By Greg Behrendt and Amiira Ruotola
226 pages; Diversion Books
Available at Diversion Books | Amazon | Barnes and Noble | IndieBound | iTunes

You were probably skulking around the eBookstore mumbling to yourself: "My dating life's a mess. I sure wish I had some guidelines for dating more successfully." Well today's your lucky day, so buck up, sugarpot, because that's exactly what we have for you! Super Extraordinary Guidelines for Ultra-Successful Winner Dating ™. Dating has become a confusing mess for most single folks out in the world, and quite honestly, it shouldn't be. Dating was one of the most well-structured, well-thought-out things that our generation inherited. How we managed to f*** that one up is a mystery. In our natural evolution as humans and as we've become a more liberal society, we've rid ourselves of ideas or thought processes that don't work, like no premarital sex, the inability of women to vote, etc. ... Certainly there are formalities and expected behaviors that do need updating and revising to keep up with the contemporary times, but dating, as it turns out, may not have been one that needed much. The radical revision of dating that followed the sexual revolution and its continual morphing that has come with the advances in communication technology and social networking has turned dating into a blur of booty calls, ambiguous hanging out and "window-shopping" your Facebook photos, then making assumptions about who someone is rather than getting to know them. And the result is a lot of unhappy and unclear people that are in complete disharmony with their romantic universe.

What women are craving is the clarity that the formality of dating would provide for them. Think about the collective sigh of relief from just the knowledge alone that when you're asked out that you're actually on a date instead of spending the entire time trying to figure out if you're on a date, just hanging out as friends or being sized up as a candidate for casual sex. DATING IS SOMETHING THAT YOU HAVE CONTROL OVER, so if you want it to change, if you want to take control of your dating life, you have to take it upon yourself to be very serious about and completely committed to HOW you date. You have to have a set of standards that you live and date by without exception. Which means FORMULATING A DATING STRATEGY and INSTITUTING DATING POLICY for yourself, then sticking to it. It sounds ridiculous but it's not. In fact, had you done it earlier you might be in a very different place with your love life and been able to save that $4.99 (or whatever this book costs) you spent on this fantastic piece of literature, put it into a high-yielding mutual fund and turned it into at least a billion dollars by the time you retire. (These numbers are guesstimations made by two book writers that have no experience or financial expertise and cannot be held accountable for the way you spend your money.)

We know the word strategy in relation to dating can sound like an underhanded manipulation of another person, and that is NOT at all what we're talking about. Strategy, in the dictionary, is defined as: 1.The science or art of planning or conducting a war or military campaign. (Nope!) 2. Carefully devised plan of action to achieve a goal or the art of developing or carrying out such a plan. (Wrong again!) 3. An evolutionary theory, a behavior structure, or other adaptation that improves viability. (AHA! Bingo! Now we're talking!)