Claire

Liked: her laugh, the way she argued about movies. We texted every morning for three weeks. By the fourth week she was "slammed at work." Then nothing.

Lesson: be more available, text first more, show her I'm serious.

Dani

Liked: everything, far too fast. Second date I suggested a weekend away. She said "maybe," then cancelled the third date the afternoon of. I waited at the bar an hour.

Lesson: plan bigger, spend more, she needs to see I'm all in.

Mel

Liked: she was kind. Third date I asked where this was going. She said she wasn't sure yet, and I heard that as a no and pushed. She went quiet for a week and I sent four texts into the quiet.

Lesson: be clearer about my feelings earlier.

Rachel

Two years. I did everything I thought a good boyfriend does. Agreed with her. Fixed her problems. Cancelled on my friends when she was down. Somewhere in year two she stopped laughing at my jokes and I told myself it was work stress.

She left in March. She said she had stopped feeling it months before and I never noticed. She was right. I never noticed.

Lesson: I should have done more for her.

What I kept finding

Every piece of advice I could find was one of two things. Lines and tricks for the first night, or therapy for a marriage that was already in trouble. Nothing covered the two months in the middle, where every one of mine died. And nothing explained how the same man could be fine on a first date and useless at keeping anyone.

I went on a quest to finally figure out why I was not having success with women. Eventually I learned what I was doing wrong. Then I took what I had learned, read back through this diary, and finally saw it on every page.

There are two stages, and they are two different jobs with two different sets of rules. First she catches you. Then she keeps you. Right behavior at the wrong time is wrong behavior.

I had been running the keep-her rules on first dates, and no rules at all once I had her.

Her interest is a number, and you read it off what she does, not what she says. Claire was the texting. Four to eight days between asks, not four texts a morning. Mel was me asking for a commitment she had not brought up. Rachel was two years of that number sliding and a man who never looked.

Then the part nobody had told me about: what to do once you are her boyfriend. Disagree without arguing. Listen without fixing. It is a different job from the first one.

Every lesson I had crossed out, I could now correct. Then, because I am a man who forgets, I built something so I would not have to remember.