“Most girls would have really been devastated,” said Lisa Slayback, a bubbly 33-year-old with flowing blond hair and a perky smile. “I just went out and slept with somebody he worked with.”

Sally Hershberger sprays a divorcee (photo credit: Ken Goodman)

Ms. Slayback was attending “Start Over Smart: A Modern Divorce Expo” at the Metropolitan Pavilion, the first of its kind in New York City, which aimed to offer those fresh off a divorce useful advice on how to gather their wits, their finances and their sex appeal. She had read about the expo in the Staten Island Advance and paid $75 for a ticket on Saturday.

Then she met Sally Hershberger, the Hollywood hair stylist who was offering $800 haircuts for free at one of the expo’s several booths, and with a sassy new ’do, she was feeling chipper.

“What’s really nice here is nobody’s pushing you to buy anything. It’s all really about you,” she said.

The expo was the idea of Nicole Baras Feur, a 42-year-old divorce mediator who went through her own bitter divorce with her husband a year ago. The two had dated since they were 16 (she was at Dalton, he was at Riverdale), got married at age 24, and then went splitsville in 2011.

“If I had an expo like this when I was going through it, I think I would have felt much better,” said Ms. Baras Feur, whose mother, Francine Baras, cofounded the expo.

She first had the idea for “Start Over Smart” after attending a similar event in Paris two years ago.“People are more ready than ever to talk about their divorce,” added Ms. Baras Feur.

The attendees were predominantly women in their 40s who had been married in their 20s, and were now single parents.
They walked around the expo carrying complimentary orange tote bags as they visited a string of exhibition booths. There, they talked about virtually all aspects of a divorce, from investment planning to “Body Cosmetica” and sex therapy, while sometimes helping themselves to complimentary packets of Gobstoppers or Medjool dates in each booth’s goodie bowl.

One booth taught divorcees how to “InvestiDate,” a simple art of background checking a new boyfriend to see if he was actually a conniving rake or a compulsive gambler. “InvestiDate” was coined by Maria Coder, a former Associated Press reporter who suffered her own heartbreak when she discovered her boyfriend was hitting up 36 women on Facebook for sexual favors.

“It was 36 in one month. It was all my heart could take,” said Ms. Coder.

We ventured a visit to “Get Back in the Dating Game,” a how-to workshop hosted by Amy Laurent, a professional matchmaker and a co-star of the upcoming reality Bravo! series Miss Advised.

Wearing a form-fitting purple dress, a pair of cream-color Prada heels and a diamond ring (not engagement) large enough to plug a manhole, Ms. Laurent looked suitably dressed for, well, an appearance on a Bravo show.

Instead, she implored the predominantly female audience to move away from their ex-loves and jump back into the dating game.
“Get rid of those pajamas, change into something else and get out of the house!” said Ms. Laurent.

To conclude, she wished the crowd good luck, and the show ended with Cee Lo’s censored version of “Fuck You” playing in the background. The event staff started clearing away chairs as we spoke with Julia Attison, a woman who sat in front of us during the entirety of Ms. Laurent’s workshop.

Ms. Attison, a copywriter from West Babylon, was married at age 22 and divorced by age 35 (“He was self-absorbed, but mostly in an autistic way,” she said of her ex-husband). Now 38 and single for the past three years, she forced herself to go on dates with divorced people like herself.

“I’ve gone on a lot of dates where they’ve done nothing but ex-bash,” she said.

She was disappointed in the turnout at the expo, which was largely female, save for a few shell-shocked men who navigated the event by themselves.

“When it comes to self-help, it’s mostly women who come here,” said Ms. Attison.

Dance like no one is watching (photo credit: Ken Goodman)

By the time we finished speaking, the theater had been transformed into a party space for the expo’s opening night celebration. Bartenders served up “Fresh Start” cocktails (Tanqueray, lime, simple syrup, mint, Perrier) as The Transom walked around a room filled with middle-aged women slowly nursing their drinks.

We met Teresa Dedovitch, the owner of A New Dawne in New Jersey, which offers divorce ceremonies to couples who are on the fritz.
For $500, the company will host this ceremony at a venue of the couple’s choosing —akin to a wedding ceremony, just with a radically different outcome— to ensure that both parties end their marriage without the bad blood that often accompanies a divorce trial.
“We encourage both people who are getting divorced to come,” said Ms. Dedovitch. “It rarely happens.”

As we continued to work the room, we heard women complain about the lack of men, the high cost of the event (it was an additional $35 for a ticket to the after-party), and the lack of vodka and whiskey at the open bar.

“There’s always less men at all these functions,” said one middle aged woman from New Jersey. “Not that I go to a lot of them.”

When asked by another group of women if we were attending the event as a divorced man, we said we were press, which caused one woman to groan.

“There is not one good looking man here who isn’t working,” said the woman, who called herself “Kara.”
Those men who could call themselves divorced were written off as slim pickings by Kara and her crew.

“They look more emotionally fried,” said Kara, pointing to a balding man who was standing alone sipping his drink. “They don’t have anywhere else to go, and they need the help.”

drosen@observer.com 

Dating scams range from using a dishonest photo from ten years or 30 lbs. ago, to the “long con” or “affinity scam” in which a dater wriggles his way into your life and, after he or she has earned your trust, cleverly extorts money for a get-rich-quick scheme. ”If a man asks you for money on the Internet do not give it to him,” Mr. Evans said. “It just boggles the mind how often women get fleeced. Men get fleeced too–I got an email this morning, ‘she moved in with me burned down my house and took my money.’” Worse, Mr. Evans has talked to many women who were attacked or raped by someone they met on a dating site.

It’s enough to make singles run for cover. But Maria Coder, a former investigative reporter, is a professional InvestiDater. In the course of working the crime beat, Ms. Coder started to compile resources for hapless daters: CriminalCheck.com and FamilyWatchdog.us, free criminal sex offender databases and SpyDialer.com to hear someone’s voicemail without having the phone ring are just a few. Ms. Coder still dates online–”online, offline, wherever I can get a date I take it”–and her favorite dating site is Craigslist’s personals, believe it or not. She’s developed her research into a book and a series of classes.

“It can be a lot of fun, but it does come with certain dangers too,” Ms. Coder told Betabeat yesterday by phone, on a furtive break from her day job as a publicist. “I started to get concerned about myself dating Joe Shmoe off the Internet and not knowing what could happen to me or my friends.”

She related her online dating story of woe: after months of dating, she started to suspect the man she trusted had something to hide. “I saw it coming in a way,” she said. “But I thought the book was playing tricks on my mind. I actually stopped working on the book for several months because I thought it was playing with my mind.” Unfortunately, it turns out her instincts were correct: her partner was hooking up with strangers via Facebook.

Now, through her website, classes and at events like the divorce expo Start Over Smart, Ms. Coder is immersed in stories of online dating tragedy. “‘He was married, he had children, he had a family,’” she paraphrased of common complaints. “‘He was after my money.’” Other dating pitfalls include addicts and petty liars.

Ms. Coder. (investidateyourdate.com)

One common scam among men is to pretend to be a soldier; another is to pretend to be an investment banker. Women can check these claims out with StolenValor.com, Archives.gov and the FINRA broker database, BrokerCheck. Find out if your prospective date has had multiple bankruptcies, in which case he or she may be digging for treasure. Check their voicemail to make sure they sound like who they say they are. Ms. Coder advises online daters to stream all their dating activity through one anonymized email address, keep it updated throughout the date by sending messages to yourself from the cab, and give a friend the password.

Ms. Coder’s classes include “Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing 101,” and the slightly more advanced “Are You Dating an Ass?” She is working on a third class that will involve a trip to the courthouse. Her book, “InvestiDate: How to Investigate Your Date,” is out in paperback and will be out as an ebook soon.

“It’s kind of like Inspector Gadget,” she said. “You’re the most prepared person on the block.”

Need a job? Create one.

For Part 2 of The Greenery’s Make Your Own Job series, meet Maria Coder, InvestiDate-rix extraordinaire.

She teaches online daters how to do a little basic checking on prospective beaus—one of those services you  don’t realize you need until it’s too late.

Because there are some seriously scary fish swimming around out there.

I’ve never joined an online dating service. I was lucky: Hal came along before the Match.com era, so I was, mercifully, spared that particular horror.

Confession: I did, however, once place an ad in the Nashville Scene dating section, back in the days before The Interwebs. I was dating someone at the time, so I had no intention of following through; the ad was an experiment, as it turned out, in crowd-sourced nuttiness. It was highly entertaining. And it was also deeply disturbing.

My disc-hucking aviatrix era

The ad went something like this: Blonde, irreverent, disc-hucking aviatrix seeks scintillating conversation, madcap adventure, or simple companionship with human male; golden retriever a workable substitute if suitable human male not available. No U.S. senators.

Daily messages rang into a password-protected voicemail box. My favorite one, which I think best sums up the overall tone and quality of the replies, said: “I don’t know what you mean by the whole golden retriever thing, but I think I might be inter-rested.”

Wow. Online daters, I ache for you. Please carry mace. And an Uzi.

Or…you might consider arming yourself with a little knowledge instead. Enter Maria Coder, savvy savior to the online dating world’s walking wounded.

Coder teaches daters to protect themselves

The backstory: Quiet alarms were beginning to sound in Maria Coder’s head. She thought it was a bit weird that her boyfriend kept minimizing windows whenever she walked by his computer. One night, he didn’t call back when he’d promised to, and it was getting very late.

Worried, she checked his computer, and discovered his ugly little secret: He’d been flirting and sexting with dozens of women on Facebook. That very night, he had left to “liaise” with one of them. “I was devastated,” she says.

Not one to mope for long, Coder took action. She wanted to feel less vulnerable, and took steps to arm herself and others with a little information about fellow online daters. An experienced crime reporter, she knew her way around public records and databases. She knew how to find out if somebody had a police record. And she’d learned to listen when her internal alarm bells went off—because they were usually right.

She’s since started offering those skills to online daters in a seminar series that teaches basic investigative skills. And she’s written a book that came out earlier this month—InvestiDate: How to Investigate Your Date. For more, read my Nashville Scene profile of her from the Valentine’s week issue.

Coder brings her seminar series to Nashville on Thursday, March 8th, 6:30-8pm, at Bongo After-Hours Theatre. I’ll be there. I’m impressed with her knowledge of search tools and simple, legal investigative techniques regular people can easily use to, say, check the sex offender registry for their beloved’s name. And even if you aren’t sure you want to background check your (potential) true love, you might as well get the tool box, just in case.

A few sample tips and search sites from Coder’s toolbox:

She claims to be a lawyer, but it doesn’t add up. Search trade databases like Martindale.com for her name and company.

He says he was born and raised in Nashville, but he doesn’t seem to know anybody here. Check out Zabasearch.com for a list of former addresses.

He says he’s an investment banker with an amazing investment opportunity for me. Run away. Now.

Related post: Make Your Own Job—Sarah Souther

Perhaps I waited too long to write my follow up on InvestiDate and figured the news segments would speak for themselves. Since at least one of my friends seems to believe that Maria Coder is brooding fear by teaching people tools to investigate their potential dates, I think the time has come for me to speak honestly and clearly about my experiences and her class. When I met Maria Coder and decided to attend her first of likely countless classes she will teach, I didn’t know what to expect. With an intentionally open-minded outlook on life most days, I thought it couldn’t hurt, and perhaps I might learn something, as a single woman living alone in a big city. I did.

InvestiDate helps you stay safe

Two classes and two interviews later (Catch my Today Show segment here and my meeting with ABC Eyewitness News anchor Sandra Bookman above.), I have an opinion. Crazy or cautious? Well, the psychologist who commented on my segment of the Today Show would have you see me as one of the “paranoid” types of women who would take “that kind of class.”

Although I’ve never before admitted this in public, I have had some difficulties here and there, growing up, dating, and even just going out with friends in public spaces. Despite having had some incredible experiences meeting, loving, and knowing people in my lifetime, I’ve also loved someone who lied to me for many years, had someone slip a roofie in my drink (thankfully without the intended outcome, thanks to the presence of a very dear friend), and suffered a separate date rape many years ago. In reality, I’ve chosen to leave plenty of equally trying experiences out of this discussion. Were I afraid now, I would have every right. I suppose, not knowing me closely enough to see the personal growth I’ve experienced since then, one might easily suspect me of at least paranoia.

If, however, you’ve read any of my other blog posts or know my life, you know I do not tend to err on the side of paranoia, no less caution. I went skydiving because it scared me. Singing a cappella opera, nude, as all of the other models leave the stage in Sarah Small’s Tableau Vivant of the Delirium Constructions and publicly writing about it has left me with an incredible influx of amazing fans and some less flattering folks exhibiting some stalker-like behavior. Not exactly the action of a paranoid woman, and certainly one of the most challenging but meaningful things I’ve done in my lifetime thus far.

Anyway, I won’t lie and try to say that dating hasn’t presented its share of challenges too. Sure, sometimes I need to regroup after a hard breakup and take a little time. Skeptics of InvestiDate, now is the time to read carefully. Initially, after Maria’s class, I questioned my readiness to restart dating. When a dog leaned up against me on the street that night to get me to pet him, I thought, “May be I should just stick to dogs.” Surprisingly though, over the course of the next two weeks, the seed that had been planted at the first class began to sprout thoughts in my head about dating websites and that really nice guy in the neighborhood. Before I knew what had influenced me, I had already updated my profile on okcupid and started checking out new sites. I again somehow had the confidence to date.

Maria teaches tools to keep people informed and safe, not hidden away in their apartments, afraid of a connection with another human being. She actually approves of dating on Craigslist and recommends ways to do it safely. These are not the actions of a fear monger. She is not teaching us how to put duct tape and water bottles in a box in case Al Qaeda attacks. Like a teacher of a self defense class, she instructs each student regardless of gender, background, confidence or fear.

If a somewhat fearful person attends InvestiDate and, by making sure her date isn’t a sexual predator, feels better about allowing a little more trust and vulnerability when meeting a stranger in the city, good for her! For the record, I don’t intend to use most of the tools she teaches, but I will employ some. Honestly, when a video of me singing nude has circulated to hundreds of thousands of people already, on its way to a documentary, I think I’m a fool if I don’t take any precautions here or there. Still, even Maria Coder admits on the most recent news segment that the point is “to give you the power to make an informed dating decision.”

On a day like today, when the whole world seems bent on having an opinion, let’s make them count. Be clear, be unified where you can, and above all, please don’t waste time worrying about people who only want to empower us to move forward with our lives. While we’re at it, may be we can figure out some ways to help each other live our lives together more easily and fruitfully. I don’t have the answers. I don’t know who does. I do know there are better things to question. I wonder, “What will happen at the Brooklyn Bridge at 5pm, and what happens if the super-committee doesn’t reach its deadline?”

Gone are the days when I hear the phrase, “Oh, it must be so easy for you,” in reference to myself or anyone else dating or finding a good match. Still, people often look surprised upon hearing that New York has a reputation for stacking the numbers in favor of the single man, and even those who defend the dating scene here admit (and, in true New York fashion, like the fact) that it isn’t easy. Although I have learned so many beautiful lessons, found priceless and lasting friendships, and truly value those I’ve met while dating in the city, I admit I have suffered occasional defeat.

I once wrote a post (or two or three) about dating; however, I admittedly shy away from discussing such a topic online, especially when it involves other people I respect. Even omitting any mention of the couple of mixers and speed dating events I’ve attended during and because of my efforts writing  Skydiving for Pearls, I seem to have decided to remain a bit of a mystery in this area of my life. Don’t expect that to change anytime soon.

On the other hand, when I stumble upon something of interest to myself and potentially other women (or men) who, like me, navigate the sometimes muddy waters of the single life in Manhattan, I feel obliged to share. At a group exercise/dance class downtown last night, I met Maria Coder, founder of InvestiDate. As a former journalist and certified investigative reporter, Maria has steered her life toward helping people learn the skills necessary to date smartly.

With a surprisingly optimistic outlook, this dating sleuth told me that she doesn’t judge the way someone chooses to try to find a mate. Craigslist, for example, could theoretically work with the right investigative mindset before making potentially dangerous mistakes on a date with a stranger. When she invited me to her class this Thursday with a discount, I decided to give it a try. Hopefully I have already learned the street smarts not to put myself in situations that might harm me, but I don’t doubt I might learn something new.

For those of you wondering, “Is this what we’ve come to – not trusting anyone and doing background checks on my husband?” I suspect the lovely Maria has a more balanced approach. Based on our brief conversation, I believe she wants to help women succeed in their efforts to find whatever they seek by dating in the city, without putting themselves in physical or financial danger. Sometimes we can’t avoid emotional pain, but I look forward to this class on Thursday where I may just learn to try my best. Either way, I doubt my heart can ever doubt too much to once again fall in love.

For anyone wishing to join me, Maria has kindly offered my readers the same $5 discount she offered me for Thursday night’s class, Investidate: How to Investigate Your Date – Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing 101! Just enter the code PEARLS at checkout. Hope to see you there! Don’t worry guys, you know I still love you.