The "Year of Yes" Gets Her a Man

Like many dispirited single women, Maria Headley feared that her taste in men was sabotaging her quest for love. The bookish, intellectual types she favoured seemed to offer nothing but awkward coffee dates and graceless passes – never romance, nor the spark she craved. Such serial disappointment, she concluded, could only be evidence that her modus operandi was seriously awry. The Telegraph UK had this story today.

“So the budding playwright set about devising her own unorthodox matchmaking scheme. For 12 months, instead of following her instincts, she would go out with anyone and everyone who asked her, regardless of their age, appearance, profession or even sex.

Headley dubbed it her “year of yes” – a dating assault course so physically and emotionally challenging it would change her life. In the ensuing 12 months, she dated more than 150 different people, some more than once.

Soon, the dates came thick and fast. Over coffee, a man from Cyprus asked her to bite his penis. She declined. A 70-year-old neighbourhood eccentric took her salsa dancing. A lesbian she nicknamed “Wonderwoman” asked her to have her baby. She slept with an actress, dated taxi drivers, psychics and carpet salesmen. A 30-year-old virgin wooed her with his exposed brick walls. A train conductor, who sounded so cheery over the intercom that she pursued him down the platform, took her swimming.”

Finally the 28-year old Headley married a 52-year old playwright with two kids, after he got a divorce from his wife.”The year turned me into a much more open-minded person,” she says. “If I had not done it, I would never have considered dating Robert. He had kids and was in a really big, bad, dramatic, miserable situation. I would have been too nervous of what people thought.”