The secret to dating? It’s all in the secrets
HERE’S what I knew about dating when I was single: nothing.
Worse than nothing, actually. Knowing nothing might have made me mysterious. Knowing nothing might have lent me a neutral, doughy appeal, just the sort of thing to attract a hot control freak who’d mold me into her willing servant. Knowing nothing might have gotten me some action.
But no. I had grand notions of romance fuzzily inspired by “Say Anything,” the Gen-X weepie in which poster nerd John Cusack wins over pouty beauty Ione Skye. I actually thought the best way to find and keep a smart, attractive and interesting woman was to tell her how smart, attractive and interesting she was. I was forever declaring my affections, writing earnest appeals, staying up late with friends to strategize campaigns of sincerity waged against Suzi or Lisa or Nicole -- out-of-my-league lovelies who inevitably declared it’d be best if we remained Just Friends.
What I never understood when I was dating was the simple secret shared by the successful and denied to legions of Xbox-fiddling losers like me. This one bit of knowledge has become a stealth weapon of success in our frenetic, attention-hungry age, explaining the appeal of everything from “Lost” to the nation’s No. 1 self-help book.
And what is that secret?
I could just tell you, but that would contradict the secret’s essential power. Better to let it emerge on its own.
What do New Zealand actress Jessica Rose, $300-an-hour business consultancies, W. Mark Felt, “The Da Vinci Code,” Ted Williams, crop circles and the self-help juggernaut of the moment, titled -- get it? -- “The Secret,” have in common?
All of the above garnered attention by appearing to shrink from it. Some avoid disclosure for good reasons: Felt became Deep Throat to expose government crooks. Williams declined interviews because journalists are scum (so sayeth the self-loathing journalist).
But increasingly, keeping secrets -- or at least appearing to hide something -- is a deliberate, double-think strategy to stand out. Rose was just another struggling actress-slash-model before she became the mysterious teen blogger Lonelygirl15. ABC’s “Lost” has spawned a whole genre of serialized dramas that tease at shocking revelations, only to yank them away the moment things start making sense.
Advertisers even have a name for it: mystery marketing. It shouldn’t work -- after all, we’re living in an age of unprecedented openness, of celebrity secrets exposed, of full disclosure and total transparency. The very idea of discretion seems quaint in a time when we videotape childbirth and happily chat about our childhood traumas or recent surgeries on national television.
But that’s precisely why secrecy has never seemed so alluring. In an era where everything is up for grabs, what we want most of all is what’s held out of reach.
WHAT does any of this have to do with dating? Plenty. If you’re looking for good dating advice, ignore “The Game” and “The Rules” and watch “The Secret.” (Hot Dating Tip: It’s free on YouTube). Ignore all the superstitious nonsense about the universal laws that will manifest cool cars and bigger body parts if you Just Believe. Pay attention instead to the way this claptrap is presented. In the opening sequence, the “Law of Attraction” is “discovered” by wise men of yore and then passed on, “Da Vinci Code”-style, to a long line of brilliant, successful and secretive positive thinkers. “The Secret” is successful because, like Freemasonry and King Tut before it, its essential ordinariness is cloaked in obscurity.
Ergo, the secret of dating: Withhold. When you peel away the layers, the message is totally mundane. Play hard to get.
If I were playing the field today (rather than happily married to the one woman who actually likes being called attractive, smart and interesting), I would play it like a CIA operative, erasing all signs of actual emotion and dropping vague references to grand adventures and deep intrigue. I’d get a tousled, noncommittal haircut and finally figure out how to shut up about my crazy family. No doubt I’d creep out women who happened to be emotionally balanced, but I’d be intriguing to the other 99% of the female population.
The less she knows, in other words, the more she wants to know. Of course, I possess far deeper truths, but for now I’ll keep them to myself. I’ve been sworn to secrecy.