The Secret to Dating

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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 laid.

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 Sky by… declaring his love over and over and otherwise basking in her magnificence. 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 loved hanging out but inevitably declared it’d be best if we remained Just Friends.

I was, in short, a schmuck. I learned this helpful bit of Yiddish from my wife, who might just be the only smart, attractive and interesting woman alive who actually likes being told so. I’m exceedingly lucky that when we met, I was too busy being a schmuck with someone else to screw things up with her. At the time, I was dating a rockabilly chick from Long Beach who slept with my best friend and then, three sexless months later, decided the time had come to relocate to a far-off city (I drove the U-Haul, naturally).

All of which serves as a quick object lesson in what I never understood when I was dating, a simple secret shared by the successful and denied by legions of schmucks like me. Men who know the secret have “game.” Men who don’t spend Friday nights fiddling with their X-Box.

I’d even go so far as declare that this secret applies to far more than dating – in fact, 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 number-one 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 the following have in common?

New Zealand actress Jessica Rose, $300-an-hour business consultancies, W. Mark Felt, “The Da Vinci Code,” New York’s Midnight Club, Ted Williams, the Segway, Scientology, Thomas Pynchon, crop circles, British pop group The Gorilaz, and the self-help juggernaut of the moment, titled—get it?—The Secret.

All of the above garnered attention by appearing to shrink from it. Some avoid disclosure for good reasons. M. Mark Felt became Deep Throat to expose government crooks. Ted 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. Jessica Rose was just another struggling actress-slash-model before she became the mysterious teen blogger Lonelygirl15. The Midnight Club, like so many other nightspots I’m not cool enough to have ever seen the inside of, is famous for being unmarked and unadvertised. Members of the band the Gorilaz, taking a cue from previous rockers-in-costume Kiss and the Residents, hide their true identities and appear in videos as cartoon icons. The success of ABC’s “Lost” has spawned a whole genre of serialized dramas that tease at shocking revelations each episode, 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 electronic everything everywhere, of celebrity secrets exposed, of full disclosure and total transparency. The very idea of discretion seems quaint in a time when we videotape childbirth, trade confessions online and happily chat about our childhood traumas or recent surgeries (I’ve been dining out on the tale of my vasectomy for months – Hot Dating Tip #1: the ladies love an anecdote about a guy in stirrups).

All of which explains 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.

And what, preytell, does any of this have to do with dating? Plenty, obviously. If “Lost” were a guy, he’d be dating Penelope Cruz. If you’re looking for good dating advice, ignore “The Game” and “The Rules” and watch “The Secret.” (Hot Dating Tip #2: it’s free on YouTube). Ignore all the superstitious nonsense about the universal laws that will manifest cool cars and penis-enlargement 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 not because someone finally figured out that we all want cooler cars and bigger dicks. “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, I’d approach each date like a CIA operative in the witness relocation program, scrubbing my conversation of all traces of actual emotion and dropping vague references to grand adventures and deep intrigue. I’d get a tossled noncommittal haircut and finally figure out how to shut the hell up about my crazy family. No doubt I’d creep out women who happened to be emotionally balanced, but I’d be intriguing as hell to the other 99 percent of the female population.

So listen up, fellow schmucks: the less she knows, the more she wants to know. Of course I possess far deeper and more profound truths, but for now I’ll keep them to myself. I’ve been sworn to secrecy.