(Before I finish up here, I'd like to announce that I finally found a full list of The Rules, and you can find them at the link, as well as a few other short comments.)

"I don't want to spend any time making lists of things I need to do by age thirty-five or no one will marry me, I don't want to be on this fucking clock that no man on earth is at all concerned with.
The bridal fantasy is the most persistent, clinging and clawing prefeminist notion, and strangely, it has achieved a veneer of importance that is such that if you asked most women if you could be Marie Curie and unmarried or be any other woman married to any other man, the Nobel Prize wouldn't stand a chance." -Elizabeth Wurtzel

I kept thinking of this quote the entire time I read The Rules page and the questions and answers on it.

The whole thing is obsessed with marriage.

"It seems that ALL women are supposed to want to find Mr. Right and lure him into proposing, so we can have huge, wasteful ceremonies, inviting people we barely speak to in order to get more gifts, and preening and playing Cinderella-at-the-ball in preparation for some piece of shit Happily Ever After (meaning, HE becomes YOUR whole life). It doesn't matter if you are a clerk, a lawyer, or the Attorney General (who seems to be doing fine without tulle, thanks)-- the penultimate point of your life is the making of your Mrs.-hood. All the frou-frou of a mainstream wedding is held out like a dog treat to a Doberman before the gullible and vapid women of our society, with the whispered mesage that if you roll over and lie down like a GOOD GIRL, you get to cut the cake and wear the fancy clothes and be a princess for a day, and then live forever in bliss with your Prince Charming." -Amie Vongvisith

"One of the authors, I can't remember which one, would invariably ask a woman caller who dared to debate that one question, "Well, are you married?" and if the woman choked out the wrong reply, (nooo...) she was promptly dismissed as one of the unenlightened, cast aside as an old maid, and perhaps a not-so-clever one at that." -Brenda Ross

"A man challenges Fein, calling the Rules cynical and manipulative. He is asked if he's married, and, after he says no, he's dismissed by a woman from the crowd who says, "Men want to blame the Rules for their own inadequacies." -Mark McClusky

"When you break the Rules, you take away the pleasure men get from pursuing you, the Rules is not a hobby, but a religion. Keep doing the Rules until the ring is on your finger." -Ellen Fein

They even admit it's a religion. *shudder*

If a guy won't marry you when you want, i.e. "seal the deal" (they liken it to a business deal. Oooh, that's love), he seems to be automatically unworthy and you can't wait. Which is fine in some respects if you're the panicky sort, but if a guy just needs a few more months or something, I wouldn't quibble so much. The general rule seems to be give as little as you can possibly get away with to the guy to lure him into marriage, and if he doesn't marry you, he is worthless.

"We've heard about women who e-mail men pages of their innermost thoughts and carry online relationships with men who waste their time and never marry them."

Can't women ever tell their feelings at some point? Can relationships ever be valuable even if they don't end in wedlock?

I was relatively puzzled at their response to a woman who wanted to go away for a week with her boyfriend. While the Rules Girls are surprisingly lenient (for what I'd expect) regarding sex- I'd figure they'd be going on about giving them the milk for free and whatnot, but they pretty much leave it at wait three to seven dates first. And they ok going away for weekends. But a week- ooh, you're bad!

"The reason why you shouldn't go is that he should not get to see you seven days in a row, have sex with you et cetera without a commitment. We know lots of men who take women away (thanks to business trips, frequent flier miles, lust) and never marry them. A man is more likely to marry you, and sooner, if he can't take you here and there whenever he feels like it."

But it's apparently ok for him to have sex with you for a weekend without it...Huh? Plus, it sounds like the woman's missing out on a lot of fun (and of course, free vacation).

" Fein and Schneider have merely managed to convince a lot of women that there is a set of behaviors that always works." -Mark McClusky

If you've been doing The Rules, he has to want to marry you, or so they say.

"If this is a Rules relationship -- he pursued you from day one and visits you more than you visit him -- then you don't need to convince him you're The One. He feels that way because you're doing The Rules."

Then in another Q&A letter, ahem, it sounds like it doesn't work guaranteed in some cases :P So much for a set of behaviors always working...

"If you've done The Rules "to a great extent" and he doesn't call for weeks at a time, then he's probably not in love with you."

And if you've been dating him for more than a year and no ring (i.e. the aforementioned evidence), then go find some fresh meat.

"You've already spent more than a year waiting for him to propose; do you have another year to wait?

"If you have been dating a man for two years and you still don't know where things stand, ask him what his intentions are. If he says, "What's the rush?" or "Things are difficult at work, let's wait" or "I'm not sure how I feel," you can be sure he's either not in love with you or just complacent."

I get most of that, but if the guy's genuinely having a hard time at work and it's not a line, dump him? Ow.

I at least felt relieved that they weren't advocating for marriage ASAP right off the bat...somewhere between six months and a year sounds like their timeline. But their "the man will hint" thing puzzles me, somehow.

"A man will drop hints in the first few months of dating. He'll bring up exclusivity, or say that he loves you. He'll want to see you every Saturday night. He'll give you romantic gifts or flowers for Valentine's Day and your birthday. He'll mention the "M" word in conversation -- for example, that he's the best man at a wedding. You should know where you stand within six months.

If you're over 25 years old and it's a Rules relationship, he should have proposed by now. Tell him you're an old-fashioned girl."

Frightening how it buys into the biological-clock-losing-looks-must-move-NOW-or-else thing. Or as Cynthia Heimel puts it, "Quick, throw on some high heels and a G-string before you're too old and solo forever!"

Somehow all this "marry me or else I disappear" does not seem to fit with what the authors say the whole thing is about.

"We're interested in life in general, not desperate to get married."

So why is this all so secretly centered on trapping a man to the altar? The book's cover does not say "How to have a really interesting and fufilling life, and while you're at it, perhaps get a man."

However, I think I have finally, finally, found what the REAL purpose of all this trickery is about. Look below:

" We saw that you could avoid heartache, and date with self-esteem and boundaries, by letting a man pursue you.

By doing The Rules and limiting the amount of time and energy you put into this relationship, you won't get overly dependent or hurt if things don't work out."

There you have it, folks. Don't get involved until the last minute.

If this is even remotely possible to do, that is...

"I have a neighbor who loves to tell me about her "traditional rules for courtship." Every time I run into her, she tells me about a recent date that came to an abrupt end due to some flaw in protocol, some failure to conform to her rules that inevitably led to the untimely demise of the fledgling romance. One guy didn't get out of the car and walk her to the door after the first date; another committed the unspeakable offense of calling her on Friday to ask her out on Saturday. Neither was spared a swift and stern reprimand. Neither ever called her again.

Every time she tells me one of these stories, I want to shove her into her apartment and slap her until she hands over the stupid book -- because I know it's in there, dog-eared, highlighted and damn near memorized. I want to tell her there's nothing she can do about it. She's going to fall in love with people who don't love her back, she's going to get dumped without warning, she's going to obsess over the wrong people and not notice the right ones. Buses are going to sail past her, mow her down, fail to appear. It's going to hurt; but if it didn't, she'd never know what good felt like." -Carina Chocano

"I am a 40 year old male,that divorced and am now married to the love of my life and BEST FRIEND. I feel that the Rules 2 may offer some comfort and direction to woman that have been burned, however it may lead to one holding back love and emotion in a relationship. The bottom line is, that in order to get a lot out of a relationship, a person has to put a lot in, no matter if they are male or female. One can't develop full trust and friendship with role and game playing. I simply say this to all ladies: "Don't expect to make or expect major changes in a guy. Simply come as you are to the relationship, be YOUR best, not anyone elses and follow your heart and don't force the thing to happen. The ideal guy will learn to appreciate you for who you are, if he really loves you. A guy that you have to use these or any RULES on is not worth your time! While I teach chemistry and physics for a living,I am quite certain that there are no balanced equations or RULES for falling in love." -Howard White

"You see so much about people wanting to go back to the '50s lifestyle and you just can't do it, you know? It's not the '50s. It's 2000 and the circumstances are very different." -Denise Fedewa