On February 16, The New York Times ran a piece titled "(Name Here) Is a Liar and a Cheat" about such sites as dontdatehimgirl.com, manhaters.com, womansavers.com, truedater.com, and dontdateherman.com, recently popular in the dating world. These sites allow men and women to tell others about someone they have dated, to alert them to the date’s inadequacy or lack of straightforwardness (or occasionally that the person is actually as advertised). Frequently the person is found to have been grossly misrepresenting themselves; for example, a man is married when they've said they're single; nothing like his pictures on the dating sites (weight, age appearance, stature, etc.); well employed when he's living in his parents basement, and so forth. The complaint about the women is most frequently that they either have bizarre personalities or are simply unattractive physically.

Clearly, this is an idea whose time has come, for this group no less than every other category of transaction. In this era it's entirely proper for patients to rate their doctors, purchasers their vendors, students their professors, and on across the board. Feedback is a great leveler of the playing field; it insures that people can't hide out and cheat their customers; it weeds out providers who aren't giving real value.

So let's get rid of the cheats as quickly as possible. But beyond the obvious misrepresentations, it's interesting how far most of these people who've been hurt go into the relationship before they wake up to the fact that they're being conned. Take the commonest case, in which the man turns out to be a sleaze-ball serial dater just out to score, maybe already married, possibly an alcoholic or marginal drug addict, or possessed of a violent streak. Why don't people wake up earlier to the fact that the person they've been dating is a scumball, manipulator, or garden variety personality disorder?

Some of this problem comes with the territory: it takes several months of dating before the sexual chemicals diminish to the point that people can begin to see things straight. They also fail to ask whether the person they're dating might not be sneaking into their lives by virtue of a personal blind spot. Is there something that allows the person to appear attractive to them when the actual case is that they're simply familiar, and negatively familiar, at that? If people turn off their radar, no wonder they get missiles dropped on them!

But the most common mistake, and the one easiest to fix, is that people get so caught up in their wishes for a wonderful new relationship that they fail to look for and take in new data about the person, and instead simply accept what they're being spoon fed. No wonder that they see nothing - until they've been trapped, chewed up, and are ready to be spit out.

Here some simple dating rules that can help you stay safe:

1. Fall in love (or in sex) only up to a point ; reserve a part of yourself to uncertainty. It's just fine not to know how far you can go with this person; you just met!

2. Ask yourself why the other person is so particularly appealing. When you get an answer, muse on how that leaves you vulnerable, and whether you've ever encountered the same situation in the past; if so, how did you get hurt? This will give you a clue as to your possible blind spot - and a remedy in either your heart or your action.

3. Ask yourself, over the first several months of your relationship, what you really know about the person; not what he or she tells you, but what you've validated via other, multiple, reliable sources. If you haven't validated it, the data is worthless.

4. Don't be afraid to go get that data. In the new century it's our responsibility to get the information we need. If someone we're contemplating an involvement with has a problem with our learning about them, look out! Either they've been in a cave for the last decade, or they've got something to hide. Good people should have no reason to keep you from talking to friends, co-workers, ex wives and significant others, etc.

Involve yourself keeping these ideas firmly in mind, and it will be far less likely that you'll ever need to be posting on one of these sites for the dating-exploited.