The Truth About Men Who Are Dogs

Dating men is not something we recommend to amateurs. If you feel you must have a personal life, then we advise consulting an expert first. You might consider someone like Susan Forward, author of a classic of pop psych, “Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them” (Bantam, 1986).

And don’t even try to tell us that you haven’t read it.

“I still get letters on the book,” Forward says sweetly over salad at the Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills. “It was translated into 15 languages, and I still get royalty checks. I saw it in the San Francisco airport six months ago. That was really a surprise.”

Hey, there must be a lot of men hating women out there. But that’s not all. Forward’s latest tome on male dysfunction is “When Your Lover Is a Liar: Healing the Wounds of Deception and Betrayal” (HarperCollins), which she co-wrote with Donna Frazier. Apparently, a lot of men lie. Imagine that.

“I started it a year before the Clinton scandal broke, so it had nothing to do with that at the time,” says Forward, an L.A.-based licensed clinical social worker and former radio talk-show shrink who has left private practice.

Forward didn’t have to examine hanky-panky at the highest levels of government to wrap her brain around that one. She didn’t have to stray any farther than her backyard. Literally.

“My ex-husband was a terrible liar. A lot of it was about money. He was incredibly reckless and irresponsible with money. It was, ‘The deal is closing next week,’ and living on what’s supposed to come in, but it never came in, so now you’re in debt. It was a nightmare. And I lived that way for 15 years because I was madly in love.

“Later I found out there were lots of other women. I certainly had signs that I refused to look at because we were so passionate and so intense with each other romantically and sexually that I figured, ‘How can I have a bad marriage if he can’t keep his hands off me?’ I still get love letters from him. He’s remarried for the fifth time.”

The fifth time after you?

“No, that was one of the lies. I thought I was his third wife. I found out I was actually his fourth two days before we were going to get married. You know I have this tendency to spill so much when I’m doing interviews, and then when I see it in print, I’m so embarrassed, and yet it’s not my style to hold back. I just never learned to do that.”

Well, don’t start now.

“So this woman calls me and says, ‘I think you should know I am Walter’s third ex-wife.’ And when I confronted him with it, it was, ‘Well, we only got married for a few days because she was pregnant and she was going to blackmail me,’ and he was running for Congress and blah, blah, blah. And I said, ‘OK, that’s logical.’

“So I’m not judging anybody for being an idiot because it’s like, where was I when I needed me? I was as big an idiot. The key is that if you don’t learn from it, then you’re an idiot. But I’ve made some huge, huge mistakes in my life, and I’ve tried to turn my wounds into wisdom, and I think that’s part of our journey.”

Now that’s expertise. Moving on to another category of male dysfunction, we asked Forward to analyze single men in L.A.

“I think the movie industry has really poisoned people’s perceptions to a great extent. I remember between marriages, I had a blind date with this guy. I was 30 at the time, and I looked 20. We met at our mutual friend’s house, and he looked at my mutual friend and said, ‘You didn’t tell me she was old.’ He was probably in his late 40s, early 50s. I found out subsequently that he doesn’t date anybody over 18.”

For the next book, how about “Men Who Live in L.A. and the Women Who Love Them”?

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Don’t despair, girls. You can always import your guy. That’s what writer Sara Davidson did after cowboy Richard Goff roped her heart in Nevada five years ago.

Davidson’s new book about their unlikely relationship, “Cowboy: A Love Story” (HarperCollins), corralled more than 150 like-minded Angelenos at a reading at Dutton’s Books in Brentwood on Tuesday. Surprise!

“There must have been a dozen women who came up to me and said something like, ‘I have a cowboy in my life,’ ” Davidson says. “Not literally a cowboy, but some man they felt awkwardness about, someone who was socially incorrect.

“I was quite overwhelmed by the emotional response from a lot of the people. [Goff] and I had broken a lot of rules, but the biggest taboo was class. That’s the last taboo in our society, and it’s the one no one wants to talk about in our supposedly fluid, classless society, where anyone can be president.”

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Irene Lacher’s Out & About column runs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays on Page 2.