4 tips for dating success

I am an avid reader of self-help books, and by "avid" I mean, "completely obsessed." My bookshelves would scare away anyone NOT holding a master's degree in psychology with a minor in personal-development, and even then, it's dicey.

So when gossip doyenne Paula Froelich came out with her own celebrity laden motivational tome, I had to have it. Froelich, a veteran scribe for the New York Post's implausibly venerable Page Six gossip column, was "tired of people asking the same damn questions all the time," ostensibly about how to become rich and famous, as her book is entitled, "It! 9 Secrets of the Rich and Famous that Will Take You to the Top."

Reading P-Fro's book, with its "get-off-your-not-ambitious-enough- butt-and-start-making-extensive-media-contacts" tone, I thought to myself, "Self, a lot of this advice is applicable to dating! Especially the media contacts advice." OK, not the media contacts advice. But a lot of the other stuff.

I called up Froelich to see if she agreed.

After all, she writes / hears / reads / thinks ad nauseam about other people's sordid love lives.

After all, she writes / hears / reads / thinks ad nauseam about other people's sordid love lives. "What have you concluded from all of this," I asked, "other than Trista and Ryan should never be allowed in public again?"

Never date a famous person

"Never date a famous person because if you break up, you have to see them everywhere," she says. "And male promiscuity is just as unattractive as female promiscuity."

So far, so good. I have never dated anyone famous, and I will never be a gigolo, due to my persistent lack of a Y chromosome.

Froelich, who "hates weddings," likes "manly men who know how to fix a toilet," and recommends against dating journalists "because they're worse than actors," (is that possible?), notes that she herself is single and "it's been hell."

Although Froelich maintains that "you can't really work for dating, it's just luck," I politely but vehemently disagree. In fact, I recommended she take advice from her own book, namely:

1. "Nothing good happens right away." Witness The Bachelor. Instant Prince Charmings do not exist in reality, television or otherwise.

2. "Show Up." My younger brother, who just got a fellowship in quantum physics at MIT (guess which kid my parents are proud of?), says that showing up is 80 percent, not f-ing up is the other 20 percent. You have to actually GO on the date first before you have an opportunity to screw it up.

3. "Believe in yourself and your own fabulousness." (aka, the Lizzie Grubman rule). Froelich cites Grubman, who has decidedly high self-esteem for someone known primarily for running innocent rich people over with a Mercedes. She has a point, however, "

If we're having a bad time -- we attract awful people. You get what you put out there.

If we're having a bad time -- we attract awful people. You get what you put out there." So put out fabulous and you'll get fabulous. Which sounds like a bumper sticker Kimora Lee Simmons would have on her hot-pink Hummer.

4. "True and lasting success is attained mainly by having a good, positive attitude, being completely committed to a clear goal and dedicating yourself to realizing that dream." Mission statement alert!!! Sounds like something Dr. Phil would endorse, which makes me throw up in my mouth a little, even if it IS a concise and optimistic dating mantra.

And, if all else fails, "never date a man with a van," the purview of unsavory characters, according to Froelich's Queens-bred mother.

Now that's self-help!