Don't drive a car that's cooler than you.

When I was in high school, a couple of my friends' daddies bought them brand new cars with all the latest equipment. Really cool cars. The problem was that the guys were both nerdy, and when they drove the cars around town, all attention was on the cars. They were hoping to get hot girls interested but ended up driving around with a bunch of guy friends who were more interested in the cars than the girls were.

These guys were nice enough, but they were driving cars that were -- to put it bluntly -- cooler than they were. The hot girls, whether they realized it or not at the time, were looking for future mates, fathers of their future children. They were on the make for hot guys, not hot cars.

The lesson is this: don't advertise yourself as more than you are. Don't project an image you can't later live up to. Sooner or later, you'll be found out. It doesn't matter if you're a teen trying to look like a TV idol or a twenty-something trying to look like someone out of a fashion mag or a fifty-ish guy with his first convertible. It may make you feel good to pretend to be someone you're not, but it likely won't fool whoever you're trying to impress.

(With one exception: see below.)

Life is complicated, and searching for appropriate mates is one of the most complicated things we humans do. So don't confuse the process by posing as someone you aren't. Be confident that if you come across as who you are -- driving a clunker, wearing faded Levi's, into hiking -- you're more likely to attract, and maybe even keep, someone who appreciates you for yourself.

Okay, I know all this is the old hippie view: be yourself, and someone who is your equal and soul mate will eventually discover you, or you him/her. That may or may not be true, but it's an honest approach to the iffy world of mating. Maybe I'm just being naive about what it's like today, when people meet in cyberspace, but I come from a time when we knew each other, in person, at least for a while, before we had coffee, much less sex. That doesn't mean we didn't sleep around, pretty indiscriminately at times, but we had at least first met face to face.

And I don't recall a hippie I knew who drove a really cool car.

In the end, be who you are, and keep looking for somebody who loves you for it. If, after a while no one seems to love you, maybe you need to look at who you are and make some changes. But,
in the meantime, keep looking. Be persistent. Stay clean. Be honest. There are some amazing couples out there, defying all odds but still together.

Oh, by the way, there is an exception to this rule, as there are exceptions to every rule: If you are an older man with lots of money -- no names mentioned, but you know who you are, Mr.
Trump and Mr. Hefner, et al -- you can always find plenty of pretty young women to have sex with you and even marry you, but you know as well as I do that they're looking for something other than love. A lifestyle, maybe. Don't you?

Be yourself -- your best self -- and go for the best you can get. Hey, you might end up doing better than you thought. And if you're honest from the start, you'll have nothing to apologize for later and nothing to explain. That's what real love is all about.

That's where the real adventure starts. Good luck!