At a time in history when we can often spend hours in drug store aisles picking out the perfect deodorant, selecting the perfect scent and slide for your sensitive and fickle armpit; it’s no wonder it’s so difficult to meet, nevermind marry, the perfect mate. But perhaps Robin Gorman Newman’s new book can help. How To Marry a Mensch: The Love Coach’s Guide to Finding Your Mate (Fair Wind Press) is Newman’s second title in a strategic life, love, and dating plan that takes readers from the Single Life – with dishes piled high in the sink and opportunity for self-exploration – into the arms of the mensch(all around good guy) “even your mother will love.”

In her first book, How to Meet a Mensch in New York, which has sold over 20,000 copies, Newman exposed ways in which men and women might fatefully happen upon a long-term love, outside of the usual pick-up places like bars and clubs, suggesting instead that singles seek out classes, committees, or travel tours where members of the opposite sex will naturally proliferate. Newman’s “strategic socializing tips” focus on encouraging people to “enjoy each day” as they carry out their search, “seizing the moment if you see someone you’d like to meet,” and considering “the Three Rights: Put yourself in the right place, at the right time, with the right attitude.” This last tip is one Newman echoes in her advice for singles to relinquish the idea of the Mr. or Mrs. Perfect, warning that there is, in fact, no such thing.

So once you’ve found the nearly perfect mensch–man or woman, what next? In How To Marry… Newman will revisit some of her advice around the meeting of menshes, later delving into the meat of the issue: “how to woo him,” and what to do once you “have the ring on your finger.” Though it’s unclear whether any of Newman’s love coaching has led her clients to this sought fate, we can assume it at least worked for her. After meeting and marrying a mensch she met on a singles trip to Paris, Newman is full of advice for other lonely men and women in the same loveless boat she was once in herself.

On Newman’s website, her advice for meeting a mensch includes suggesting to women that they take “a share in a ski house or going on a ski trip, or join an indoor volleyball league, take tennis lessons, etc.,” while “men should attend a singles…and seek out other cultural activities like a film or dance class, museum outing, etc. These are always female-dominated.” So here’s where I start to wonder: what happened to forming relationships based on shared interests? Do I really have to act sporty to meet a “decent, responsible person that even my mother will love?”

I’m trying to imagine myself at a Ski Lodge shamelessly faking an interest in skiing, landing the perfect mensch and through subsequent annual anniversary ski trips, pathetically fudging sprained ankles, thinking how the hell did I end up with this jerk?” Sounds not so mensch to me.

In Newman’s defense she lays out some good ideas for those who either don’t have the time or creativity to come up with new man/women finding spots on their own, and I share her belief that individual happiness leads to successful relationships – that we must fix ourselves before we can hope for a successful fix-up. It will be interesting to see what advice we gain from Newman’s strategies for securing marital security – although I’d personally take it with a grain of salt and one squinted eye. A yente is still a yente. Success with love and honorable menschen will always come from the heart and not the bookstore.

But you have to hand it to her. It seems as if Newman is living out her own personal fairy tale complete with a “mensch in the making,” as she refers to her toddler son. It is rumored that we can look forward to Newman’s advice on baby bearing in Baby Mensch. Hopefully Newman will enlighten the masses on how to raise decent and responsible children whom people other than their mothers will love – something I think many New York (and trans-national) modern day moms could use to read. And if Baby Mensch turns out a success then maybe we’ll get lucky and score How to Keep Your Mensch Out of Middle Age Crisis, and How to Stop Your Old Mensch from Farting in Public.

Oh well, I’ll let Newman handle the love coaching.

Check out Robin Gorman Newman’s advice on lovecoach.com. How to Marry a Mensch: The Love Coach’s Guide to Finding Your Mate is out in paperback beginning February 1, 2006. Happy Hunting!