The Quest

Mother Knew Best

Classic mother wisdom: when you're looking for love you'll never find it. This dovetails beautifully with her advice to play hard to get. Basically, if you want to find love, you can't look for it and should shun it when it finds you.

What's wrong with this picture? How about the fact that everyone is looking, and a great deal of the fun of being in love is total immersion in each other? Playing hard to get is for poseurs. Lonely, deluded poseurs.

These days, despite Mom's admonition, it's socially acceptable to be "looking." Online dating services advertise on network television with plenty of "real people" bragging about how they found each other. Even New York Times wedding announcements publish the name of the service that brought together the happy couples.

So there you go. Falling in love is easier than it's ever been. Just tell your mother, "I know you felt you had to say you were busy Saturday if a date called as late as Thursday. That might have worked in your day, but today we don't want to hide out on Saturday to cover a lie we told on Thursday. We're not embarrassed to admit we're looking to find someone."