RNDP 4: The Feng Shui Dating Coach

Our next stop on the quest for a Revolutionary New Dating Paradigm (RNDP) takes us to Best Life Services where we meet dating coach Katherin Scott who offers a "new dating paradigm that yields an abundance of fun, positive, and promising dates". On her own website, Making Love Work 4U, she says she coaches "Singles to attract true love and keep it... forever!"

To get you to this new paradigm she offers the following services:

• Individual Coaching: One-on-one sessions, usually by phone, to help you get clarity on your romantic goals and create an action plan for achieving them
• Special Activities: Gain dating confidence through dances, socials, and speed dating events as well as seminars on topics including body language, weight loss, and how to attract your life partner
• Attracting Love with Feng Shui: Applying Feng Shui principles to create an energy flow in your home environment that attracts romance and lasting love

Feng Shui? Weight loss? Speed Dating? This isn't a new paradigm, it's 90s new age mixed with 80s marketing.

But let's dig a little deeper. She has a Q&A page on Making Love Work. It's light on dating talk but it does have this:

Q: Where exactly can I meet a great guy? I've looked everywhere and I'm exhausted.

A: It seems to me that you're looking for the perfect place to meet the perfect man. Actually, anyplace is the perfect place to meet a perfect man. (My dad used to say "Love is geographical. Wherever you go, you can find love!")

My guess is that you're not getting good results because of the WAY you're dating. Recognize you are the constant in this equation. Therefore, you must change YOU -- and the way you're going about dating. Take the time to evaluate your dating history and patterns.

Remember, the definition of dating is - spending time with multiple people for the purpose of having fun. Sounds like you aren't having fun. Stop doing what you're doing - and do something different. Change your approach and your attitude.

Scott's answer makes several things clear. The key lies in her "definition of dating" as "spending time with multiple people for the purpose of having fun". While there is no definition of dating that satisfies everyone, it is generally agreed that dating can take place when there is only one other person involved; and while everyone would likely agree that having fun is to be pursued on a date, the usual purpose of dating is to see if the two people can develop their relationship further.

I think what Scott means is that for her the paradigm, or ultimate example, of dating involves having fun while spending time with multiple people (presumably consecutively rather than concurrently). I assume that what makes her paradigm "new" for her clients is that she helps them analyze their old patterns and become someone who has fun.

Judging by another page on her website, she uses a battery of personality assessment tools like Meyers-Briggs, along with the standard life coaching technique of asking open-ended questions that force you to come to the conclusions she has made for how you should change your life.

Should dating be about having fun? In Jane Austen's Persuasion, Wentworth realizes he is in love with Anne after she calmly saves the day when everyone else is all in a dither over the silly Musgrave girl's concussion. I have a pirate friend who tells me that before he met his wife, he would deliberately create situations of stress to see how the women he dated handled a crisis. For example, one relationship ended when his girlfriend took it badly that he had locked his keys in the car at a mall parking lot. Oddly enough, he says he never tried the stress test with the woman he married.

4D Analysis: Katherin Scott's new dating paradigm involves mystical crap that cannot be supported and has an emphasis on life coaching that makes me skeptical, but her website has given us a number of points to keep in mind in the quest for an RNDP:

• Should a dating paradigm focus on finding the one perfect person? or should it focus on finding multiple people who might be fun?
• Do people who have not found dating fun need to change themselves first?
• Should dating be fun?

By the end of this series, we should have the answers to these and other questions.

P.S. Stacey, although it means more work for me, thank you for providing a copy of the "Hooking Up" article. Zoom forwarded it along to me just like you figured she would. If anyone else wants to send me email, I'm at gmail.com. fourth.dwarf

P.P.S. To the person who dropped a copy at my door of I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Joshua Harris who I understand exposes the "Seven Habits of Highly Defective Dating" and offers a realistic outline of how to have a biblical vision of marriage, I am really not sure if I'll be offering thanks or not.