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Bethanne Patrick: What's a way to get dateworthy? The first thing you said was the reality check, and a big part of that is appearance, of course.

Dennie Hughes: I remember being single and my closet was every size between two an ten. Depended on the season, depended on where you were at any given moment. A lot of women put way too much stock in what they look like. You are not your size, there's so much more to you than that. If you're a size twelve, fourteen and you feel gorgeous -- be gorgeous! Go ahead, go out and meet men and do what you've got to do. But if you're not feeling that good that comes across, and if you don't feel that good, I hate to say it, but you're going to have to bite the bullet -- not the chocolate bar.

Bethanne Patrick: Right, you're going to have to bite the elipto rider and get out there. I think you just made a very good point that as long as you're feeling good, that makes all the difference. I just saw Queen Latifah at a conference and she looked fabulous. There is no reason to apologize for being a two, a ten or twenty, but if you're feeling miserable, look at what is making you feel miserable.

Dennie Hughes: That leads me to my second reality check: I would say that in 99% of the letters I get from readers where they're having a problem with their significant other, they offer up a rationale for their bad behavior. They're constantly giving excuses why this guy is treating them so badly and I think that starts with not feeling really good about yourself. You're so happy to get attention that any kind of attention is fine, and I say if you constantly have to make excuses for why someone doesn't call or treat you better, you should not be dating that person, period. I don't want to hear about, 'well, he had this girlfriend that used to do this and that' -- I don't care about the story!

Bethanne Patrick: Get away from him! Step away from the jerk.

Dennie Hughes: You know what I always say? Some of these letters are really so sad they make you want to reach out to this person and shake them a little bit. Finally I say, write a letter describing how this person treats you and then when you sign it, pretend it's from someone you love, like a sister or your best friend or your daughter. Sign it with their name and read it again in the mindset that this is the person that wrote it to you. I bet nine times out of ten you'd say to her, 'you've got to get out of that relationship.'

Bethanne Patrick: Well that's very interesting, Dennie, because one of the things you do in 'Dateworthy' is you have people write letters and make lists and do some thinking about this. And for many women who are single and who are feeling desperate about it, the last thing that they're going to do is think. They go out, they do, they look, they primp ... whatever. But you actually say step back and do some intellectual work on yourself.

Dennie Hughes: And why not? I mean when you're approaching a job -- you want a job, you have to think about what you want to put on a resume, you want to think about how you want to portray yourself and you think about what it is that's going to be fulfilling for you. A job is something that takes up a lot of your time.

Well, so does a relationship. A relationship is just as important and you really need to put the thought process in it. I know I have a couple of reviews that say I have people writing stuff down a lot but, guess what, if you can see it, you can edit it. If it's in your mind and you can't really see it, you can't really grasp the idea of what's going on with you.

Bethanne Patrick: If you can see it, you can edit it. That's spoken like the true typo-spotter I know you to be, Dennie. I love it! Would you also say that when a woman is single and really looking for [a relationship] that she regards it as a job -- or is that going too far?

Dennie Hughes: No, no. At one point I think I talk about when you go shopping. Men are good, bad and salvageable. And let's say you go into one of these fantastic outlet centers where you know everything in there is designer, but you have to really pick and look through every single thing. Some stuff looks like it's good because the label's great, but if you look even further there's stuff that's busted, there's stuff that's unfixable.

So it's like shopping and I always say, you never take just one thing in the dressing room. Heck, you try to cheat, you know they only say six in the dressing room and you try to stuff eight. That's how you should look at dating! Dating should be like taking stuff into the dressing room, trying it on, see if it fits, thinking about it -- do you really need it? Does it work for you? Does it work for the rest of your wardrobe? Does this man work for the rest of your life?