Police Psychology | 30 Dates in 30 Days

This is an area where few police psychologist have ever gone.  In fact, only two that I know.

When we started the book, Red Flags!  How to Know When You’re Dating a Loser we, Dan Goldfarb and I just wanted to give some advice to girls who were looking for a mate.  We designed the book around letting our female clients know when they are dating a loser by the third date.  But it had to sell.  So we came up with the idea that since we were police psychologists, we were teaching profiling of relationship criminals to women.  When phrased that way, people got real interested as 22 of 25 agents on first mailing wanted to be the one to represent it.  Usually you send it out to hundreds of agents and get tons of rejection letters before you find one that might take it.  (Steven King even wallpapered a room in his house with rejections from his first book, Carrie, a huge best-seller and movie.  Guess he got the last laugh.)

So, now Dan and I had to write it and we needed some research beyond our patients.  Well, I was breaking up at the time with a five-year on-and-off relationship and some of the cops came in and said I needed “30 dates in 30 days.”  It was what I told cops to do in the same situation (sort of a Next in cop language) modeled after Alcoholics Anonymous’ “30 meetings in 30 days.”   So I thought 30 dinners in 30 days, I could probably get away with this for $1500 or so.  I could write it off as research, and meet thirty women, why not? (more…)