Getting competitive on October 19, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I wrote before and got lovely helpful advice about healing my fairly broken heart. Thank you. Now I just kind of want your thoughts on a phenomenon. At work I sit next to an attractive guy named oh, say, Sam. I could go for him, but that’s actually not the point. He just broke up with his girlfriend. He has FOUR DATES this week. Ignore what this says about his reboundness. What does this say about his networking abilities vs. mine? (I’ve had one date, from a party. No click — we went out twice.) In fact, Sam says three of his dates are fixups from friends’ parents. Is there such a shortage of “nice Jewish boys” and an overabundance of me’s? Or is he better at networking?

Well, of course you can’t answer the specifics, because you don’t know either of us, or our families. But what do you think about getting the word out, BG? How does one get into this fixup network?

— Nice Girl

Dear Nice Girl,

Yeah, he’s just better at networking. Either that or some high-speed YentAlert went out, via bulk e-mail or phone tree, when Sam the JM became S.

As for you, start asking around. NOT VIA BULK E-MAIL OR PHONE TREE. Tell select friends (and parents of friends, I guess) that you are looking, and willing to blind-date. People who know you well. People who know lots of other cool people. People, actually, who might know Sam.

Love,
Breakup Girl

Dating expert Rachel Greenwald made a splash with her 2003 self-help book Find a Husband After 35: (Using What I Learned at Harvard Business School)and spent years researching her 2009 follow-up, Why He Didn’t Call You Back: 1,000 Guys Reveal What They Really Thought About You After Your Date(re-christened for its March 2010 paperback release as the more empowering and less finger-waggy Have Him at Hello: Confessions from 1,000 Guys About What Makes Them Fall in Love . . . Or Never Call Back) by interviewing 1,000 men about their honest reactions to real dates.

Through the insights gleaned from these candid chats, Greenwald, a professional yenta and dating coach, became a staunch advocate of third-party “exit interviews” for both men and women who have been blown off after one or two dates and desire some useful info about what might have gone wrong. She likens these post-mortems to performance reviews at work, and thinks they are the key to discovering potentially stymieng blind spots about one’s own dating behavior. Recently Greenwald has begun training others to become professional “exit interviewers.” Here’s what she had to say in an INTERVIEWinterview with BreakupGirl.net:

Why do you think it’s helpful to know why someone didn’t call you back, as opposed to just letting go and moving on?

Rachel Greenwald: Well, it’s like anything in life. Feedback improves your performance going forward. It’s a tool. You could be doing something like sending the wrong signal, or giving the wrong impression, and…not getting the results that you want. If only someone could coach you about how you were perceived and what went wrong, you could use that information to change things and get better results next time.

Do you think most people being “exit interviewed” are going to be honest?

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