The Science of Single: One Woman's Grand Experiment in Modern Dating, Creating Chemistry, and Finding Love

by Rachel Machacek

Overview

Read Rachel Machacek's blogs and other content on the Penguin Community.

One year of dating. One year of looking for love. One uproarious and touching memoir.

After years of dating without a connection, Rachel Machacek vowed to try a more dedicated, less slipshod, more scientific way of finding love. So, she committed a year of her life to trying every mainstream (and not-so-mainstream) method of meeting the right guy. In The Science of Single, Rachel welcomes readers into the findings from her roller- coaster year, and although she set out looking for the right chemistry, what she discovers in the process is hilarious, unexpected, and infinitely more exciting.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781594484964
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/04/2011
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Rachel Machacek is a writer and editor living and dating in Washington, D.C. A contributing editor to the Washington Flyer magazine, her articles have also appeared in the Washington Post and Maryland Life magazines. She ponders dating and relationships on her blog, The Science of Single.

Editorial Reviews

Washington Flyer contributing editor and "clueless romantic" Machacek spends a year looking for true love.

After a fizzled long-distance relationship followed by miserable blind dates, the frustrated 33-year-old became proactive, beginning a 12-month "experiment" using a variety of matchmaking outlets to find her Mr. Right. The opening statistics are discouraging—a 2005 survey of Internet users: "55% of singles reported no active interest in seeking a romantic partner"—yet Machacek plodded on, posting profiles on sites like Match.com, eHarmony, IJL ("It's Just Lunch") and The Onion Personals. The expectations were lofty, but the in-person dates disappointed in both looks and personality as much as the rapid-fire exchanges at speed dating and the four weeks of blind dating, which failed to turn up anyone with which the author shared romantic chemistry. Machacek appealed to family, friends and co-workers for support, especially sage gay pal Kenneth, who's "equal parts crotchety old man and charming queen." With one service charging more than $1,000, the author learned the costly side of romance alongside the quagmires of dating outside her area code and coming clean to potential love interests about her experiment. Whether these men failed to entice her due to "stylistic blunders," lack of physical attraction or spark, the author repeatedly found herself "caught in a melee of not-quite-rights." Some of the calamity is humorous, and there's fun to be had in the chase itself, but her "superficial judgments" on the parade of men who abruptly came and went eventually doomed her serial dating project. To her credit, the author acquiesces to hard-won personal revelations about her shallowness and sabotaging tendencies to prejudge others. Machacek's most rational conclusion, however, concerns her refusal to settle for less—to "not choose anyone in order to keep myself open to someone whoisright for me."

Practical but dispiriting social spadework.

Kirkus Reviews