica and Holly were just two of the women amongst the dozens I spoke to, their cases were not unique. Their stories all shared common themes.
For most of the women there were external circumstances such as focus on their careers that accounted for part of what was happening. But I was also hearing excuses from them that didn't make a lot of sense: "There aren't any good men." "I don't have time to meet people." "I'm an old-fashioned girl – dating's just not my thing." Or the worst, from those who were dating the wrong guy: “But he’s nice
sometimes
.”
Some of them genuinely didn't know how to date effectively. And they weren't entirely at fault: the rules of dating are unwritten, and no one had bothered to teach any of us what they might be. But even more important, I witnessed that they had abdicated their own power as women and people. While I saw them as tremendously attractive, magnetic individuals that any man would be lucky to associate with, they did not. As a result, they ended up alone or with the wrong guy.
So this book has two objectives: to help educated, intelligent, discriminating women get back their personal power in the dating arena and beyond; and to give them some solid strategies for realizing a fulfilling dating life. As a man, I wish to provide a fresh perspective on women's strength and beauty that they may have forgotten themselves and also provide the man's perspective on which dating strategies work best.
Since writing
The Tao of Dating For Men
three years ago, I have been privy to hundreds of stories of men's challenges relating to women. I combined that with my own experiences to give you a sense of what works best with educated, intelligent, successful men of integrity when it comes to dating. As a hypnotherapist, seminar leader and personal success consultant, I want to give you tools to re-claim your personal power in all areas of your life. If you’re reading this book, chances are you are a remarkable woman, and I want to make sure you remember that. Think of this book as what a big brother with your best interest at heart would tell you if he had a thorough knowledge of the male psyche and had experienced several dates himself. Seeing you happy makes me happy.
Some time ago, I was introduced to Taoist philosophy and found much wisdom in its lighthearted yet practical way of viewing the world. As its title suggests, this book draws on Taoist philosophy, which arises from observation of the way the world works. As such, it is more about the way things are, rather than the way things should be – more descriptive than prescriptive, more empirical than theoretical. Like Taoism, there is no doctrine, no dogma, and few rules. In fact, at every point, I encourage you to test the ideas and find out how well they work for you instead of blindly accepting them at face value. If it works for you, keep it. If it doesn't, toss it and try something else.