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You know in your heart that you’ve probably been Ms. Typed in some of your relationships, and it’s time for a change. You need to reconnect with the real you. If you aren’t currently dating, you may be asking yourself, Why am I still single? Why do I always attract the wrong type of person? Why don’t men return my phone calls? Why do my relationships end after we have sex, or only exist to provide sex? This book will help you understand yourself and your past relationships, so that you can discover your true dating personality and prevent remaking the mistakes of the past.
It’s far too easy to become Ms. Typed. Maybe one day you look in the mirror and remember the old confident you, and you wonder what happened to her. Or you know deep in your heart that you are greater than your circumstances, but you just don’t know how to turn your love life around. Maybe a bad breakup or a string of bad relationships has made you feel less and less like the woman you’re supposed to be. We all know a woman who is so amazing and has so much potential but somehow always ends up with jerks in dead-end relationships, and we wonder why someone like her would end up with someone like him (or why someone like yourself would end up with someone like your ex). I’ll tell you why. It’s because she and you are Ms. Typed.
Not only will this book help you rediscover your true self, but it will also help you create a strong foundation to get your romantic future back on track. If you don’t start acting as if you expect to meet Mr. Right right now, then how do you expect to be ready for him when he finally shows up? So many women go to bed at night and pray for their “soul mate” or a “good” man to show up in their lives. But what if he showed up and you were so caught up in your past and acting like Ms. Typed that you didn’t even recognize that he was “the one”? Under those circumstances, would you really be prepared to put your best foot forward and be in a good mental space to start a relationship? Of course not! Being Ms. Typed makes you vulnerable to dating drama that the real, healthy you would resist. And worst of all, when you are being Ms. Typed, you aren’t being yourself. So until you get rid of her, when Mr. Right shows up, that’s who he’s going to meet!
This book can help you start your personal evolution from Ms. Typed to the true, happier, and healthier you. This way when Mr. Right walks in the door, not only will you recognize him, but with your newfound confidence, health, and inner beauty, you’ll have him saying to himself, Now, that’s my type of woman!
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Why did I write this book? 
May 12: Having a hard time meeting Mr. Right? Psychologist Michelle Callahan, author of “Ms. Typed,” offers dating advice based on your personality type.
I have always been fascinated by dating and romantic relationships. As a teenager my friends and I spent hours discussing who did what and why. I couldn’t wait to get to college and graduate school to study psychology. I have always been particularly sensitive to the disappointment and pain that women experience as a result of romantic relationships. In graduate school I studied how marriages change over time, how domestic violence physically and mentally impacts married women and their children, and how dating violence affects single women. My doctoral dissertation focused on how teenagers cope with experiences of physical and psychological abuse in their dating relationships and how that abuse affects their psychological well-being. I have always been committed to discovering solutions to women’s self-esteem and relationship problems. First, I had to study and understand their experiences, and then I was determined to help them find ways out of these difficult situations. The younger the women were, the more frustrated I was that they had no support or resources. No one tells us how to act in relationships, least of all how to be smart and protect ourselves and by “protecting ourselves,” I don’t mean acting defensive but just being well informed about how men are, how relationships work, and how sex impacts us physically and emotionally — everything!
Right after I finished my doctoral program at the University of Michigan, I started my postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University’s School of Epidemiology and Public Health, working on a research project studying teenage girls at risk for STDs and HIV. The time I spent interviewing these girls helped to change the course of my career and my life. When I interviewed them, I wasn’t supposed to be doing anything more than reading off questions and recording their answers. But their pain and their needs were so great that it felt almost impossible to record what they were saying and then ignore it. They wanted to talk to me and I wanted to talk to them, but we weren’t supposed to. I resisted as much as I could, but I knew then that I had to find a way to communicate to women everything I understood about the psychology of relationships. A few years later I started my own relationship and life coaching business, and I started working with the media and providing relationship advice on television. I am always looking for ways to take the research we create in academia and communicate it through the media. For over fifteen years I have studied and worked with women to understand their relationship challenges. I want to help women find ways to cope with their relationship stress and resolve their dating dilemmas.
I decided to write a book about being mistyped because I saw dating types in myself and in the women around me. I have been Ms. Typed, and I was surrounded by other women who were as well, but we had no idea what to do about it. One of the reasons I wrote this book is that I wish it was available to me when I was struggling with feeling like Ms. Typed. I have had my share of dating disappointments. There was a time in my life when I looked back over my dating experiences and felt embarrassed by how often I acted out of character and in ways that didn’t represent who I was (or who I thought I should be). I thought I was a “keeper,” but I wasn’t acting like it! There was the amazing me who I knew I could be, and then there was the “other” me who often showed up for dates. My head kept saying, You’re smarter and stronger than this, but my body kept acting like it didn’t get the memo! I felt trapped in a dating personality that didn’t fit who I knew I was supposed to be.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I was Ms. Typed. Once I realized that I needed to change, I decided to take some time away from dating so that I could think things through, give myself some time to heal, and return to the dating world as the real me. So I put myself through the makeover process that I use with my clients, much of which is included here in this book as the Ms. Typed Makeover Kit. Doing these exercises was part of a life makeover for me. Stepping away from dating and focusing on me helped change my entire life. Soon afterward, I quit my job, started my own business, started working in television, and met a wonderful man — and the list goes on!
Excerpted from “Ms. Typed” by Michelle Callahan. Copyright (c) 2009, reprinted with permission from Crown, a division of Random House.
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