Amusingly enough, my only dating guidelines were "no bisexuals, no wiccans, no ex-strippers, no vegetarians" and I dated two bisexual wiccan ex-strippers at once. So guidelines only get you so far.

The last time I was dating there were no text messages, so take what I say with a grain of salt:

1) The mating dance of Homo Sapiens is confusing and largely literary. You can choose to opt out but know that it's exactly what you're doing. My experience has been that those who refuse to so much as pay lip service to the power struggle at the heart of the dance tend to end up with fellow socially-maladroit individuals. Which, okay, fine. But the people who can do the dance? they're the ones who resolve problems more efficiently, communicate more easily and conduct their relationships more openly. The whole point of the dance is to establish the social skillz of your counterpart. Opting out is the same as saying "I have no skillz."

2) FUCK THAT. Sell yourself like you're a stolen El Camino. Get that shit off the lot! Don't lie but if you don't punch yourself up now, you'll end up on a downward spiral of less-and-less optimal partnerships. ALWAYS ensure that your reach exceeds your grasp. ALWAYS.

3) If a guy asks you back to his house after an evening, he's going to try to sleep with you. DOESN'T MEAN HE WILL. It comes down to this: do you think the person opposite you is a rapist? Then you probably shouldn't date him. You're an adult. So's he. If you opt out of those truly awesome talk-til-dawn adventures where you're just hanging out shooting the shit and listening to music while talking about stuff you'd never get to over dinner, you are missing out on something I truly consider to be the highlight of humanity. The first "date" (my wife contests this: she doesn't consider it a date) I had with my wife was four days after she kicked out her first husband. I brought over ready-to-cook pasta, a movie and a bottle of wine. We never even got to the movie, we never even kissed, and I left at 7am.

4) Sure.

5) Monogamy makes everything easier. Dating two people at once means doubling down on your efforts 'cuz you can't go halfway.

6) I don't know what you're talking about.

7) Listen to words, but don't take them as gospel writ.

8) Sometimes. Not always. My wife was busy planning a wedding when we got together. She didn't so much as return my emails for several days. That was 12 years ago. We're having dinner with the couple she married tonight.

9) That would have precluded my awesome bisexual wiccan ex stripper stories.

10) Not always true, but at an early age, more true than not.

11) Accept them for who they want to be. Two people united in a goal can accomplish so much more than one and a person's idea of who they want to be is just as important as a person's reality of who they are now. I dated a girl for four and a half years who didn't know what she wanted to be. She ended up in a career she hated. And I dated a girl who wanted to walk away from a management-track position at a Fortune 500 company and deliver babies. She's got the best smile I've ever seen and I've been seeing it for 20 years now.