Single Semite of the Month

If Evan Marc Katz‘s name doesn’t sound familiar to you, it should. I’ve certainly mentioned him before–I met him about three years ago, in the early days of my column, at a UJC Young Leadership conference in Washington, DC, where he spoke to a packed room of frustrated daters about what they’re doing wrong with their dating profiles. I’ll admit it now…at first, I thought his advice (particularly about banning adjectives from my online profile) was a lot of hooey. But as I thought about it, I learned that the author of “I Can’t Believe I’m Buying This Book: A Commonsense Guide to Successful Internet Dating” was right–my profile was much better after I took a red pen to it and eliminated some of those murky, non-helpful adjectives. (It didn’t help me get more online dates, but that’s another story.) That’s not the whole secret to fixing online dating profiles, but it’s one of the things Evan covers in the book and also for clients of his company, E-Cyrano.com.
Then Evan published his next book, “Why You’re Still Single: Things Your Friends Would Tell You If You Promised Not to Get Mad,” a title which actually made me a little mad, but the book itself was a funny, relatable “he-said, she-said” of a read that made me feel a little better. Other people were going through this stuff too.

Over the years, Evan and I have become friends, and usually I get to see him when I’m in LA, and we talk about dating and relating and all that. He’s funny, and it’s “smart-funny,” not “stupid-funny.” (Plus, although he woulda been a contenduh even with his long curly hair, the new “clean-cut” style really brings out those eyes, that smile…)

Even so, somehow I never thought of Evan as a SSOTM until I read his latest article in Match.com’s Happen Magazine, chronicling what it’s like to be the “Last Single Guy Standing“:

Then I hit my mid-thirties. I started to take stock of my methods and was forced to wonder whether I was my own worst enemy. I suddenly felt something beyond longing for connection… I found myself with a real sense of urgency about settling down. A strange, deeply buried ticking clock of sorts. I actually found myself thinking things like, “If I fell in love tomorrow, got engaged in six months, got married in a year and had a child a year later, I’d still be in my late fifties by the time my kid graduated college.” I know. It’s nuts.

No more nuts than any of the rest of us who lived our lives imagining our own marriage timelines. Some of us planned to marry at 23, have a kid at 25, then again at 28 and 31, and be cool, hip moms well into our 50s. (Oh, not me; “a friend.”) But welcome to the world of the serious dater, maybe thinking ahead too much, too early, but needing to be serious in order to get serious. And unfortunately, Evan happens to be a dating coach, so there’s always going to be someone who says, “you’re still single, so what do you know?” (Believe me, singles columnists hear that too.)

So here he is, kids. The first in my resurrected series of “Single Semite of the Month.” And the reluctant poster child for Valentine’s Day. And a hell of a good guy.
(Have nominees for Single Semite of the Month? Send your suggestions to Jdatersanonymous at gmail dot com. And join our Facebook group to discuss suggestions and the decisions of the judges as SSOTMs are chosen…)