Speed Dating: The Smarter, Faster Way to Lasting Love (Hardcover)

~ Yaacov Deyo (Author), Sue Deyo (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Want a faster, less painful path to lasting love? Now, a founder of SpeedDating -- hailed by U.S. News & World Report as "the original fast-date service" -- reveals the essential questions you need to ask in order to date, evaluate, and even marry Mr. or Ms. Right. SpeedDating(SM) shows how to judge quickly whether a relationship has a future before a large time or emotional investment has been made.

Based on the worldwide success of SpeedDating events -- a unique form of round-robin dating -- this book translates and expands upon the essential strategies of this dynamic approach to help you date smarter, not longer! Its accessible Q & A format features tools, tactics, and exercises to help you gauge a relationship's true potential. Included are stories of singles who have used SpeedDating's principles to change their approach to dating and find the relationship they were seeking.

For someone in search of a meaningful and lasting relationship, today's dating scene can be brutal. If you want to date with less heartache and heartbreak and a lot more efficiency and fun, let SpeedDating(SM) put you on the fast track to love.

About the Author

Yaacov Deyo is a graduate of Harvard, where he studied physics and Nicaraguan land reform. On a grant from Harvard, he was involved in conflict resolution in Belfast, Ireland. Returning home, he ran a homeless shelter in Boston. In 1996 he was ordained as a rabbi after seven years of advanced study at the Aish HaTorah Yeshiva. Yaacov and his students created SpeedDating events to help Los Angeles Jewish singles meet each other.Within a year, SpeedDating expanded to more than twenty-five cities worldwide and was featured in major media, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, People, the View, the Early Morning Show on CBS, NPR, and more. Currently Yaacov runs SpeedDating Worldwide, lectures on SpeedDating principles, and is the educational director of Aish Los Angeles, one of the largest Jewish education centers in the country.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow (March 19, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0066212553
• ISBN-13: 978-0066212555
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #829,576 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't Date Without This Book!, May 6, 2002

By A Customer

When you're ready to stop wasting time dating the wrong person, read this book. The Speeddating way is to ask your date the right questions early in the courtship to spot the red flags BEFORE you find yourself deeply involved with this person for the wrong reasons-reasons like convenience, security/lifestyle or simply because the sex is just too good! Asking targeted questions also helps you to discover your own core values and to search for a life partner who will share those values. The methodology outlined in this book significantly reduces the pain of dating. Believe me!

Reading this book gave me new insight into why I married my ex-husband. We were what the authors call "defaulters-those who become so enmeshed in a relationship before making a commitment that they never really know where dating ends and the relationship begins." After living together in college and then moving cross country together for his law school, we eventually felt obligated toward marriage. We'd joke that our grandchildren's running gag about us would be, "Our grandparents lived together for 30 years and were married for 3." So we ultimately married because we couldn't imagine living without each other-not because we were so deeply in love-but because our coupledom was such a comfortable and professional and economically sustaining habit and because everyone in our families treating us accordingly. It took this book to clarify the obvious: that dating is a process, dating is not the relationship. Based on a system of core values that started to emerge when we discussed having children, my ex and I couldn't have been more diametrically opposed in the areas of religion, lifestyle and balancing household responsibilities.

So, please, save yourself heartache and years of treading water in a wrong relationship. If you're not on the same page as your partner, it's because YOU didn't ask the right questions and align yourself with someone whose heart is in the same place as yours. You want to be with someone in whom you see greatness and who sees greatness in you. This book shows you how to take responsibility for who you really are and how to attract the partner who will help you realize your full potential.

27 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Dating For Dweebs?, March 13, 2003

By	Martian Bachelor (Feminacentric America) - See all my reviews

If you think "Speed Dating" is going to be about those relatively new round-robin events you may have been hearing about lately where people get 6 or 10 mini-dates of something like 7 or 10 minutes duration each in one evening, that would be logical and yet you'd be wrong. Even though the authors claim to be the inventors of those now-popular events, and to have a decade's worth of experience putting such events on, this book isn't about that. It only gets eight superficial pages in the appendix, six of `em about the rules for such events. This is too bad because it would have been interesting to get the low-down on these things from some seasoned experts.

Instead, the book is about a general, goal-directed dating philosophy based heavily on the Jewish Talmud (book of wisdom) which is designed to help you find - you guessed it - your "soul mate". Yes, it's another one of those kinds of books. It turns people/men into relationship objects and dating into work, helping one develop the equivalent of a "Man Plan". (Yes, the book tries to be gender neutral but it's clearly aimed at a female audience.) The goal, of course, is that holy grail of modern womanhood, marriage and happily-ever-after-land.

One wonders when dating became so rule-laden. Even though the book is not very long, not to mention that it's broken down into inane bite-sized pieces, it doesn't seem probable that anyone trying to keep all this well-worn and old-fashioned advice in their head (if they don't already know the schtick) would be a very good date. It's especially annoying that the author's opinions are expressed as absolutes with continual cheery guarantees of eventual success if you just be yourself and do what they tell you to.

Among the sillier ideas presented is the one about developing a "dating team" of qualified adults to help you prepare for the big day and disassemble the happenings afterword. There are even questions to ask on dates, as one zooms in on whether he is The One.

I also thought their "key aspects of the personality" chart, which appeared a couple of times, was mostly bogus based on what I've studied about psychology. Doesn't the average consumer, in this world of nearly limitless choices, believe strongly that their possessions (the outermost and therefore least significant circle in their diagram) reflect their core values (the innermost circle in the diagram)? But the authors don't bother themselves with such considerations. Again, they simply state their half-baked notions as The Way It Is.

Books like this are one of the reasons *why* "today's dating scene can be brutal" (the book's very first sentence). But, hey, even a crummy strategy is better than none at all. It worked for them -- though I got the impression they developed all these ideas *after* getting married -- so it could work for you too. Dream on IMO.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A true guiding book about searching life long partnership, February 16, 2006

By	Sunshine girl (San Jose, CA USA) - See all my reviews

After a few unsucessful relationships I almost gave up on looking Mr. Right. My friend recommended me to read the book "He's just not into you". So I took a trip to the bookstore and I found this book. I was attracted to this book by its title. After standing inside the store reading for about 20 pages, I decided to buy it.

Now I am halfway done with book and I really like it and have recommended to my other single friends. This book not only teaches you how to handle speed dating or any dating event but also truly provides a guide about how to search the long lasting love. I was feeling frustrated and rushed into a few meaningless relationships. I have been in a wrong relationship for 5 years and afraided getting out and by the time it ended my heart was broken. I also have wasted my time with a few guys who don't want to commit. If I have read this book much earlier, I would have saved my time and feeling for the right person.

Eventhough I have not done with this book, I have the confidence finding the right person and I can let the Mr. Wrong go easily.

Only after you know who you are, who you are looking for and what kind of relatinship you are looking for, you can find your true lasting love.----this is what I learned from this book so far.