Amy Cohen and Hedda Muskat, as writers and producers of the longest-running TV dating show, Love Connection, interviewed over five hundred singles. They have compiled their stories into this candid and straight-from-the-gut book. The people are real and the stories are true.
Amy is currently the senior producer on the successful Change of Heart syndicated relationship show and was formerly the senior producer on Home and Family. Her work has been published in Ladies Home Journal, Playboy, and Movieline.
Hedda is the reality producer on The Martin Short Show. She was previously a producer on The Howie Mandel Show and The Montel Williams Show. She was also head of casting and television production for a major infomercial company, where her biggest account was a dating service hosted by Chuck Woolery. Hedda is the author of a successful book from the 80s, The Yuppie Cookbook.
As the writers on numerous television shows, from talk shows to dating shows including Love Connection, we have had the opportunity to meet and interview hundreds of singles in the last few years and to get to know their most intimate thoughts about their dating lives.
Dating is a loaded word. It conjures up images of a serious time, filled with unknown expectations.
Who pays for what? Do we kiss? Am I drinking too much? Talking too much? Am I too boring? Some might even argue that going to the gyno is less stressful than going on a DATE.
So why all this dating phobia? It's because people haven't really dated since the 1950s. The 60s were filled with love-ins and sit-ins and enough LSD to give one the illusion they may be out on a date, even if they were alone in their room banging their head against the wall.
There were even fewer dating rules in the 70s. Singles just hung out at discos, dropping ludes and going home with whomever. This continued until the early 80s, as boomers graduated to coke parties and screwing each other in night club restrooms.
And then AIDS hit with a bang! Singles freaked out. The discos closed down, the drugs calmed down, and now people suddenly were faced with something they'd only seen in movies--DATING! The kind where Moondoggy picks up Gidget and they have a picnic on the beach, under the moonlight, and get to know each other. They might even hold hands.
And that's how dating should be. Relaxed, fun, and friendly. Dating in the new millennium has a different approach. The term "date" itself becomes synonymous with "getting together," "hanging out," or "joining friends." By keeping the term "date" less formal, a lot of the anxiety and pressure formerly associated with the dating experience can be eliminated.
No matter what we choose to call the term, dating always will have some anxiety attached to it. We put this book together based on stories and intimate thoughts of hundreds of single people who told us about their dates.
This is a single person's bible to the dating life. Yes, it's scary, yes, it's hard, yes, it can be depressing. But we will show you how to make it less scary and more exciting, how to make it easier and more relaxed, and most of all how to have a good time.
According to one successful dater, "Dates are like streetcars... One comes along every five minutes. You just have to be standing at the corner."
What is dating?
Webster's dictionary defines dating as "...to go out socially."
A relationship is defined as "a connection, association, or involvement; an emotional or other connection between people."
The most important thing to remember when you embark on dating is that you shouldn't confuse the meaning between dating and a relationship.
Successful dating is not the same as a successful relationship. This book is solely a guide to successful dating.
How we got our statistics:
We talked to 505 daters in an independent survey we conducted in three states at various clubs, bars, malls, and grocery stores. While we realize this doesn't cover every single dater in the universe, it does give us a good random sample from which to deduce what daters like and don't like. We called this our "Love Connection Dating Survey."
