I keep being rejected at the same stage. What am I doing wrong?

In her surveys, behind the polite phrase personality clash there most often stands one thing: the person behaved rudely and was read as a boor. From this she proposes an unpleasant but useful self-check, more honestly done before continuing to go on dates.

“the rejected person portrayed him or herself as rude and was most likely interpreted as being a jerk”

Baila came to her; everything ended after the first date and she did not understand what she was doing wrong. A few minutes into the conversation the reason was visible: a monotone, the same pitch throughout, zero expression; the author could barely hear her and kept asking her to repeat. Baila was given exercises for voice and intonation, and soon she called to say she had been asked out on a second date. A caution: another of her clients laid out his entire mental-health history, along with his list of medications, on the very first dates, and then wondered why he was getting refusal after refusal; vulnerability is revealed in stages: first make sure you like each other, and open up more deeply as the relationship becomes more serious.

“The tone and volume of your voice matter too!”

A caution: Shaya, at forty-seven, had been dating for twenty-five years. He was selective about whom he would start with, but after that the script always repeated itself: for two or three months everything looked promising, he was sure he had finally found his match, and then the girl would start behaving so irritatingly that he had to end it. He explained his failures by being a poor judge of people, slower than others to notice obvious flaws.

“He would date them for about two or three months and things would look very promising.”