BACK in my halcyon student days, a friend claimed to have found a revolutionary dating book to change our lives.
The Rules, written by US authors Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider, advocated that a woman should play hard to get, never split the bill and that sex on the first date is verboten, akin to romantic suicide.
Among the book's many gems: "Be feminine. Don't tell sarcastic jokes - be quiet and mysterious, act ladylike, cross your legs and smile. Don't talk so much.
"You may feel offended by these suggestions and argue that this will suppress your intelligence - but men will love it."
In short, it was belittling, insulting, sexist tripe. "To heck with that," we declared, before punting the book into the nearest bin. Now, some two decades on, Fein and Schneider have published an updated version, providing a lofty set of teeth-grating ideals aimed at the digital generation.
Apparently, in this romantically challenging social media age, we ladies should be a "CCUAO" which, rather than being an acronym for a deathly dull quango, actually stands for "Cyberspace Creature Unlike Any Other".
Pearls of wisdom include waiting "at least four hours to answer a guy's first text and a minimum of 30 minutes thereafter". Weekends, meanwhile, "from Friday, 6pm to Sunday, 6pm" is a "blackout period", which sounds less like stoking the flames of amore than navigating a hotel booking system.
There is complex mathematics involved: a first date (coffee) should last no longer than one to two hours; a third date (dinner and a movie), a maximum of six. It also decrees: "Don't Answer Texts or Anything Else after Midnight" (a blatant rip-off of the plot of Gremlins).
But here's the deal-breaker: The Rules 2 insists "heavy drinking and dating do not mix". Effectively rendering it useless for 99.2% of the general Scottish population.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article