DEAR E. JEAN: I'm 29, run my own thriving business, and have my health, a great family, and good friends. Sorry to sound like a big whiner, but I don't have a man, and this is a problem I've been worrying about for some time. I always say I'd rather be alone than with the wrong guy, but I do think having someone to share experiences with would greatly enhance my life. I have a lot of hope and 90 percent of the time my spirits are high, but I've been alone for so long, it's scary sometimes.—Wondering Where My Mr. Right Is

STOP, WONDERING: Einstein gave you relativity. Madame Curie gave you radium. And now I give you…

MR. RIGHT, RIGHT NOW!
How a Smart Woman Can Land Her Dream Man in 6 Weeks

Yes, I'm about to shamelessly flog my own book—out this month from Harper Collins—not to mention commit repeated acts of autoplagiarism. Old Eeee has devised a foolproof method for finding and landing your dream man in Six Damn Weeks! No self-help horsehockey.
So, Miss Wondering, you say you've been “alone for so long, it's scary”? I promise that if beginning January 1 you follow the principles found in MRRN (which is based on Darwinian theory, cutting-edge scientific research, and 10 years of hard evidence provided by thousands of letters sent in to the Ask Eeee column), by February 14 (and by the hairless loins of Cupid!) you'll have the man of your dreams. Why's that possible? Three simple reasons:

REASON #1
You Were Born to Drive Men Mad
The Mr. Right, Right Now! method (which works so well, it will soon have bikini waxes and perfumes named after it) is rooted in the fact that you are already outfitted by nature to find and seduce a chap. You are so designed because Ma Nature wants you to produce new combinations of genes, and Mom gets her new gene combos only if men in their $7.7 million penthouses are pestering you for sex.

I can hear you tut-tutting about this “born to seduce” deal.

Let me ask you one question, Miss Wondering: Would men around the world go to such extravagant lengths to mask our charms with chastity belts, foot bindings, and shapeless power suits if we weren't just unbelievably, incredibly hot?

Right. So you see, we can solve the “problem” you've “been worrying about for some time.” Read the next letter and discover the second simple reason why following the MRRN plan will bring you a lovely lad by Valentine's Day.

chaplain looking for a boyfriend. I'm well-groomed, often called pretty, and I have a great sense of humor. I meet many men who seem very interested in me until I tell them my occupation. I guess they think I'm going to convert them! I'm beginning to think I should avoid saying what I do.—Love to Officiate at My Own Wedding

HELL'S BELLS, LOVE: I swear on this issue of ELLE that your profession is not the problem. (Anyway, God Herself will never take the rap for running men off.) Indeed, you could be swaddled up to the eyelids in clerical collars and speaking in King James English and still drop chaps in their tracks. Nay. I say unto you: The reason the men runneth off is because the instant thou meeteth a nice gent, instead of smiling, listening, and responding to the man, thou starteth worrying about runnething him off—which, in fact, causeth him to runneth off. And ZAZZ! That is the death of allure, because…

REASON #2
Men Decide Pretty Much Everything About You in the First 30 Seconds
You can be brilliant for 30 seconds, right, Reverend? Men absolutely lose their brains over novelty and beauty. And even if a man simply likes the way you appear to him or is mildly provoked by the way you look, everything after that is fixed by his first impression.

“The impression is anchored,” says Frank Bernieri, PhD, an associate professor of psychology at Oregon State University and the world's leading expert on spontaneous social judgment. “We think these other bits of information are revealed to us independently, but no—they are absolutely anchored by that first sight. When a guy sees an attractive woman, he wants to find her interesting. He wants to discover she's intelligent.” (In other words, he wants to be wowed by your profession.)

In fact (hold on to your surplice!), when a man first makes your acquaintance, the information he picks up after the initial 10 or 12 seconds isn't augmented by further observation. “People think they're learning more, that their judgments are better,” says Bernieri, “that they're catching the nuances, but that's not the case. They're interpreting information consistent with what they already believed in the first few seconds. And they'll go out of their way to look for information that confirms it.”

(Really, Reverend, this instant-love stuff is older than the Old Testament, with your kings constantly clapping eyes on nubile females and 30 seconds later taking them “to wife.” It's David and Bathsheba. It's Romeo and Juliet. It's Anna and Vronsky. It's Michael Corleone in The Godfather gazing at Apollonia on that hot Sicilian hillside, hightailing it straight back to the village, and asking for her hand in marriage.)

You must stop pouring your brain through a sieve worrying about what men think and be your divine self. Which brings us to our third letter and Reason #3 that the Mr. Right, Right Now! six-week plan will work miracles for you.…

DEAR E. JEAN: I'm a 33-year-old, independent-minded attorney with a sadly lacking personal life. I hate the bar scene, and my work schedule is so busy that meeting men is difficult. Am I naive to think I can expect a love relationship to happen when I have so little time?—Frustrated in Mo.

FRUSTY, DARLING: Pshaw! Time is on your side because…

REASON #3
When You Meet a Man and You Like Him and He Likes You, You Will Quickly Synchronize

This is also called clicking. And you know exactly what it feels like, Miss Frustrated, right? You're walking around the corner to buy a copy of The Economist when you see a man coming toward you, and there's a flash of recognition.… You've never laid eyes on him before, but you seem to know each other. (I can't prove it, but I think your DNA is reading his DNA, and the sudden jolt you feel is Ma Nature telling you “STOP! Here's your Mr. Right!” And wise women do stop. The rest glance down at the pavement and go on wondering the rest of their lives why they've never found their true love.)

“Anytime you meet and synchronize with someone,” says Bernieri, “it's energizing.” (Two people in sync even begin to mirror each other's movements—on the research tapes, it looks like they're dancing!) And that's an intoxicating reinforcer. “I don't care who you're interacting with,” says Bernieri. “You can't wait for the next time you see him because you just love this person.”

(By the by, so-called “dating coaches” use Bernieri's research and try to “teach” synchronizing to hapless suckers in dating courses. It never works. Faking synchrony doesn't cause good feelings. Good feelings cause synchrony.)

And the most stunning thing? Bernieri has found that if two strangers meet and don't synchronize during the first 30 seconds, chances are high they'll never synchronize.

“You either have it immediately or you don't,” says Bernieri.

So let's review: You say you have “so little time,” Miss Frustrated. Fine. Got 30 seconds? The MRRN method works so fast because Ma Nature, who has created you as a veritable mantrap (excuse the plain English), will see to it that you attract a chap and that you click and synchronize. And if you're synchronizing, all you have to do is be yourself and keep doing what you're doing and you'll have a powerful foundation on which to build something marvelous.

Of course, the hard part is everything leading up to that 30 seconds. Before it can occur, you must acquire the right opportunistic mind-set, make the most of your physical assets, rid yourself of your fears, and place yourself where there are such high numbers of elite and eligible men that it becomes a mathematical certainty that you will meet your Dream Man. To find out how to do that, stop reading this column and run out and get yourself a copy of Mr. Right, Right Now!