Rescue Dating
For the Perfect Search
by Melinda Maximova

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My new husband’s college buddy came to visit the weekend before my wedding for one last hoorah before the big day.  This being both of our second marriages my fiancé, thankfully didn’t feel the need to have a bachelor party instead opting for a weekend on the town with his old buddy from college.  He asked me to join them and against my better instincts, I assented and joined in the revelry.  This was a mistake.

Bachelor parties are a tradition that enable men to have one last night of single dome before tying the knot in commitment and fidelity to just one woman.  Should you let your guy have a bachelor party?  Is he wrong for wanting one? Should you join in the fun?

For many women, joining is exactly what they want.  They are willing to let their guy have a bachelor party as long as she too can attend. By injecting herself in the event she essentially lays interference to any possible temptation by her future husband of strippers or hookers, or both who may also be in attendance.  We used to call them stag parties and the guys would sit around watching porn movies projected onto a big screen, while getting drunk.  Now it more likely involves strippers who after a certain amount of libations and monetary incentive, will resort to unsightly behavior better left to the imagination. Sounds like a party I could skip.  Being around a room full of drunken, horny guys acting like college boys does not appeal to me in the slightest. In fact being around my guy in this environment would turn me off completely.  I don’t want to see my guy revert to the asinine adolescence of his college years.

Which brings me back to the college buddy visit.  So the buddy comes to town to party down and walk down memory lane with his best friend, my future husband.  Memories of college days when they were, as described by others, dubbed, “Dumb and Dumber trying to get laid”. And the more they drank the easier it was for me to visualize this dynamic duo in their “Dumb and Dumber” prime. At first I tried to be a trooper and laugh along with the stories they told but in reality the stories were a big turn off and as the night wore on I not only began to dislike the energy of the college buddy, but also the behavior of my fiancé himself.  I wasn’t intending to marry a college kid was I?.

So, in retrospect, I wish I hadn’t joined in at all. By joining them I had managed to sour the mood for the night, my future husband began to look like a toad, and my finance’s attempt to introduce me to his old buddy ended with the buddy not particularly liking me, or me him.

Thankfully, my husband didn’t want a bachelor party, but if he had, I wouldn’t have wanted to be the one to prevent a tradition, or right of passage, that was important to him.  What kind of climate is that for forging into a marriage?  Instead, I would let him have his party and would have stayed as far away as possible.  Going would only present a side of him to me that I may not want to see, a side that is long gone with youth but still a side that he may want to re-visit with his college buddies on occasion- with out me next time.  I don’t need to be buddies with all his friends.  We have our own friends together, but just like women need some alone girlfriend time, men also need alone time with their buddies where they can be “Dumb and Dumber” remembering the years of trying to get laid.

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Matchmaker marries client

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San Francisco was ranked the number one best city to be single… If you want to stay single, especially if you are a single mother. A lot of men don’t want a woman with kids, and it doesn’t matter how lovely or adorable your child is. When a guy has a line of twenty-eight year old, never-married, hotties knocking on his door, a single mom can look like a lot of baggage. I was no exception.

Finally, I found a younger man to love. Six years my junior, he looked up to me and respected me and was attracted to my nurturing personality and guidance. We stayed married for six years before he began to stray. When he turned thirty-three, he noticed the evolution of his own power and wanted to explore it. I, on the other hand, was almost forty and no longer interested in going to nightclubs or participating in the singles scene. While my husband was attracting women as young as twenty, his interest in our marriage continually lessened. One night, he didn’t come home and stayed away for five more nights. If I’d had trouble hearing it before, his message was now loud and clear. He wanted out.

Suddenly, I was a divorced mom navigating the dating scene in what was inarguably the most difficult city to find love. I knew that if I wanted to get a good man, I had to get a plan and be proactive. I needed to find the diamonds in the city and create close intimate relationships with the winners. I needed a really great guy with a great attitude who would love me and take me away from the drudgery of dating. I needed…
… To become a matchmaker. What better way to weed out the duds and find the diamonds than starting my own matchmaking company? What better way to get inside the locker room and become one of the guys?

It worked. Men came out of the woodwork. Handsome and successful, they were great catches who were looking for love. I hit the jackpot. I had access to the best of the best, right at my fingertips. Not only was I becoming a friend, date coach, and matchmaker to the most eligible bachelors in the city, but I was also helping them find true love.

One client in particular was very intriguing. He was 47, 6’4”, handsome and sexy, and had many qualities girls desire. But, he could have won a “Razzie” in the dating department and needed a lot of personal date coaching. He wore his heart on his sleeve and didn’t filter what came out of his mouth. He literally talked his way out of any chance of closing a deal—with some really great women. I had no problems setting him up with women, but the girls were running for the hills after the first date. He had been married for twenty years and was recently divorced, without a clue how to navigate the dating scene. With his handsome, good looks, he could easily get a girl to go out with him, but inevitably, he would blow it. His list of dating tragedies could have been better categorized as dating disaster bloopers. One girl even jumped out of the car before it stopped moving. These women were chewing him up and spitting him out before he could get a second date, and I was stuck trying to help him through it.

Now granted, he needed a lot of coaching and obviously, he shouldn’t show up for a date with three martinis under his belt, but in my humble opinion, these women had no idea that a really great guy was hiding beneath the gaffes and goofs. They didn’t realize that with a little patience and careful tending, this “Neanderthal” could actually become Mr. Right. I saw a lovable, fun, engaging, sweet, guy who genuinely didn’t know any better. Yes, he was clueless, but he had a great heart and deep inside was still a confused little boy attempting to fumble his way in the scary world of adult dating. I had a keen insider’s view of this man. I was his professional matchmaker, and I could see Mr. Right beneath the Neanderthal exterior.

His lack of success wasn’t entirely his fault: He was dating women who didn’t know how to navigate the Power Shift. He was not the only one making mis-steps; his dates were making mis-steps, too. I knew him in a different context, but his dates didn’t see what I did and dismissed him out of hand. They were women in their late 30s who were behaving like princesses and, ultimately, were missing out on a relationship with a really good man.

“Let’s go younger,” he announced one day. “Let’s try that sweet spot between twenty-eight and thirty-three, when women still have their looks but haven’t become jaded or bitter. Let’s go for fun and for someone who will value me.”

He was already forty-seven, but he still had a tall trim body and a handsome face, and I didn’t have any reason to think that younger women wouldn’t find him attractive. Moreover, I was used to this request. Most of my clients wanted to meet women in this age group. Regardless of my clients’ ages, they all seem to want women in this same “sweet spot,” between twenty-eight and thirty-three.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s give it a try.”

He was able to date much younger women. He took twenty-eight year old Yvonne salsa dancing and shared drinks and intellectual banter with Nicole, a thirty-year-old law student. He had a lot of fun with these young women but in the end reported back to me saying that he felt they were too young.
“She isn’t ready for a relationship. She seems like she still wants to play the field.”

“Well,” I said, “you know, women in this age group are very sought after. They have a stream of guys trying to date them. They have all the power. They see you as just another guy in a long line.”

It’s a common dilemma. My client wanted a woman who was youthful, fun, and exciting. He wanted a woman who valued him and appreciated his power, but he also wanted a woman who had her own power. She should be a woman who was grounded and intelligent and someone with whom he could communicate as a friend. In short, he wanted a woman his age, but who looked and acted much younger.
During the turmoil with my own unraveling marriage, the dynamics of my relationship with this client shifted. Having just gone through a divorce himself, he was now the expert on this subject, and he started coaching me. He helped me through the pain of rejection and distracted me with trips to Lake Tahoe and Las Vegas and we became very close friends… But just friends.

From my perspective, he was funny, sensitive, and engaging. We had tons of chemistry, but I wasn’t attracted to him sexually. He was a little dorky at times, and I tended to go for macho men. I usually went for men like my father, who as a teenager, would get in fistfights for fun, or like my ex-husband, who was a competitive boxer. My client was a great friend, but I couldn’t imagine intimacy with him.

Absent of pressure to take this friendship to a different level, we had fun. Lots of fun! And we also had deep conversations about life and social dynamics. I developed a lot of respect for him. He was competent and obviously successful, owning multiple vacation properties, and he could be a guy’s guy, but he could also engage in pillow talk with me like a girlfriend. As time went on, I began to realize that I was falling. I was falling, slowly, ever so slowly, in love.

However, I knew that I had an uphill battle if I wanted a relationship with this guy. I knew that if I wanted to land this fish, I would have to pull out all the tips, tricks, and skills that I preach every day in my work as a matchmaker. I would have to play my cards right and put my money where my mouth was and forgive him for his missteps and misspoke words. He certainly had no “game” on the dating dance floor, but he was someone who had all the components of a great husband. I knew I needed to be youthful, but grounded, in my own wisdom, and admiring, yet independent. In essence, I had to become the woman that all men seek. I needed to become the wise and powerful woman with a youthful and open attitude they desired. For the first time, I had to test my theories by putting them into practice in my own life.

San Francisco may not be an easy city for single women, but a woman who uses her heart instead of her pride will go a long way in finding her Mr. Right. I turned a Neanderthal into “Cary Grant” and married him. Sometimes, a girl has to be proactive if she wants to get and marry a really great guy. My goal now is to help my other clients morph into the Mr. Right women crave and to help the women they date see the potential “Cary Grant” glimmering within the Neanderthal exterior.

Hear the matchmaker/client interview on KRXA Radio, the Sheila Show

For more information contact Melinda Maximova, matchmaker with Perfect Search melinda@theperfectsearch.com

Send $15. and I will answer any relationship, sexual or dating question. I will spend up to 1/2 hour on the question.

Being in the business of getting high-net-worth men married off has made me uniquely privy to the all important, and often contentious, prenuptial agreement. Even saying the word can sour many a love struck couples.  But the reality is that prenups are important and should be handled with an open mind and an understanding from each side’s perspective.

I have had several clients tell me the horrors they experienced during divorces, sans a prenuptial agreement.  One in particular was so disturbing I even wanted to go to court for him.  He was a successful surgeon and fell in love and married a nurse on his floor at work.  She was already 35 when they married and they never had children during their rocky, 5-year marriage.  Because California law states that married couples split assets 50%-50% upon divorce, she was not only entitled to monthly alimony payments, half of his money, half of his properties, but also half of his practice.  These were all assets that he had before their short marriage. One’s business is an asset just like any other and so in the case of a divorce, the business is split as well.  And he had a business partner who, after the divorce had to share the ownership and control with the bitter ex wife too.  If he would have removed or limited any claim to any portion of the value of the business in a prenup, he would have not only saved himself, but also his partner and his practice.

It is one thing when you marry young and neither has money and you build a family and buy a house, accumulating wealth together, with one supporting the other through school, or one manning the house while the other works.  This is a case where the 50%- 50% asset division makes sense.  But in the case where one, or both persons already has assets before coming into the marriage then communal property doesn’t make sense and a premarital agreement is important. Protecting your wealth, which you worked hard for your entire life, from falling into the hands of an ex who now hates you is just a smart thing to do.  No matter how much in love you are before the marriage, and no matter how sure you are that a split will never occur, you have to protect yourself from the ‘what if” scenario.  Even the most wonderful man or woman in the world can spin out and become miserable to live with over time.

If both parties have assets before coming in to the marriage it can be pretty straightforward.  If they divorce, they only get what they brought into the marriage and they divide equally, or quit claim each other from, what they accumulate during the marriage.  Not too complicated.  But when one person has assets and the other doesn’t it can get tricky.  It wouldn’t be fair for a woman to spend her youth with a man, building a home with him, only to have him boot her out penniless, for a younger woman when she gets old.  This is the risk of having a flat out, “You get nothing in the case of divorce,” scenario.  One candidate of mine got married in her early 40s after signing a prenup that waived all claims to his assets and during the next 10 years her husband acquired large amounts of wealth. Feeling very suave, he began using his money to lure young women into his bed and after his wife caught him he promptly left her for a 24 year old! She was left in her fifties, with out a job or a place to live, regretting the signing of their iron-clad prenup.

I had another client who married one of my candidates with a prenup that waived her claim to all assets and alimony, and all future claims to, or ownership of any property they acquired through out the marriage. This prenup was good for the husband because it gave the bride incentive to be a good wife, but bad for the bride because it didn’t give the groom any incentive to be a good husband.  He could leave her high and dry at any moment and she wouldn’t have anything more than years and tears on her face, making it more challenging to replace him. Like any deal, it has to be fair and ethical for both sides.

I had one client who presented a prenup to his bride-to-be, a month before the wedding causing her to burst into tears.  His prenup kept her from all his assets, any future property they acquired during the marriage, any alimony payments and kept her out of his will if he should die before her. He preferred to leave his assets to his three children from a previous marriage.  This was complicated by the fact that the children were minors and so the assets would essentially be in the hands of the contentious ex wife if he died prematurely. My client was so paranoid about his future wife using him for money that he was ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater” so to speak.  He ended up causing irreparable damage during the negotiation cycle so that the prenup was never signed and the marriage plans were abandoned altogether.

These are all examples of pre marital agreements, or lack thereof, going awry. There are good examples though too, that can be used as templates for crafting a protective prenup that is fair, compassionate and honorable.   Some prenups have milestones in place so that if the spouses stay married for five years, for example, a prenup might reward the wife more money, and even more if they stay together for 10 years, and so on.  That gives the wife an incentive to stay in the marriage and be a good wife.  There is a danger however, if the husband starts getting bored with the marriage at year five, he would have an incentive to divorce her rather than hang in there because the longer they stay married the harder his fiscal punishment would be in a future split.

Another kind of prenup could be drafted with milestones that stipulate the wife doesn’t get anything if she leaves him, but gets incrementally more alimony over the years if he leaves her. This would deter both parties from initiating a split. However one could argue that he could just behave badly and force her to leave him rather than leave her.  I had one candidate who signed a prenup like this and her husband simply quit coming home rather than legally filing for divorce.  Therefore he wasn’t actually “leaving her” and didn’t have to give her anything according to the prenup. She left him anyway and got - zip.

A “sunset clause,” is where the prenup states that the agreement’s going to last for a certain amount of time, say, ten years, and then they’re not going to have it anymore at all. This rides on the assumption that if the couple makes it this far, they’re gong to make it the distance. This is a good faith measure showing the spouse with lesser assets that trust and faith will evolve over time. This can be dangerous however, if an unhappy wife waits until the 11^th year and then leaves her husband and gets half of his assets and cashes in on his monthly alimony payments.

Drafting the right prenup for your relationship should be an individual document according to individual circumstances. The number one thing to remember is that the time before a marriage is supposed to be a romantic one and so negotiating the details of the prenup should not take an emotional toll on the relationship. Honesty about what you each have, honesty about what you each want, and compassion for the other’s interests are all critical for drafting a fair agreement that protects both parties.  The one who pushes for an unfair prenup will run the risk of seeming distrustful, and lacking commitment to the marriage.

Making sure the prenup holds up in court after a divorce is equally important.  Otherwise, what is the use of the document?  Each party should have their own lawyer, there should be ample time to negotiate the document before the wedding date, and the agreement should not leave either party destitute. No matter what state you’re in, the courts look for equity to make sure that one spouse is not taking advantage of the other.

Stumble it!

When in a solid relationship, how much freedom should you give your partner? What is the leash length? For example, can your man go to his annual Vegas trip with the guys? Can he go to a bachelor party knowing that he may get tangled up with unscrupulous strippers and hookers? And what about Girls Night Out? Is this just an excuse for women to act single for a night? Should your guy reel you in, or should he set you free?

I am a big fan of freedom. The day I graduated from high school I bolted out to California from the cornfields of Illinois. I wanted freedom and couldn’t wait to leave home. Because of this, I also like to bestow freedom on the ones I love. I give my 17-year-old daughter a pretty long leash, but she has earned it. She has grown up to be a levelheaded, sensible girl, and I trust her. I also give my dog a pretty long leash. She is a loyal, intelligent Border Collie who would travel to the ends of Earth to be next to me. But for my man, now that is a different story. There are many women out there dangling their seductive wears, and quite frankly, I feel it is naïve to think a man will indefinitely resist the insistent allure of “Cats in Heat”. Just like it is naïve to think a dog will “Stay” when you put an open can of wet cat food in front of it and leave the room. We are all animals inside, and like animals, we all have our weak and breaking points. Sure, if you love something, set it free, and if it doesn’t come back, you know that it was never yours. But, the flip side of the coin is that a woman must be alert and ready to run interference when her man is in precarious circumstances. And she must use her leash with care and wisdom. I strongly recommend the ever so useful, “Retractable Leash”.

Let me explain: My dog would never run away. She loves me and she loves our home and her life. She is the most loyal, loving creature on Earth. And, I don’t need to put a leash on her most of the time because when I walk with her she would rather keep pace with my calves, following me wherever I go, than run off to play with the other dogs. I don’t need a leash… unless… there is a kitty in sight. And then, all bets are off. She will bolt across the street, mindless of people or cars, and chase the kitty just for the fun of watching it run. Kitties all across my neighborhood, lazily sunning on their porch stoops, bolt upright, tails flared, backs arched, and high-tail it over the nearest fence to escape her advances. Poor Kitties!

Now, for the most part, my dog and I are fine with out a leash at all. We have complete and total trust. But, she is a dog, and a dog is a dog, and so for her safety, I keep her on a retractable leash to prevent her from getting run over when she spots an ever so tempting kitty seducing her from across the street. The retractable leash has varying lengths. With the push of a button you can keep the length quite close. This is useful when walking past the enticing Kitties. But you can also extend the leash to a cool 6 yards when we are kitty-free, and therefore, danger free. Now, when we get to the park and there are no cars, or kitties, I can remove the leash entirely and my dog has all the freedom she wants to run about and love me from afar.

So, keeping your partner on a tight leash is only necessary when danger is lurking. If you know your man has a not-so-innocent crush on someone, then -tight leash. Or if some pretty girl, encased in a dripping dress with a figure that spells “Yes”, is stalking him at a party, then- tight leash. But, if your guy takes his stupid annual trip to Vegas with the guys, and you are not threatened by it, then long leash. And if your guy is watching Spring-time girls walk by at an open-air café, and you know he is just looking, then long leash. But most importantly, and whenever possible, remove the leash entirely, because when you have a solid relationship you should give each other as much freedom as you possibly can. After all, a friendship with out loyalty and trust is no friendship at all.

Stumble it!

Browsing the singles sites I came across a woman advertising her skills at dominance. She lured her readers in with a heading, “Do you need to be paddled, powdered or pampered?” I am sure she was slammed with enthusiastic, “yes’s” from her eager on-line suitors. Usually it is the men who take the reigns and dominate in the bedroom and women are typically the ones who get pampered – or perhaps, in play, paddled and… powdered?

Apparently, even the most authoritative, alpha male likes to be dominated by a woman in bed at times. Many men who endure stress and strain on the job, especially, or have high-powered positions at work love to surrender power in the bedroom. They may not always want to be the dominant one but having a nurturing yet firm, disciplinarian woman force him to bend at her will can be very sexy.

Some men may be too afraid to ask a girl to be dominant but may secretly crave it, or he may not even realize he likes it because he’s never tried it. But all men were little boys at one time in their lives and for men, tapping into when he first began to mature and had to surrender all authority, obligation and command, can bring about a hyper erotic state. His submission will actually help him to relax and release stress. By revisiting his budding masculinity from infancy, when he wanted to be caressed, powdered and pampered, to boyhood and adolescence, when he perceived a grown women as ever-so-mysterious, powerful and sexy, a woman will find she can unleash a fountain of sexual energy with in her man. With an assertive and loving hand she will combine his inner-boy spirit with his grown man’s body to create supreme pleasure for him.

Many women are too passive, and naturally submissive to be assertive or dominant in bed. By exploring this side of herself though, she can also experience a new freedom. After all, doing unto others in bed is a direct cue for what we like done. He can reverse the roll for her to experience and she too can enjoy the tranquility of childlike powerlessnes on another occasion.

Stumble it!

Pornography in the relationship

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Does it bother you if your man watches porn? Does his porn watching indicate he wants other women? Can his porn watching become an addiction? Do you enjoy watching porn with him? For many younger women in their 20s porn is a benign, and great way to heighten foreplay in a couple’s sex life and the answers to these questions are simple. But I think for many women who grew up in the 70s the answers are not so simple.

In 2009 pornography is available on cell phones, blackberries and any web-streaming gadget. Kids in high school can actually watch porn during class, and they frequently do.  Because of this access, the new generation of young adults has an entirely different view of pornography than their 40 something year old counterparts. 20 year olds, both male and female, share porn regularly on line. This is one reason why many of my clients tell me they are attracted to younger women. They feel younger women in their 20s are far more open minded in regards to porn, and sexuality in general, than women in their 40s.

It was different for the generation of women growing up in the 70s, when every man had a girly calendar hanging in his garage. Or when Hustler magazine ran a cover of a woman being ground up in a meat grinder and the feminists were in an uproar. Feminist hated porn. Porn was bad. It objectified women as sex objects and degraded them with demeaning images.  So this was the frame of reference for women growing up in the 70s. Now fast-forward to 2009 when people commonly use their computers for masturbation, and monitors are purposefully turned away from cubicle entries in offices in order to hide the porn. It makes for a varied perspective on pornography.

Vibrators and female masturbation were also looked at differently in the 70s. Today most women are open minded about having a vibrator, or at least to masturbation. Are they cheating on their man by using a vibrator? Are they cheating if they masturbate after he goes to work?  The answer is no. They are not going to become addicted to their vibrators; they are simply masturbating. It is a similar analogy. Men are visual and men like to satisfy their visual needs when masturbating. For men, porno is a masturbation tool much like a vibrator is a masturbation tool for women. Both can be introduced into the bedroom and shared as foreplay, but both can also be enjoyed alone. Neither can be defined as an addiction unless it interferes with one’s life and is preventing a normal sexual encounter in the relationship.

Whether or not a woman should watch porn with her man is entirely an individual choice. If she enjoys it, then she should watch away. If she does not then she shouldn’t feel pressured to, but she should try to be open minded about his desire to watch it. Remember he is a man, and a man is different than a woman, and women should be ever so thankful for that.

For more information contact Melinda Maximova, matchmaker with Perfect Search melinda@theperfectsearch.com

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