Reba Toney, a former call screener for the Dennis Prager radio show, now hosts a couple of talkshows of her own on Christian radio.
A single mom, she’s published a new book called "The Rating Game: The Foolproof Formula for Finding Your Perfect Soul Mate".
According to her MySpace page: "If you’re always getting dumped then you’re dating people who are too good for you. If you’re always dumping people then you’re dating people that are too good for you. . Use the Rating Games fun 1-10 scale in face, body, personality, and life situation. Learn how t rate yourself and others, so that you date only those who rate the same as you!"
Reba appeared on Dennis Prager’s show yesterday. She said to think of dating as like a job interview. You may not be qualified for dating certain people just as you may not be qualified for certain jobs. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. Your experience will be good for some people and not for others. You may be under or over-qualified for that person you want to date.
Dennis: I was mesmerized by this. I think it was in Psychology Today 20 years ago. Yale or somebody did a study at mixers and they found that most people did have a self-worth number and they would approach within the ballpark of what was available to that number.
I do this. It’s intensely painful but I often think of certain women as being out of my league (too beautiful or too classy or too accomplished) and other women as beneath me. I get a comfortable feeling with other women that I can land them. I’ve never broken out of this pattern. I’ve never dated anyone who I thought was out of my league for longer than a couple of months and I always got dumped.
Reba says women tend to understate their worth. They look in the mirror and see their flaws. Men look in the mirror and tend to exaggerate their worth.
I remember one beautiful female convert to Judaism telling me about the amazingly misplaced self-confidence of nebbishy Jewish men trying to pick her up. "Jewish men don’t know their level," she says. "They were raised by their mothers to believe they could be president of the United States."
So what happens when a man dates above his level?
Reba: "You see that all the time. The phrase that shows that it’s happening is, ‘She won’t stop nagging me.’ Well, you wanted someone better than you and you got it. Now she has expectations of you that you can’t meet."
Dennis: "You get what you’re dating."
Reba: "It’s not fair to marry someone expecting them to change."
Dennis: "How do you rate yourself?"
Reba: "In four areas: Face, body, personality, life situation. Rate yourself and then your exes. You rate what you think is a ten and then evaluate how close do you come to this. If you think Jessica Alba is a ten, then you rate yourself accordingly."
Dennis: "Looks matter more to men than to women."
Reba: "It does at the beginning…"
"The book came out of my experience with marriage."
"You can figure this out before you give someone your phone number."
