"You can't call him!"

I went to a girls night in while I was home. Being exhausted as I was from the tile madness, I wasn't quite myself. A little quieter, a little subdued even with wine.

The evening's contingent was made up of about ten women ranging in age from late twenties to late forties. Pretty, plain, personable, masculine, feminine, attention seekers, wholesome, divorced, never married - it was quite a collection of women. However, we all had one thing in common, we are all single.

A collection of self-sufficient women. Successful women. But single. One woman was sharing her tale of woe regarding her latest fun date courtesy of craigslist. When she stated she sent the guy a little email, you could literally hear the crisp night air being sucked furiously from the room. Immediately, several of these wind suckers frantically stated "oh no! you can't call him" and from there the litany of dating don'ts poured forth.

It was then that I took in the room and thought "maybe that is exactly why we are sitting here single."

I know. Men love the chase, they are by nature hunters.... yada, yada, yada.

But still somewhere along the line, dating and relationships turned into the complex creature, where even your best tried and true male road map cannot provide a clear path. Each man is different; requires distinct items for fulfillment. As such, one set of rules works for one and not the other. Where the art lies is in the determining which set of rules applies to each particular man.

Is the fact that we work-successful women so faithfully follow the "rules" found in the myriad of self-help relationship books a major contributor to exactly what is stopping us from being successful in love? I look at my old ladies and their relationships were not full of the turmoil we face today. How did something as simple as love get so damn complicated?

While I know that a real relationship anything but a Hollywood love story, I do not believe there should be this strict list of 10 steps to trap a man. Coyness and all that old fashioned stuff still resides in my heart. I do like being pursued. I love picking up my mobile and seeing my man's name flash on the screen. But to have this delicate dance dictated by "shoulds" and "cannots" of some so-called expert who resides in the self-help aisle may not necessarily be the answer. Maybe blindly following these "shoulds" and "cannots" is a contributor in why the ten of us women remain single in the face of desiring a loving relationship.

Some days, I think I was born too late. While being able to be independent and work-wise successful, I do think my old ladies enjoyed a fuller love life with their husbands. To listen to their stories of courting, I wish I could have that. Maybe I still can. Or maybe the world is just to different now to facilitate that. But this gyrl holds fast to the dream....