Rhonda Britten, Fearless Loving. copyright Victoria Mary Clarke, 2003-03-16

There’s a dating crisis in Ireland. The boys don’t ask the girls out. The girls are independent and they have their own careers, but they don’t want to be alone forever, they want to have partners.  They want to be assertive, too. They don’t want to bend and shape themselves to suit the men.  They don’t want to do all the housework, so they live alone.  They are waiting for a man to be invented who is sensitive and domesticated and respectful of women’s equality, but who is equally strong and manly and capable of sweeping them off their feet and making them feel feminine.  They want to feel that it’s perfectly acceptable for a woman to call a man and ask him out, but they feel inadequate when they are reduced to chasing the men. Some of the men are terrified, some of them think it’s funny.  Either way, there are more single women in Ireland than ever before.  Sex and the City, here we come. 
Enter Rhonda Britten, the Jim’ll Fix It of the dating world. With her “Fearless Loving” strategies, she aims to do for dating what Jane Fonda once did for aerobics .  Every week, in Britain two women are murdered by their partner or ex-partner. If the statistics are anything similar in this country, maybe we should give up mating and dating altogether?  Maybe segregation of the sexes is the answer.  Rhonda says not.  And domestic  violence is something she knows all about.  Her own father regularly beat her, when she was a girl.  And when she was fourteen,  he turned on her mother, -from whom he was estranged- and shot her dead outside the family home.  Little Rhonda watched helplessly as he turned the gun on himself and orphaned her and her sisters on the spot. It took her twenty years, she says, to stop hating herself and start living.  Three times she attempted suicide and failed and she took turned to drink and a series of disastrous relationships, to ease the pain.  After years of therapy, she developed her own system for living without the undercurrent of fear that had cast a black cloud over her every waking moment.  This system, she calls “Fearless Living” and it became a best-selling book and now a training institute.  Now she’s tackling the really big issue-love.  And she’s here to tell us her eight simple truths which will change the way we date and allow us to find love fearlessly.
So how do you? I ask her, as we sip our camomile tea in the Shelbourne lounge. “You have to decide to take your dating life into your own hands” she says, animatedly.  ‘You might say you don’t want to look too interested.  You want to be “hard- to -get”.  But if men are afraid of hard-to- get women, nothing is going to happen!”
The kind of men who approach me as I sit shyly, waiting to be noticed, will be the serial conquerors, the ones who look upon women as prey.
“Not the kind of person that you would want to have a relationship with!  So I suggest that the first thing you do is start being more approachable.”
I confess that being approachable sounds terrifying.  I look away, as a matter of course, when anyone looks at me.  And hide in the kitchen, at parties.
“Absolutely, it’s terrifying.  But you have your best tool right there on your face and it’s called a smile. Just look at men and women as potential friends, and quit thinking of them as potential mates and you’ll have less fear around it.  If it’s a potential friend, don’t you want to figure out if you like them?”
I suppose so, I say.  But like a lot of people, what I’m worried about is do they like me?
“That’s not any of your business.  The point is, if you are interested in somebody, can you be the one to move forward?  You have no control over whether they like you or not.”
Chemistry, Rhonda says, is not something to wait around for. I thought chemistry was essential, I tell her.  Surely there’s no point in having a relationship if it isn’t thrilling?
“Chemistry is biological, quite literally.  When I see a man across the room and I think he’s a good mating prospect, chemicals are released in my body, which give me a feeling of euphoria.  And I say to myself “I am not responsible.  I can’t stop myself from falling in love, I am not in control!”
We look around the room we’re in, at all the men.  I don’t fancy any of them, I tell her.  She says I’m basing my judgment purely on physical appearance and if I pick a partner just because he’s a hunk, that’s not going to be a great basis for our relationship.  She recommends that her clients make a list of the important qualities that they are seeking in a relationship and give the guys a chance by dating lots and lots of different men and always for a minimum of three dates.  Even if her clients don’t feel any attraction to the men they date.
“By the third date, they are dreading it, they really don’t want to waste any more time!” she laughs.
But surely you don’t want to lead a guy on and give him the wrong impression, I say.  You might hurt his feelings.  She snorts.
“But if I didn’t say “I love you” and I didn’t say I am going to have his children, if all I am doing is dating him, then where’s the problem, how am I leading him on?”
But supposing the guy takes it personally and says “ Rhonda, I don’t understand.  I really am in love with you!  Why don’t you like me?”I  persist.
“I would say “I really appreciate the compliment, but why do you want to be with me if I don’t want to be with you?  Why do you value yourself so little?”  When women call me up and cry and say he’s not calling, boo hoo hoo!  I say well, good!  Good, he’s not calling.  Move on!  Why would you want to talk somebody into loving you?”
            And so we come to the fundamental component of loving fearlessly.  Loving yourself enough to be yourself, no matter what anyone else thinks of you.  Not trying to impress anyone.  Especially not men.
            “ I have a rule which says dating is where you practice being yourself.  It’s not about whether he’s your future husband or whether he likes you, it’s about are you able to be more and more yourself on every date?”
Last year, 2.5 million Britons went under the knife for cosmetic purposes.  And in the Western world, billions are spent annually on beauty products.  If we were happy with ourselves, all that money could go to people in need. So if Rhonda is right and this is really the key to finding a partner, this fearless dating thing, then we could save billions.  But we are going to need help.  We are going to need our own dating coach.  Someone to hold our hand and stop us from calling him to see why he didn’t call us.  Someone to pick us up, bandage the bruises and send us back out onto the pitch.  It just might work.

Fearless Living and Fearless Loving are published by Hodder Mobius, 14.99 euros.  For info about coaching, training and seminars see www.fearlessliving.org