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Even after each client has received the names of two matches, Stern and her staff of six do not abandon the libido to take its wobbly course. Hopeful marriage mates are given coaching to learn the finer points of courtship ("Packaging Yourself for Marriage," "Getting Past First Base"). "Men and women constantly complain about mixed signals," says Stern. "The men accuse women of agreeing to a second date, then never returning calls. The women say, 'Why do they always say I'll call you, when they don't mean it?' We tell all our clients: tell the truth."
She is particularly hard on many career women, who, she says, "have no idea how to connect with a man in an intimate relationship. They want to be on a pedestal and have everything done for them. A surprisingly large number of women who are liberated and successful in business are not that way in dating because they have learned from their mothers to be passive and indirect."
Stern is much kinder about her male clients, who, it seems, are somewhat old hat in actually "trying to please women in dating and courtship." They are shocked, she says, when women they are introduced to "come on too strong sexually." She recalls one thoroughly offended man blurting after his first date: "She jumped me." And women are complaining there are no decent men left out there?