or return his phone calls very infrequently.ELLEN FEIN & SHERRIE SCHNEIDER
This comes from The Rules: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right, a 1995 bestseller that became something of a cultural phenomenon. Assailed by critics as manipulative and antifeminist, the book was a big hit, selling more than two million copies in twenty- seven languages. The book also spawned a number of sequels. Given the title, I expected the book to be a neveristic gold mine, but not one of the original 35 Rules was phrased in such a way. Most were expressed less forcefully, like “Don’t Talk to a Man First” or “Don’t Accept a Saturday Night Date After Wednesday.” In discussing the rules, however, the authors did occasionally toss out a few neverisms:
You should never spend Saturday nights lying on your bed.
Never sit around dreaming of him
or you might end up acting on your thoughts.
(on an attraction to a married man)
Never give him your address or meet him at your apartment,
and never let him pick you up in his car to drive to a restaurant.
(a rule for dating via personal ads)
Never let him think, even if it’s true,
that you are home thinking about him and making the wedding guest list.
Men love the seemingly unattainable girl.
Never try to impress a woman, because if you do
she’ll expect you to keep up to the standard for the rest of your life.W. C. FIELDS
Never have sex with your ex.YVONNE K. FULBRIGHT
This was the first of seventy dating and relationship rules—every one beginning with the word never—that Fulbright laid out in Sex with Your Ex . . . And 69 Other Things You Should Never Do Again (2007). Fulbright’s list contains all the mistakes one would expect in such a compilation, and also some fresh ones. Here are several more of my favorites:
Never ask him if you look fat.
Never answer your phone during sex.
Never reveal your number of sexual partners.
Never talk about things your previous lovers did in bed.
Never write your ex a letter letting him know “how you feel.”
Never ask . . . which of your friends he would sleep with if he weren’t with you.
Never give a gift or present without wrapping it.GREGORY J. P. GODEK
In 1001 Ways to be Romantic (1999), Godek added: “Get extra-nice wrapping paper and bows. If you truly have two left thumbs, get the store to do your gift-wrapping for you.”
Never tell a woman she doesn’t look good
in some article of clothing she has just purchased.LEWIS GRIZZARD
Never chase a man. Let him chase you.KIM GRUENENFELDER, in her 2009
novel A Total Waste of Makeup
The words come at the beginning of the novel, when the protagonist—a twenty-nine-year-old Hollywood executive assistant—attempts to make sense out of her own life by writing a book of advice for her imagined future great-grandniece. As she reflects on “pretty much anything I wish I had known at sixteen, and wish I could force myself to remember at twenty-nine,” she also offers these tips:
Never ask a guy about his old girlfriends.
Never expect anyone to take care of you financially.
Never ask a single person if they’re “seeing anyone special,”
an unemployed person if they found a job,
or a married couple when they’re planning to have children.
Never have a love affair with a man whose friendship you value.
Because there’s nothing like sex
to make people hate and misunderstand each other.EMILY “MICKEY” HAHN
Never judge someone by who he’s in love with;
judge him by his friends.CYNTHIA HEIMEL, in But Enough about You (1986)
Heimel added: “People fall in love with the most appalling people. Take a cool, appraising glance at his friends.” In Kim Gruenenfelder’s A Total Waste of Makeup (2009), the protagonist makes a similar observation:
Never judge people by who they date—your own sex life
is confusing enough without trying to figure out someone else’s.
Never crowd youngsters about their private affairs—sex especially.ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
The words come from the character Lazarus Long in Heinlein’s Time Enough for Love (1973). He continues:When they are growing up, they are nerve ends all over, and resent (quite properly) any invasion of their privacy. Oh, sure, they’ll make mistakes—but that’s their business, not yours. (You made your own mistakes, did you not?)
Never try to make a husband your husband.KERRY HERLIHY
This exceptional admonition is from “Papa Don’t Preach,” an essay that appeared in an anthology of feminist writing, The Bitch in the House (2000), edited by Cathi Hanauer. In the essay, Herlihy also wrote: “Never take him seriously when he complains about his wife.”
Never document your workplace romance in a diary
where a nosy roommate or boyfriend can find it
and attempt to blackmail your boss.RUTH HOUSTON
Houston, an “infidelity expert” who wrote Is He Cheating on You? (2002), offered this thought in 2009, shortly after CBS producer Joe Halderman, was arrested for trying to extort two million dollars from David
