The Science of Mating

Take our Are You a Good First Date?

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Try the "NATO" approach: Don't attach to outcomes; just meet to see if a second date feels right.

Avoid overanalyzing ghosting; it often isn't personal, just move on.

Look past one deal breaker; it could be a bias worth reconsidering.

I asked one of my 30-something kids how to screen out men who weren’t emotionally comfortable, self-aware, or available on dating apps. She suggested I contact @alittlenudge; I’d like her. I looked her up, then DM’d. She responded (fangirl moment), and the good news is that she validated what I thought. The bad news is that I didn’t want it to be true.

Erika Ettin, or @alittlenudge, is a leading online dating coach with economic and business degrees from Cornell and Georgetown, respectively. She flat-out told me there was “no shortcut” to finding emotionally mature men. I’d have to meet each person I deemed worthy of a date and see if they were capable of emotional communication, owning their mistakes, and being able to work through conflicts in a positive, intimacy-deepening way.

“People are notoriously terrible at self-assessing,” Ettin pronounced. “Many people are not (emotionally mature and self-aware)—and it’s those people who think they are.”

She was right. She mentioned she’d be happy to work with me, and I willingly took the offer. Although a luxury, I could gratefully afford it. And goddess knows, I’d probably been making the same mistakes in my last seven years of dating since divorce. Maybe @alittlenudge could offer a reset. Besides, I could claim it as a business expense if I wrote about it, right? (Yes, here. Hopefully, the IRS is not reading.)

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