I was reading a crock of sh*t article a few weeks ago about the dating ‘rules’ and the growing trend amongst women to revert back to strategies of old to snag a husband.

You know, the standard stuff like a woman should always ignore three phone calls before answering one, she should practice kissing on a mirror to avoid disappointment and she should always wear pantyhose, or some other equally ridiculous crap.

This is all well and good and if you’ve had success following this rubbish, good for you! However, there seems to be a lack of quality advice aimed at men.

Honestly, I suspect one or two of my previous flings might have been attempting to follow the female-oriented rules… I’ve had the experience of someone feigning being busy just to inconvenience my schedule, I also suspect I may have dated one or two who learnt to kiss (and god knows what else) with a mirror… then there was the guy with the pantyhose… I joke, I JOKE!

Alas, when I looked back on the various men I have dated over the past few years, I had a shocking realisation… I am actually sitting on a goldmine of dating advice. So, good blog readers, I have decided to share this with you. Based on my own dating experience, I feel that I can assist all of you semi-psychotic bachelors out there, by providing some great advice that I have learnt from the men who have come and gone in my life.

So here are my top ten rules for dating women:

1. If your mobile phone is running out of battery in the  hours leading up to your first date, sending a text to the person you’re meeting is a great idea. Turning up to a busy meeting place and sitting at the bar waiting to be discovered is not. If you asked her out, there’s a good chance she can’t remember what you look like!

2. If you forget your wallet or don’t have enough money to cover your half of dinner, do not wait until the bill arrives to advise your date of this. If you’ve managed to scrape your gold coins together and split the bill, do not invite your date back to your place to ‘hang out’ if your next request is going to be that she cover the cab (or bus) fare for both of you.

3. If you have an aversion to washing your clothes, try to at least remove the obvious marks from them before your date. If your date notices them or questions whether you are, in fact, wearing the exact same pants for the fourth time, try lying. Do not admit that you don’t EVER  actually wash your pants because they’re dry clean only and you only have one pair.

4. Despite how awesome you think you are, try to avoid telling your date (repeatedly) of how certain you are that she really likes you. Similarly, comments such as ‘I knew you liked me the second I walked into that bar’ and ‘I know you’ve already thought about having kids with me’ do not lead to the assumption that you are boyfriend material.

5. Even if it is prefaced with ‘Don’t take this personally, but…’ the comment ‘can you just stop asking me questions?’ is not the way to impress a girl and is always going to kill the conversation.

6. If you end up dating someone to the point where you’re sharing a bed, try to avoid sleep talking as much as possible. Sure, talking about breakfast or your job while deep asleep can seem funny enough, but talking about how you are ‘going to have lots of sex and beat the sh*t out of them all’ is only going to scare the crap out of your date.

7. If you ride a bike, try to avoid bringing it on a date. If you must, do not then proceed to talk on your phone for the first 5 or so minutes after meeting, while your date walks beside you… Sure, you’re giving off the impression that you’re cool and that you want to make a speedy exit, but you’re also confusing the crap out of your date, who will spend the rest of the evening wishing that she took that 5 minute window of opportunity to get the hell out of there.

8. Emotional stories such as how your parents divorced when you were seventeen, resulting in you still hating them for humiliating you, may seem like a big deal to you, but sharing them on your first date, or any date for that matter, should be avoided. It was TEN YEARS AGO, for God’s sake, get over it!

9. As much as you may love them, eating two salad sandwiches a day does not make you a foodie by any measure. The people you work with may find it hard to believe that you eat TWO salad sandwiches every day without fail, but for your date who was talking about her passion for food, you just became really freaking boring.

10. Whatever you do, and no matter how emotional you get while out with a girl – DO NOT CRY. Do not cry when discussing your failed relationship, do not cry when talking about sport and no matter how extreme the circumstances, do not cry over dinner!

In writing this post, I’ve not only revisited and cleansed my soul of some of the more negative dating experiences I’ve had, but I’ve also decided that in the vein of He’s Just Not That Into You and The Rules, I’m going to write a book. It will be titled She Thinks You’re a Raving Lunatic.