New York Times bestselling author Harlan Cohen was still in college when he began his dating advice column. When Cohen graduated, his column graduated with him—to the New York Daily News. Cohen took his 17 years of dating advice experience to BU this past Monday night. A crowd of BU students made up of predominantly Greek brothers and sisters packed into Metcalf Hall to hear Cohen’s romantic wisdom. What Cohen provided was nothing short of helpful—and hysterical.
Cohen is best known for his book The Naked Roommate: And 107 Other Issues You Might Run into in College. His latest book, to be released this April, is entitled Getting Naked: Five Steps to Finding the Love of Your Life (While Fully Clothed and Totally Sober). While it’s a universal dating advice book, the ideas it touts are catered to the college set. At the event on Monday night, Harlan gave the crowd the meat-and-potatoes of his book’s approach to love.
Cohen told the audience that, as students at a major university in a college city, we’re uniquely blessed with many options. There are plenty of young people all around us, and most of them single at that. He said that women need to grow “big ovaries” and approach men more often. The process of approaching women is more intimidating than ladies give guys credit for. Students should follow their passions and get involved, thus increasing their chances of meeting others who enjoy similar activities. Students can’t let fear of rejection thwart their quest for love in college, and what’s more, rejection is something we should get used to. When you truly put yourself out there, you can expect some rejection every now and then—but that’s okay. Often times, the reasons someone doesn’t want to date you are beyond you. As a society, we’re sort of conditioned to hate people who don’t like us in the same way we like them, but there’s no reason for that, Cohen asserted. There are tons of fish in the sea.
Cohen listed this fear of rejection among other commonly held beliefs that complicate the college dating scene. “Men are assholes, women are bitches, and couples in love suck,” is what Cohen described as the mantra of many single people. It’s a belief that we need to shake. He also said we tend to hang on far too long to relationships that are failing, for fear we may never be fortunate enough to fall into one again. If someone’s treating you poorly, Cohen said, there’s no excuse to stay in that relationship when there are plenty of options all around you who would treat you better.
In order to remedy our wounded dating lives, Cohen prescribed a five-step fix. As part of his advice, Cohen used the analogy of a thong. “Put on a thong,” he said, “and stand in front of a mirror.” Assess yourself in that thong. If there’s stuff hanging out that you can fix in a healthy way, then change it. If you can’t fix what’s hanging out, learn to accept and embrace it. Cohen didn’t mean dieting down a few pounds to obliterate your muffin top. What he was prescribing was a general life tune-up. We all have three different ‘thongs’—an emotional, physical, and spiritual. Our emotional thongs have to do with our life experiences and the way we handle what’s thrown at us, our physical thongs have to do with our self-confidence as related to our appearance, and our spiritual thong can be filled with meaningful hobbies and passions. When our thongs are all filled out healthfully, we’re ready to date.
Cohen rounded out the evening with “the Chlamydia Song,” an homage to STDs and college. The comedic love authority’s full take on romance goes live April 24 when Getting Naked hits stores.
