Nicholas Aretakis, author of the new book “Ditching Mr. Wrong,” will be offering relationship advice to women Tuesday at 7 p.m. in the Eastern Michigan University Student Center Auditorium.
His lecture, which shares the book’s title, is an open invitation to all the ladies (and gentlemen) on campus that might need help. If you are currently dating, or thinking about dating, that special someong, this is the event for you. But what qualifies Aretakis, a self-proclaimed “serial dater” and bachelor into his early 40s, to offer tips for spotting Mr. Wrong?
Aretakis is not a psychologist, therapist or even a life coach. He is the successful CEO of Arkayne, a technology company in Arizona that focuses on automatically linking your blog topics to similar content found around the web.
A roving bachelor until 42, he now has a fantastic wife (from Michigan, incidentally) and three beautiful children. He knows a few things about being Mr. Wrong and sincerely wants young ladies to be able to spot the wrong guy early in their relationships.
To clarify, Mr. Wrong is not merely “the bad/lazy boy” that does illicit drugs, mocks your friends and family cruelly and plays Halo for hours while ignoring your needs. Most women already recognize that bad boy and, hopefully, steer clear of him if they want a serious relationship.
Mr. Wrong is more often “Mr. Wrong For You,” as opposed to Mr. Right. While he may be a great guy, Mr. Wrong and you may be in a dead-end relationship, and Aretakis hopes to provide some of the tools you need to see your way through the murky dating scene.
After 42 years of “having fun,” Aretakis has been blissfully married to his Ms. Right for six years. When he finally settled down he began to notice that “so many guys vastly mistreated women, and I thought it was unnecessary.”
While this concerned him, Aretakis said that he was more worried by the fact that “many women would end up in their mid-to-late 30s, sometimes their early 40s, and would be unhappy that they [still] weren’t happy.”
“Objectively and analytically, they had spent too much time with the Mr. Wrongs” he said.
Happily married, he knew the reason he was qualified to give advice to women was because he knows how Mr. Wrong For You thinks.
“I was on that dating circuit for over 20 years and I had hung out with those same guys,” he said. “I don’t know who could speak better to that, Dr. Phil?”
Still, the main reason for Aretakis’ book and lecture series isn’t because he noticed injustices within the dating realm or even that he married his beautiful wife. His daughters are the reason.
“I want to make sure that my girls, when they grow up and by the time they start dating, have some good helpful advice to prepare,” he said.
He decided to get a head start on his young daughters’ dating future instead of waiting for that first Mr. Wrong to show up on his doorstep.
While the rules for spotting Mr. Wrong are universal for women in their early 20s through their 60s and 70s, women in their early 20s can afford to be a little more patient and allow a relationship to develop a bit.
Women in college aren’t always searching for the man they will marry and start a family with, so much as a “Mr. Right For Now.” Still, recognizing those warning signs will be important for when those women are ready to have longer lasting, healthy relationships.
Aretakis explains that both men and women have ticking biological clocks, but that these clocks begin ticking louder and faster for women that want to have children as they grow older. From first meeting a man to possible cohabitation to engagement and marriage, it may be upwards of four to six years before a woman ever has a child, if that’s what she wants.
So, while college women are mostly dating for fun, and are encouraged to do so, when they do decide they want a family they are looking at the better part of a decade before that nuclear family is fully realized.
Some of the tools Mr. Aretakis provides can be found at his website, ditchingmrwrong.com, including the “Dating Litmus Test.” The test presents questions like “Do you accept each other’s strengths and weaknesses, without trying to (dramatically) change each other?” and, “Does he ‘give’ comparably or more than he takes from the relationship?”
Women are asked to rate their answers from 0-4 and add up their scores for grades that range from “A: Very good chance that you are with the right guy” to “D/F: Move along! You are wasting valuable time.”
One young lady, who took the test with her fiancée of two years in mind, awarded him an outstanding 94 points, launching him well into the A range. However, when said fiancée took the test and tried to answer the questions how he thought she had scored him, he ended up with a score in the B range.
This is not all that unusual, explains Aretakis:
“He was harsher on himself than his fiancée was. They are in a happy and healthy relationship and she’s happier with him than he even realizes.”
But quizzes that you can easily find in a variety of popular women’s magazines are not all Aretakis has to offer. He invites everyone to either visit his website or attend his lecture for more information on discovering which guys are Mr. All Wrong – and which are Mr. Just Right.
