Use just the right combination of personal questions about his mother, his future goals and his childhood. Time your sexual encounters perfectly. Be wary of your finances, especially how your wage packet might impact upon his ego. Make him feel like he’s in charge. String him along. Invest in a few pieces of expensive lingerie, because cotton pants from Marks & Spencer don’t say marriage. Ingratiate yourself with his friends, but make a big deal out of giving him alone time with them. And when the time is right, make that ultimatum.

If you’re confused about how to do this, you’re not the only one. But now a man called Blake Lavak has written a much celebrated romantic instruction manual called Own That Guy in 60 Days. His advice is simple: don’t wait for a man to ask you out. Put yourself out there, be proactive and chat him up first. On your first date buy him dinner to show that you’re financially in control. Don’t wait for him to call the next day: get in contact to thank him for the night. And sleep with him on that first date – "Give him what he wants and he’ll be hooked.”

This is all well and good, but of course totally contradicts the advice of best-selling boyfriend bible The Rules, by Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider, which has been lauded as the go-to self-help relationship book since 1995. These rules advocate playing hard to get by hardly ever returning calls, never talking to a man first, and staying away from sex for as long as possible (limiting yourself to a maximum of "casual – as opposed to formal – kissing” on the first date). You always let him take the lead and pay for dates.

Is it possible that so much has changed on the dating scene in 20 years that the new formula for success is the complete opposite of the old one? Of course not. Any idiot knows that following these guides to the letter will doom most people to failure. Like men who believe they can sign up to pick-up artistry and appear on the red carpet alongside a supermodel in six months, women who adhere to advice like this are being taken for an expensive ride. But that doesn’t stop us hoping.

What these sorts of advice books really exploit is a universally desperate desire to simplify human communication. If people had to admit that relationships are basically intricate sets of compromises dependent on luck, looks and lifestyle, then half of us probably wouldn’t even bother getting out of bed every morning.

And when I say people, I mean women. Because, let’s face it, keeping a relationship happy and healthy, or cultivating one at all, is still seen as a female domain. We’re all suffering from a Victorian hangover that tells us that women belong in the domestic sphere of wifely duties and men don’t really have time for all of that, unless they’re looking for a bit of arm candy. This attitude also presupposes that women aren’t naturally sexual creatures with libidos of their own, but instead can use sex as some kind of bargaining tool against their unwitting male prey. That’s why "catching your man” books aimed at women far outnumber their counterparts marketed at men.

Women’s magazines are also packed with articles that mirror this outlook – written mostly by female writers. It’s as if these journalists suffer from social Stockholm syndrome, in love with the society that fences them, as evidenced by their endless decrees about how to look, how to behave and how to manipulate if you want to find a man (and God forbid you might want to find a woman). Unfortunately, there is only one relationship rule that ever really works.

Just kidding. There aren’t actually any at all.

 

(The Guardian)