Ah, sweet love. The wisp of tender passion is in the air, as Valentine's Day creeps ever closer. With its imminent approach, many people dwell on love and how to attract and/or keep it, I myself within that poignant crowd. What gentle fools we are...
As much as it would be nice to think it's as easy as an arrow into the heart from Cupid's deft bow, don't fool yourself. Love isn't quite as easy as that. Even Cupid has a harder time these days, despite us living in a time of avid "social" media. Ironic that in many ways, our social media use has actually left us even lonelier than we were before.
It doesn't have to be that way though and I am lucky enough to have a few love experts willing to share some tips on how to fall in love. I recently reviewed
How to Fall in Love, and authors Dalma Heyn and Richard Marek have a few tips and advice for the singletons amongst us. Help me welcome Dalma and Richard to A New Day!
Fall in Love with Richard and Dalma
 |
| Richard Marek and Dalma Heyn |
Being single in the digital age is hard work.
There are dating apps to fill out, finding the perfect pics to show off your
fun and quirky side, and then all those profiles to swipe through. And that’s
just to hopefully get a date or two! How is anyone expected to find and nourish
true love via 1” pixelated photos and brief blurbs that leave you feeling flat?
Do you have any tips for the lovelorn in 2019?
Being single IS hard work—much like an audition for a part you don’t
even know you want but nevertheless have to keep returning to for call-backs. The
“perfect pics” to show off your “fun and quirky side”—plus all other attempts
to present the “you” you want a potential date to “get” at first glance—it’s exhausting.
In all the years I’ve written dating columns, I’ve just one serious
piece of advice—and it’s mostly for women. (A man seems able simply to be
ambulatory and under age 80, and not a serial killer to be considered a good
date.) But women are caught in the
age-old “I’m the perfect woman” trap. Here’s how to get out of it: YOU are
looking for someone, and that fact is more important than presenting yourself
to be looked at. Think of it as looking out of your eyes, not looking at yourself
through the culture’s. By that I mean, do not try to please this mysterious
group of dates out there—instead be clear about what pleases YOU. This little
switch sounds easier than it is. I’ve spoken with some women who aren’t sure
what they want and so naturally fall back on ways to be wanted. But focusing on
YOUR desires will go far to make filling out these dating apps more of a
pleasure than a drag.
Excellent Advice! Knowing yourself is half the challenge when looking for a new mate. What do you really want in a partner? Do some soul-searching first before expecting someone to fit a role which you don't even know the parameters.
Okay, so say we’ve been out on a date or two.
Fantastic, but how do we take it to the next level?
Going from a first or second date to “the next level,” as you put it, is more a matter of intuition. If you’re both feeling good about seeing each other,
and are both shy, it just takes a nudge—in words and In person. Before you
leave your last date, you say, “This is fun. I hope we can do it again.” Responsive but not too eager, and hardly
requiring much of an attention span. Your
date’s response will either be, “Yeah, let’s go for pizza at that new place on
Saturday, okay?” Or it won’t elicit more than a grunt. Either way, you’re
ahead. It’s either moving forward or you’re moving on.
PS: It may take a lot of these deadly
attempts at connection, but, as my mother used to say, it only takes two
minutes to meet someone and know it’s right. So you have to plow through.
It makes sense that it takes work to find someone you truly connect with. Not everyone is a perfect match to you, but there is someone out there for everyone. Keep looking! And once you find them, keeping working to grow that love every day.
One of those ways is with a simple note sharing your heart's desires—a love letter. Are love letters still valid and valued
today? Do you have tips Dalma and Richard on how readers can create the perfect love letter for
their beloved? Or even win your 2019 Love Letter contest!
Love letters are more valid, and more valued, than ever. Attention spans
may have hit rock bottom, but that doesn’t mean a quick “Love ya! ” is going to
catch anyone’s attention, short as it may be, unless you’re speaking to your dog-walker.
Just as desire needs space, time, and room to breathe in order to expand into love,
so do words between lovers need space, time, room and thought in order to
express love. Part of the joy of sending AND receiving a love letter is that it
does take time. Precious time devoted to revealing a precious emotion—one that
no little heart-faced emoji can possibly express.
All letters are valid and
valued—when was the last time your received a thank-you note via snail-mail? An apology, written out with care and heartfelt concern for reparation? A letter
can say, and mean, everything. And a love letter, of course, means more than
anything.
You seem to know a lot about love letters and
what should go into them. Is there anything that star-crossed lovers should steer
clear of when expressing their undying love to their sweetheart? What are some
love letter don’ts?
We could give you a list of don’ts for business letters, personal
letters, apology letters….but we have no such list for love letters. Unlike the
former, which require certain formats and sign-offs; proper margins and good
grammar and correct placement of addresses and dates, the love letter is
totally without rules. It’s as free an
expression of an overwhelming feeling that you’ll ever have, an emotion that simply
must be expressed. Your way. It’s YOUR
expression, in YOUR voice, with YOUR wit and soulfulness and charm. You love this person and can’t bear holding
in your feelings one more moment., grammar, punctuation, be damned. All that’s
required is that it be pure; it mustn’t have any other agenda than to express
your love. Our sense of how we’ll judge the letters is simply that we feel what
the writer feels!
Hear that readers? You don't need a Masters degree in Love OR University level English to express what your heart feels. Just let those heartfelt emotions flow!
I recently read ‘How to Fall in Love’,
co-authored by you both. Did collaborating on this novel bring you closer
together? What inspired you to write a love story orchestrated by Cupid, but
bungled through by two unlikely characters – Eve, a former ballet star cum
maple sugar bush owner, and Evan, an anthologist and car enthusiast? Are the
lessons they learned along the way important for anyone contemplating love?
We were inspired to write the book by just what you so wisely point out
in question 1: That everyone is overwhelmed with dating apps, texting, sexting,
tagging on Facebook, getting the right makeup highlighter for Instagram…..that
we wondered how two people not seriously wired got together. And since we wanted our question to be
presented in a light-hearted way, we thought of the old-fashioned idea of
Cupid—how his arrow, when it hit, engendered love in one person. And the rest just flowed.
Richard is an
editor, so an anthologist was a fun way to present an editor, and I know a bit
about dancers. We both know a lot about second chances, and the difficulties of
making love happen when two lives are so different from each other’s. It was a
great collaboration and we had so much fun!
What about you Dalma and Richard? How do you
keep the romance alive in your relationship? Any tips on those struggling to
find or keep love vibrant and meaningful in their lives?
We have been blessed with a kind of ease between us; we don’t “work” on
our relationship as much as we keep in touch about what we’re feeling. When trust builds over the years, so does
empathy for one’s partner. Even when
we’re furious at each other, we can each feel, somehow, what the other is going
through, and find ourselves letting it go faster than we did when we were
younger and had to make our points really clear.
Thank you so much for speaking with me Richard and Dalma. I appreciate all your advice and inspiration on love and keeping passion alive and well in today's fickle digital age. We need to slow down and take the time to know ourselves and others better if we are to keep our connections strong. Your enthusiasm for reaching that level of connectedness is heartening.
If you want to connect with Dalma and Richard, you can find them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and on their website. Don't forget to take a look at their love letter contest. You can win a rose gold Tiffany Paloma Picasso love ring, plus a hand-written, framed copy of your love letter.
Happy Valentine's week my friends. May love find you and keep you in a special place, even if it's just falling in love with yourself all over again.
❤️❤️❤️
ABOUT AUTHORS DALMA
HEYN & RICHARD MAREK:
Husband and wife team Dalma
Heyn and Richard Marek are the authors of How to Fall in
Love , a provocative love
story for the digital age. Heyn is the author of the New York
Times best-seller The Erotic Silence of the American Wife,
Marriage Shock and Drama Kings. Her books,
published in 35 countries, have been best-sellers both here and
abroad. Richard Marek is one of the most accomplished book editors and
publishers of his generation, working with writers James Baldwin, Thomas
Harris, and Robert Ludlum, among many others. He is the author of Works
of Genius and has ghostwritten a number of best-sellers.
