Review of the book Smart Dating

A detailed Summary of Review of the book Smart Dating

In the book Smart Dating, Donald Black examines ways to start and build a healthy relationship. He explores the areas of looking for dates, choosing the best date, and dating them. His most important points, which he stresses, are listening and showing that they are listening, the importance of nonverbal communication, and making the other person comfortable. Black has based his research on personal experience, book research, and from interviews from thousands of other people. Black relays the importance of communication in his book by saying, "Effective communication is critical to successful dating" (150).

Listening is one point Black stresses regularly throughout the book. Listening to the other person not only makes someone a better person and a friend but also allows them to become a wonderful person in the eyes of others because of they are being supportive and attentive (46). Becoming an effective listener also makes relationship stronger (189). Listening allows people to know more about the person they are speaking with, reducing unpredictability if they were to go on a date with that person. To get to this point of getting the other to self disclose, people are suppose to ask questions and get the other person ta

On nearly every page, he mentions the fact of keeping the other person comfortable when engaging in communication. This is most important when a two people first meet. One should talk to the other and after finding out just a little information, for example their name, then ask them out for a simple date like coffee (139-40). Nothing fancy because then they can feel forced to make a decision about that person in a higher level of relationship (140). Coffee is simple and is more of a friendly thing to do. The person should be asked in a comfortable way, not being pushy or overly aggressive (142). This will lead to the to future dates if everything goes well.

Black explains ways of showing listening by leaning towards the other person, getting on their side, and attempting to understand what the other person is saying (47). He describes other things too, for instance: Looking the other in the face, not thinking about what to say next, being aware of what the body is doing, not interrupting, and trying to understand (188). He does point out that some people may be lacking the necessary skills of listening, and suggests that if someone realizes their listening skills are low that they practice them. He believes engaging in experiences where it is necessary to listen which will improve skills in this area, and also to challenges people to say the least possible in conversations to learn this as well.

For the fourth step of evaluation, Black is more interested in identifying stuff about the person. He says understanding what the person is saying is very important but he stresses more on the point that understanding the persons self-interests and biases will help you understand where they are coming from in the future (71). Also being able to understand these points will help you realize if you like this person or not due to their nature of opinions.

Overall this book is well written. It is unfortunately repetitive over the same subject. It covered many topics and showed many ways to communicate well in romantic relationships. It easily could have been shortened by a lot of pages, so it wastes a good amount of a person's time that wishes to undertake it. This book could have included more charts and specific theories so his information sounds more credible. Sometimes he says the reader should just change this aspect of his/her life without showing them a way to do so. This book was helpful but many others out there could have been better and been more informative and contained quality information instead of quantity.

He talks in depth about the attraction theory. He states that similar people attract each other (113). He also points out that people find others physically attractive and their personality attractive as well. Within the relationship rules approach, he really only approaches the romantic rules of it. With social penetration theory he mentions deepening as the relationship goes on. He also goes on to say that as the relationship deteriorates so doe

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Approximate Word count = 2028
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Miscellaneous