Singles Flock to ‘Experts’ for Tips on How to Stalk Elusive Romance

Jane Austen said it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

Well, it is also a truth universally acknowledged, or at least acknowledged by those who lead the many singles classes around the San Fernando Valley these days, that single women with hopes of being that wife had better start making themselves approachable in public places.

Say you’re a single woman dining alone in a restaurant and . . . Wait. If that’s where you’re reading this article, then you’ve already found a habit you’d better break.

Bringing reading material into restaurants when you’re alone is a major no-no if you want to meet men, according to Barbara DeKovner-Mayer of Encino, a former actress and radio personality who teaches a six-hour seminar called “The Female Connection: What It Takes to Attract and Keep a Man.”

It is also a major no-no if you don’t want to be a statistic in those notorious studies that say women over 30 have hardly any chance of getting married. This past summer, Newsweek magazine featured a much-publicized cover story that included the results of a study called “Marriage Patterns in the United States.” Done by two Yale sociologists and a Harvard economist, the study found that if white college-educated women born in the 50s are still single by the time they are 30, they have a 20% chance of marrying; if they are still single at 35, they have a 5% chance of marrying; and if they are 40 and unmarried, the study said there is only a 2.6% chance that they will marry.

“A lot of women are panicked, whereas before they were just anxious,” said John Fergus, who teaches a seminar called “Meeting the Opposite Sex” at Los Angeles Valley College in Van Nuys and the Learning Tree in Canoga Park.

“The problem is very complex. Finding someone is probably as complicated as finding out how to live life,” he said.

Back to the restaurant. So you’re dining alone, you want to get married and an attractive man catches your eye. Now what?

“If a man’s looking at you,” DeKovner-Mayer said, “you make eye contact, look down and then immediately look up.”

What you do next, said DeKovner-Mayer, is whip out a business card (“one of the most important tools for single women”), walk over to his table and say something like, “Do you always look at redheads during dinner?”

Or, “Do you usually dine alone? Because if you don’t want to dine alone again, call this number.”

“Then walk away. Give him some room,” DeKovner-Mayer said. “Men are so unused to being approached by women. But a man who’s had a little experience, he’s going to think, ‘What a neat one this is. She’s got guts.’ ”

Don’t Come on Too Strong

Still, you have to be careful. Some of the experts caution against a woman coming on too strong.

“Men want to do the pursuing,” said Brenda Blackman, a communications consultant based in Tarzana who teaches a class called “Playing the Dating Game” for Valley College and Los Angeles Pierce College in Woodland Hills.

“Most men are flattered if a woman approaches them, but they don’t want her to come on like gangbusters. Just smiling and eye contact--most men will pick up on that.”

If you’re shy about encouraging strangers in public places, you still have to take definite steps.

“I advise people to develop a personal network,” said Teri Ansel, a Tarzana-based psychotherapist who teaches a class called “Happily Single” for Every Woman’s Village in Van Nuys.

“People don’t always think about networking in their personal lives, although they do in their career. Make a list of 50 people you know, make appointments with them and say, ‘I’m ready to date again. Do you know anybody?’ ”

That approach might seem intimidating, “but if you don’t make it obvious enough,” Ansel said, “people won’t think of you. Very often they say, ‘now that you mention it, I do know someone.’ People are not active enough in looking. They’re so terrified of rejection.”

Who Are the Experts?

Who are these purveyors of romantic advice? On the whole, their track records aren’t terrific: One has been married five times, another has been divorced twice, another is on his first marriage and one has never been married.

DeKovner-Mayer not long ago married for a fifth time. She used to host the KIEV talk radio show “The Female Connection” and has been a political-affairs analyst for “Israel Today,” traveling throughout the Middle East, Central America, Europe and the Soviet Union. She has worked as an actress, with movie credits that include “Twist Around the Clock” and “Don’t Knock the Twist.”

Fergus started teaching singles seminars 13 years ago because he was having a difficult time meeting women and so were a lot of his male friends. (Women aren’t the only ones who worry about being left on the shelf.)

“It started out as a kind of experiment,” said Fergus, a social scientist who does independent research for companies. He has been married three years.

Blackman describes herself as “single by choice.” She has been married--and divorced--twice.

“But I think I could get married again instantly,” she said. “I’m thinking of putting together a class called ‘How to Get Married’ for women, since so many women seem to want to these days.”

Blackman began teaching singles seminars with a class called “Fifty Ways to Meet Your Lover” three years ago. Before going into communications consulting five years ago, Blackman ran a jewelry business.

‘Getting Better All the Time’

Ansel--a psychotherapist, hypnotherapist and marriage, family and child counselor--has never been married.

“I wouldn’t teach the class if I weren’t single,” she said. “There are a lot of married therapists who sort of set themselves up on a pedestal. They haven’t been single since they were very young, so who are they to give advice? I’m in my early 40s, and you can say I’m getting better all the time.”

What kind of people take seminars like these?

Mostly women. DeKovner-Mayer limits her class to women only, and a recent seminar she led was made up of nine average, respectable-looking women. All were mortified at the thought that anyone might find out they have trouble meeting men and didn’t want even their first names used in an article.

They ranged in age from 26 to 66. One, a middle-aged Southern belle, is even married. She took the seminar to find out how to help her single, 23-year-old daughter meet men. Only one appeared to be what Helen Gurley Brown used to call, in that memorable phrase from “Sex and the Single Girl,” a mouseburger. But she was smart and witty once she spoke up.

Body Language Emphasized

DeKovner-Mayer spent a lot of time speaking on the importance of body language. “A woman is sitting at a party and her foot is going round and round,” she said. “She’s bored out of her mind.” Now DeKovner-Mayer lets one shoe dangle from one foot. “What does this mean?” she asked.

“That’s sexual,” said a pretty young woman with long, blond hair. “Good!” said DeKovner-Mayer. “You’re into your sexual self.

“Now, what if you’re having dinner with a man and he does this.” She furtively extended one wrist under the table to sneak a glance at her watch. “He’s bored.” But all is not lost. “Maybe,” said DeKovner-Mayer, “he just has an early appointment the next day. What I do then is look at my own watch and say, ‘God! I didn’t realize it was so late!’ He’ll think you’re reading his mind. Men are shocked when women do that.”

Worse signs are: a man steps back at your approach; his jacket is buttoned and your presence does not inspire him to unbutton it; he keeps his arms closed while you talk to him. According to DeKovner-Mayer, the three signs mean that he wants to get away from you; he doesn’t want to open up and he’s closed off.

DeKovner-Mayer has one piece of advice for all these situations: don’t waste your time. And if you’re interested in a man, don’t use that same body language out of shyness. “Shakespeare said, ‘Love is not timid,’ ” DeKovner-Mayer said. “And I beg you to remember that.”

“By the way,” she said, “crossing and uncrossing your legs in the presence of a man is a very intimate gesture.” The room was silent for a minute. Finally, the mouseburger-type spoke up: “What was that gesture again?”

Don’t Scratch Your Nose

More advice: Don’t scratch your nose or touch your face while talking to a man. He might pick up that you’re bored or insecure. Do have an icebreaker in mind to approach attractive strangers. The best one is a compliment followed by a question. One example: “What a handsome tie. Did you pick it out yourself?” And don’t leave out the second part, the question, DeKovner-Mayer said. “Otherwise, you’re dead in the water.”

“Practice in front of the mirror,” she said. “Practice saying, ‘I’d enjoy it if you called me. Here’s my card.’ Listen, you’ll stumble the first few times. You may throw up on a guy’s shoes from fear--I’m kidding--but there used to be a joke about a very ugly Frenchman who was always surrounded by gorgeous women. Finally, someone asked him how he got such beautiful girls. He said, ‘Ah, but you don’t know how many turned me down first.’ ”

DeKovner-Mayer, 49, scoffs at the Newsweek story. “I read that and laughed,” she said. “I really think that if I were single tomorrow, I’d have the same great chances I’ve had all my life.”

Other seminar leaders take the statistics with a grain of salt.

“There are some women who, even if there wasn’t a man shortage, wouldn’t be married,” said Fergus. “And there are certain things a man looks for. If a woman’s very different from the norm, she may not get married. The main emphasis of my program is finding some effective ways to get below the surface sooner rather than later.”

Advice Sounds Familiar

The advice given women in the 80s sounds similar to that promoted long before the women’s liberation movement. Said Blackman: “I get a lot of flack when I say this, but men want women to be women. Young women tend to be so career oriented that men sometimes feel they aren’t needed.

“I ask men in the class, ‘What do you want?’ And that’s what they say. I think grandma knew what she was talking about.

“I know a lady in her 70s who is getting married in December to a man in his 50s,” Blackman said. “I asked her what her secret was. She said, ‘I make him feel like a man, honey.’ ”

Does all this advice do any good?

Yes, said one of DeKovner-Mayer’s graduates, a 51-year-old Encino divorce. Since the class, she has met a man on an airplane, one on the beach and a couple at singles events.

“Basically, I would say it made me more comfortable with what I was already doing,” she said. “I have three sons and they rather like the idea that a girl will give them a call now and then. But I think a lot of us have been brought up with the idea of the separation of the sexes. You forget men can be apprehensive, too.”

And not all magazines agree with Newsweek on the male shortage. Here’s what a writer in the Ladies Home Journal had to say:

“Now let’s examine that proposition that if you don’t get your man soon, you probably never will. True, your chances are best in the early twenties, for the reason that there are more unattached men then, but to say that they are nil thereafter is to run counter to a whole host of real-life stories. I lunched the other day with a radiant fortyish bride. A college science teacher, she had gone to the office of her new department head to pay her respects. She came out with a prospective husband. Who married the most glittering widower in our town the other day? A 55-year-old spinster!”

That’s from an article in the August, 1947, issue. Which goes to show that women have for a long time worried that they would never get married. And yet, somehow, most of them did.