Controversy Anthropologist Helen Fisher in What happens in the dating world can reflect larger currents within popular culture. For example, when the book The Rules appeared, it touched off media controversy about how men and women should relate to each other, with different positions taken by columnist Maureen Dowd of The New York Times and British writer Kira Cochrane of The Guardian.

Sara McCorquodale suggests that women meeting strangers on dates meet initially in busy public places, share details of upcoming dates with friends or family so they know where they’ll be and who they’ll be with, avoid revealing one’s surname or address, and conducting searches on them on the Internet prior to the date.

Don’t leave drinks unattended; have an exit plan if things go badly; and ask a friend to call you on your cell phone an hour into the date to ask how it’s going. If you explain beautifully, a woman does not look to see whether you are handsome or not — but listens more, so you can win her heart.

Questions LDS Couples Should Ask Before Marriage on *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Did you know that the divorce rate among Mormons is now 40%, only 10% below the national average? With a 40% chance of marriage failure.

A paper in the April issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family, but presented early to the Council on Contemporary Families says that past studies have overstated the risk of divorce for cohabiting couples. Arielle Kuperberg, assistant professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, says that the important characteristic is not whether people lived together first, but how old they were when they decided to share a front door. Economist Evelyn Lehrer University of Illinois-Chicago says the longer people wait past 23, the more likely a marriage is to stick.

How an Insensitive Jerk Saved my Marriage One of the reasons cohabitation was linked with divorce in prior years was that poorer people tended to move in together and then slide into marriage when they got pregnant. But their economic plight did not improve. So it might not have been the cohabitation, but the poverty that was causing the split.