Being happily single is wonderful. Many of my long-married women friends talk wistfully of their single days evenings spent with a stack of movies, a glass of wine and a huge bowl of popcorn no real cooking, no one to answer to, and no one to nix their choice of French with English subtitles in favor of something with more action. Even while searching for a soul mate, the ability to savor that solitary state is important. In her uplifting, boldly pro-woman guide to dating, It’s Not You, It’s Him: The Zero-Tolerance Approach to Dating Dr. Georgia Witkin tells readers, If you love who you are and are happy with yourself, then don’t change a thing. . . . There’s nothing wrong with you and nothing about you that you should change just to meet a guy. An assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Center, Witkin tells her readers, Once you start assuming that you are perfectly loveable just the way you are, everything will change. . . . You’ll start to look at each new man through your eyes instead of looking at yourself through his. She adds emphatically: Most of all, don’t apologize for who you are. Men don’t apologize for anything. They don’t apologize for being overweight or balding, dressing like a slob or being single. Take a note and take a lesson. But Witkin isn’t anti-relationship in fact, she promotes a realistic, tolerant approach, in which women trade the myth of perfection for the math of probabilities. As she so aptly puts it, A perfect match doesn’t exist; the man who loves you does. We think single women will adore Witkin’s no-nonsense approach.
Linda Stankard writes from Nanuet, New York.
